President Joe Biden signed into law a $1 trillion infrastructure bill at a White House ceremony on Monday. The white House witnessed a rare bipartisan for the signing.

United States: Joe Biden signs $1 TN infrastructure bill into law

The Biden administration is prepared to impose further sanctions and ratchet up diplomatic pressure on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's government following elections set for this Sunday, senior US&nbsp;officials said.

Escalating US&nbsp;criticism of Ortega as he is firmly favored to win a fourth consecutive term, a senior State Department official said on Friday that Washington sees the vote as ushering in a "dictatorship" in the Central American nation.

Since the last election in 2016, Ortega has abolished presidential term limits, expanded his family's business empire and piled pressure on independent media. In recent months, he has jailed opposition contenders, activists, journalists and business leaders. Other critics have gone into exile.

The United States will maintain its diplomatic presence in Nicaragua despite regarding the election as the end of Ortega's democratic mandate, the official told reporters.

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But President Joe Biden's administration will limit certain trade "interactions" with Managua and uses its vote in international financial institutions to discourage lending to a "corrupt government."

Biden is likely to add his voice to condemnation of Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, by issuing a statement on Sunday, a senior administration official said.

Biden also intends to sign legislation to increase pressure on Ortega, who has arrested opponents and cracked down on critical media, all but guaranteeing his re-election, the official said.

"You're going to see broad international rejection of fraudulent elections," the administration official told reporters.

Reuters reported last week that Washington was readying targeted sanctions for after the election. This would add to the punitive measures already rolled out, including on Ortega family members. read more

The State Department official confirmed more sanctions were in the works, though earlier actions have not deterred Ortega. Many analysts are skeptical, with sanctions having done little to effect change in Cuba and Venezuela.

US&nbsp;officials hope to gain leverage by coordinating sanctions with others, such as the European Union and Canada, even as Nicaragua's neighbors have resisted going beyond tough words.

"We're prepared to focus our attention through sanctions and diplomacy on imposing costs on those involved in repression in Nicaragua," the State Department official said.

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Ortega, the longest-serving leader in the Americas, has said that sanctions would not deter him and his government was upholding the law by arresting people conspiring against him.

The State Department official said the Organization of American States is expected to send a "strong message" when it meets this month. Seven nations - including Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala and Honduras - abstained in October on a resolution expressing alarm at Ortega's actions.

US&nbsp;options appear limited. The State Department official said Washington would be very careful about hitting sectors of Nicaragua's economy that "might impact the population." This would appear to leave only individuals, security units and government-controlled companies as future targets.

Washington has begun a review of Nicaragua's membership in the Central America free trade agreement. But the administration is mindful that Nicaragua's suspension could hurt its struggling economy and possibly spur further migration to the US-Mexico border.

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The State Department official said the administration was willing to study what additional measures could be taken under CAFTA-DR, which gives preferential treatment for regional exports, but stopped short of saying it would consider Nicaragua's suspension.

The Biden administration is prepared to impose further sanctions and ratchet up diplomatic pressure on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's government following elections set for this Sunday, senior US officials said.

The Biden administration is prepared to impose further sanctions and ratchet up diplomatic pressure on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's government following elections set for this Sunday, senior US officials said. Escalating US criticism of Ortega as he is firmly favored to win a fourth consecutive term, a senior State Department official said on Friday that Washington sees the vote as ushering in a "dictatorship" in the Central American nation. Since the last election in 2016, Ortega has abolished presidential term limits, expanded his family's business empire and piled pressure on independent media. In recent months, he has jailed opposition contenders, activists, journalists and business leaders. Other critics have gone into exile. The United States will maintain its diplomatic presence in Nicaragua despite regarding the election as the end of Ortega's democratic mandate, the official told reporters. Also Read | Chinese spy convicted of trying to steal US aviation trade secrets But President Joe Biden's administration will limit certain trade "interactions" with Managua and uses its vote in international financial institutions to discourage lending to a "corrupt government." Biden is likely to add his voice to condemnation of Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, by issuing a statement on Sunday, a senior administration official said. Biden also intends to sign legislation to increase pressure on Ortega, who has arrested opponents and cracked down on critical media, all but guaranteeing his re-election, the official said. "You're going to see broad international rejection of fraudulent elections," the administration official told reporters. Reuters reported last week that Washington was readying targeted sanctions for after the election. This would add to the punitive measures already rolled out, including on Ortega family members. read more The State Department official confirmed more sanctions were in the works, though earlier actions have not deterred Ortega. Many analysts are skeptical, with sanctions having done little to effect change in Cuba and Venezuela. US officials hope to gain leverage by coordinating sanctions with others, such as the European Union and Canada, even as Nicaragua's neighbors have resisted going beyond tough words. "We're prepared to focus our attention through sanctions and diplomacy on imposing costs on those involved in repression in Nicaragua," the State Department official said. Also Read | UN Security Council calls for end to Ethiopia conflict Ortega, the longest-serving leader in the Americas, has said that sanctions would not deter him and his government was upholding the law by arresting people conspiring against him. The State Department official said the Organization of American States is expected to send a "strong message" when it meets this month. Seven nations - including Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala and Honduras - abstained in October on a resolution expressing alarm at Ortega's actions. US options appear limited. The State Department official said Washington would be very careful about hitting sectors of Nicaragua's economy that "might impact the population." This would appear to leave only individuals, security units and government-controlled companies as future targets. Washington has begun a review of Nicaragua's membership in the Central America free trade agreement. But the administration is mindful that Nicaragua's suspension could hurt its struggling economy and possibly spur further migration to the US-Mexico border. Also Read | US journalist detained in Myanmar hit with third charge, says lawyer The State Department official said the administration was willing to study what additional measures could be taken under CAFTA-DR, which gives preferential treatment for regional exports, but stopped short of saying it would consider Nicaragua's suspension.

US prepares sanctions, pressure on Nicaragua after election -officials

Climate change is an “emerging threat” to the stability of the U.S. financial system, top federal regulators warned in a report Thursday, setting the stage for the Biden administration to take more aggressive regulatory action to prevent climate change from upending global markets and the economy.

The report, produced by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, is the clearest expression of alarm to date about the risks that rising temperatures and seas pose to the economy and could herald sweeping changes to the kinds of investments made by banks and other financial institutions.

It was released as President Joe Biden and senior administration officials prepare to attend the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where the United States will try to demonstrate to the world that it is serious about addressing the climate threat. Biden’s climate agenda has stalled in Congress, leaving financial regulation as one of the few areas he can point to as evidence of his commitment on warming.

The Biden administration also released a series of reports Thursday on the threat that climate change poses to national security, saying it increases the risks of conflict within and between countries and could potentially displace tens of millions of people around the world.

The report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is led by the Treasury secretary and includes leaders from the major financial regulatory agencies, portrayed the financial threat of climate change in stark terms. Higher temperatures are leading to more natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires and floods. These, in turn, are resulting in damaged property, lost income and disruptions to business activity that threaten to alter how assets, such as real estate, are valued.

At the same time, the move away from fossil fuels could cause a sudden drop in the price of stocks and other assets tied to oil, gas, coal and other energy companies, or sectors that rely on them such as carmakers and heavy manufacturing. Such a shift could hurt the stock market, retirement savings and other parts of the financial sector.

“The financial sector may experience credit and markets risks associated with loss of income, defaults and changes in the value of assets,” the report said, adding that liquidity and legal risks are also concerns.

The council warned that low-income communities and people of color were disproportionately at risk from climate change because they lacked the resources to protect their properties and weather a loss of income. This dynamic threatens to exacerbate income inequality in the United States.

The report made a series of broad recommendations; however, it avoided the type of policy prescriptions that environmental groups and progressive Democrats have been demanding from the Biden administration. For instance, it did not recommend that banks be subjected to tougher rules such as assessing their ability to withstand climate-related losses, new capital requirements or curbs on extending financing to fossil fuel companies.

Nor did it include specific timelines or other milestones that it wants financial regulatory agencies to meet.

The report did recommend the formation of a financial risk committee, more rigorous analysis of the effects of climate change on the insurance industry and greater coordination with climate experts to better understand the economic and financial effect of the emerging threat.

The council did say it supports work that the Securities and Exchange Commission is doing to develop rules that could require companies to disclose how climate change risks could affect their operations or earnings. It added that regulators should review whether to require banks to report more information about their climate-related risks. The council includes the leaders of the SEC, the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators.

The Biden administration has previously said climate change is an existential crisis, but large portions of its climate agenda remain stalled in Congress. Environmental groups have argued that the Biden administration is not acting quickly or ambitiously enough after four years during which the Trump administration dismissed the threat of climate change and rolled back environmental safeguards.

Some environmental groups have suggested that the recommendations were scaled back because Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who chairs the council, was seeking a consensus document that would be acceptable to all members. Two members — Jerome Powell from the Fed and Jelena McWilliams from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — were appointed to lead their agencies by former President Donald Trump. McWilliams was the lone member of the council who abstained from voting to endorse the report Thursday.

Yellen, who will travel to Glasgow for the U.N. conference next month, hailed the significance of the report at the council’s meeting Thursday.

“It’s a critical first step forward in addressing the threat of climate change, and it will by no means be the end of this work,” Yellen said.

Ben Cushing, manager of the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said the report was a step in the right direction but that it needed to be more bold. He said Wall Street firms were contributing to the climate crisis and that regulators must rein them in.

“Secretary Yellen’s report lays out preliminary steps to make the financial industry more transparent and accountable for their growing climate risks, but it’s also a missed opportunity to recommend actions that actually reduce climate risk and limit Wall Street’s toxic investments in the fossil fuels that are driving the crisis,” Cushing said.

The next step is for the various financial regulators to act on the warnings in the report, said Steven M. Rothstein, managing director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets, which works with investors to address climate risks.

“Banks, insurance and fossil fuel companies should be on notice,” Rothstein said. “Each agency must now provide specific timelines when they plan to put in place measures to protect the safety and soundness of our financial system, our institutions, our savings and our communities.”

Climate change is an “emerging threat” to the stability of the U.S. financial system, top federal regulators warned in a report Thursday, setting the stage for the Biden administration to take more aggressive regulatory action to prevent climate change from upending global markets and the economy.

Climate change is an “emerging threat” to the stability of the U.S. financial system, top federal regulators warned in a report Thursday, setting the stage for the Biden administration to take more aggressive regulatory action to prevent climate change from upending global markets and the economy. The report, produced by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, is the clearest expression of alarm to date about the risks that rising temperatures and seas pose to the economy and could herald sweeping changes to the kinds of investments made by banks and other financial institutions. It was released as President Joe Biden and senior administration officials prepare to attend the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where the United States will try to demonstrate to the world that it is serious about addressing the climate threat. Biden’s climate agenda has stalled in Congress, leaving financial regulation as one of the few areas he can point to as evidence of his commitment on warming. The Biden administration also released a series of reports Thursday on the threat that climate change poses to national security, saying it increases the risks of conflict within and between countries and could potentially displace tens of millions of people around the world. The report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is led by the Treasury secretary and includes leaders from the major financial regulatory agencies, portrayed the financial threat of climate change in stark terms. Higher temperatures are leading to more natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires and floods. These, in turn, are resulting in damaged property, lost income and disruptions to business activity that threaten to alter how assets, such as real estate, are valued. At the same time, the move away from fossil fuels could cause a sudden drop in the price of stocks and other assets tied to oil, gas, coal and other energy companies, or sectors that rely on them such as carmakers and heavy manufacturing. Such a shift could hurt the stock market, retirement savings and other parts of the financial sector. “The financial sector may experience credit and markets risks associated with loss of income, defaults and changes in the value of assets,” the report said, adding that liquidity and legal risks are also concerns. The council warned that low-income communities and people of color were disproportionately at risk from climate change because they lacked the resources to protect their properties and weather a loss of income. This dynamic threatens to exacerbate income inequality in the United States. The report made a series of broad recommendations; however, it avoided the type of policy prescriptions that environmental groups and progressive Democrats have been demanding from the Biden administration. For instance, it did not recommend that banks be subjected to tougher rules such as assessing their ability to withstand climate-related losses, new capital requirements or curbs on extending financing to fossil fuel companies. Nor did it include specific timelines or other milestones that it wants financial regulatory agencies to meet. The report did recommend the formation of a financial risk committee, more rigorous analysis of the effects of climate change on the insurance industry and greater coordination with climate experts to better understand the economic and financial effect of the emerging threat. The council did say it supports work that the Securities and Exchange Commission is doing to develop rules that could require companies to disclose how climate change risks could affect their operations or earnings. It added that regulators should review whether to require banks to report more information about their climate-related risks. The council includes the leaders of the SEC, the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators. The Biden administration has previously said climate change is an existential crisis, but large portions of its climate agenda remain stalled in Congress. Environmental groups have argued that the Biden administration is not acting quickly or ambitiously enough after four years during which the Trump administration dismissed the threat of climate change and rolled back environmental safeguards. Some environmental groups have suggested that the recommendations were scaled back because Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who chairs the council, was seeking a consensus document that would be acceptable to all members. Two members — Jerome Powell from the Fed and Jelena McWilliams from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — were appointed to lead their agencies by former President Donald Trump. McWilliams was the lone member of the council who abstained from voting to endorse the report Thursday. Yellen, who will travel to Glasgow for the U.N. conference next month, hailed the significance of the report at the council’s meeting Thursday. “It’s a critical first step forward in addressing the threat of climate change, and it will by no means be the end of this work,” Yellen said. Ben Cushing, manager of the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign, said the report was a step in the right direction but that it needed to be more bold. He said Wall Street firms were contributing to the climate crisis and that regulators must rein them in. “Secretary Yellen’s report lays out preliminary steps to make the financial industry more transparent and accountable for their growing climate risks, but it’s also a missed opportunity to recommend actions that actually reduce climate risk and limit Wall Street’s toxic investments in the fossil fuels that are driving the crisis,” Cushing said. The next step is for the various financial regulators to act on the warnings in the report, said Steven M. Rothstein, managing director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets, which works with investors to address climate risks. “Banks, insurance and fossil fuel companies should be on notice,” Rothstein said. “Each agency must now provide specific timelines when they plan to put in place measures to protect the safety and soundness of our financial system, our institutions, our savings and our communities.”

US warns climate poses ‘emerging threat’ to financial system

President Joe Biden credited law enforcement agencies for upholding the US political system during the January 6th riot at the capitol, called for more resources to be allocated to law enforcement officers.

US: President Joe Biden speaks to hundreds of uniformed officers

The roughly 15% of the population living in rural America includes some of the oldest and sickest patients in the country — a disparity that has grown more stark during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Biden administration is investing more in telemedicine, whose use has grown sharply during the pandemic, as a way to improve their access to care.

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was distributing nearly $20 million to strengthen telehealth services — usually medical appointments that take place by video or phone — in rural and underserved communities across the country. While the amount is relatively modest, it is part of a broader push to address the long-neglected health care infrastructure in those areas.

The spending includes about $4 million to help bring primary, acute and behavioral health care directly to patients via telehealth in 11 states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Maine.

The money will update technology in rural health care clinics, train doctors and nurses how to conduct telehealth appointments and teach patients how to take advantage of virtual appointments when they cannot see a doctor in person.

An additional $4.3 million will help specialists at academic medical centers provide training and support to primary care providers in rural and other underserved areas via “tele-mentoring,” so that they can treat patients in their communities with complex conditions, such as long COVID or substance use disorders.

“Telehealth expands access to care and is a vital tool for improving health equity,” said Diana Espinosa, the acting administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency within the department that is distributing the money. “This funding will help drive the innovation necessary to build clinical networks, educational opportunities and trusted resources to further advance telehealth.”

Rural Americans are at greater risk of dying from heart disease, cancer, accidental injury, chronic respiratory illnesses and strokes than their urban counterparts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The pandemic, too, has hit them disproportionately: ICU beds have been sparse in rural Idaho during virus surges. Navajo Nation in rural Arizona once had a higher virus death rate than New York City.

In August, the Biden administration provided billions of dollars to rural communities through the American Rescue Plan — separate from the $20 million — to address virus concerns, including by expanding telehealth, and to help rebuild crumbling health care infrastructure.

Other investments in rural health during the pandemic have included improving training for clinicians working at rural Veterans Affairs hospitals; more than $8 billion to help hospitals and doctors’ offices make up for lost revenues and increased expenses during that time; and $350 million to rural communities for food, medical supplies and vaccines.

Even though telehealth has become more mainstream during the pandemic, challenges persist. It remains inaccessible in areas without internet or proper speeds. And there is still a lot of uncertainty about how using telemedicine more would affect insurers’ and hospitals’ bottom lines over time, not to mention patient outcomes.

A large body of research supports the use of telehealth for communication and counselling, and for monitoring patients with chronic conditions, but more evidence is needed on its broader use.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center will receive more than $3.5 million of the $20 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration, through two grant programs to improve health care in rural, medically underserved areas of the state that have widespread chronic disease and high poverty rates.

The coronavirus pandemic increased not only the need for telehealth but also the amount that doctors and nurses get paid to use it. Early in the pandemic, Congress and the Trump administration expanded Medicare’s coverage of telehealth services for the duration of the public health emergency, although it is unclear whether the coverage will continue indefinitely.

“There is now momentum; telehealth is now considered part of the mainstream of health care delivery,” said Dr. Saurabh Chandra, the chief telehealth officer at the Center for Telehealth at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “There were lots of loosening of regulations that allowed us to expand telehealth and do telehealth in a very short period of time.”

Telehealth is not just for rural areas, Chandra said. It can be used in schools and correctional facilities, as well as in patients’ homes, nursing homes, doctors’ offices and hospitals. Among other things, telehealth technology has been crucial to stabilizing rural COVID-19 patients as they await transfer, through a program commonly called “tele-ICU.”

The University of Mississippi Medical Center plans to start such a program — essentially a two-way video system that connects critically ill patients in rural hospital ICU beds with teams of doctors and nurses who specialize in caring for patients from a distance.

Angela Turner-Ford, a Democratic state senator in Mississippi who is the chairwoman of the state’s legislative Black caucus, said that increasing access to telehealth would also help medical providers combat misinformation that had been circulating among the state’s Black residents and creating high vaccine hesitancy.

If it were easier to connect with doctors regularly, many of the hesitant might change their minds, she said.

“They are left to themselves and what someone may have told them that may not be reliable information,” Turner-Ford said. “If you don’t have that existing relationship with a practitioner, someone in that instance may have known who to call just to have a simple conversation.”

Jennifer Yturriondobeitia, CEO of Cornerstone Whole Healthcare Organization, a nonprofit in Boise, Idaho, focused on improving rural health care, said the $350,000 it received will go toward telehealth for mental and substance abuse disorders. Idaho lacks treatment for these conditions, especially in rural areas, she said.

Yturriondobeitia said her group had used telehealth in Idaho since 2015. Back then, patients drove to doctors’ offices to connect with distant specialized providers. Now the focus is on connecting patients with those providers from their own homes.

In Oregon, the funding will help residents primarily in the Columbia River Gorge region. Five of the six counties that will benefit are in the vast rural area where mountain ranges form the boundary between Oregon and Washington. Poverty levels are high, and for some, a visit to the doctor can be an hour’s drive away. Nearly one-third of the population is Hispanic.

“They don’t have enough primary care doctors, they don’t have enough mental health professionals, they don’t have enough anybody there,” said Dr. Nancy Elder, director of the Oregon Rural Practice-Based Research Network, which received $475,000.

Chronic diabetes is also pervasive in the region. Elder said one way she believed the quality of care could be improved was by increasing the skills of the doctors and nurses already based there.

The region’s award will be used for Project ECHO, a program that allows rural primary care clinicians to learn from specialists by video. The meetings begin with an educational presentation, followed by a discussion of real-life clinical obstacles the providers are facing.

“They get access to expertise that they wouldn’t have,” said Maggie McLain McDonnell, director of the Oregon ECHO Network and Health Education Initiatives, “but they also get support so that they feel less alone in the challenges that they’re facing treating these patients.”

The roughly 15% of the population living in rural America includes some of the oldest and sickest patients in the country — a disparity that has grown more stark during the coronavirus pandemic.

The roughly 15% of the population living in rural America includes some of the oldest and sickest patients in the country — a disparity that has grown more stark during the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden administration is investing more in telemedicine, whose use has grown sharply during the pandemic, as a way to improve their access to care. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was distributing nearly $20 million to strengthen telehealth services — usually medical appointments that take place by video or phone — in rural and underserved communities across the country. While the amount is relatively modest, it is part of a broader push to address the long-neglected health care infrastructure in those areas. The spending includes about $4 million to help bring primary, acute and behavioral health care directly to patients via telehealth in 11 states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Maine. The money will update technology in rural health care clinics, train doctors and nurses how to conduct telehealth appointments and teach patients how to take advantage of virtual appointments when they cannot see a doctor in person. An additional $4.3 million will help specialists at academic medical centers provide training and support to primary care providers in rural and other underserved areas via “tele-mentoring,” so that they can treat patients in their communities with complex conditions, such as long COVID or substance use disorders. “Telehealth expands access to care and is a vital tool for improving health equity,” said Diana Espinosa, the acting administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency within the department that is distributing the money. “This funding will help drive the innovation necessary to build clinical networks, educational opportunities and trusted resources to further advance telehealth.” Rural Americans are at greater risk of dying from heart disease, cancer, accidental injury, chronic respiratory illnesses and strokes than their urban counterparts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The pandemic, too, has hit them disproportionately: ICU beds have been sparse in rural Idaho during virus surges. Navajo Nation in rural Arizona once had a higher virus death rate than New York City. In August, the Biden administration provided billions of dollars to rural communities through the American Rescue Plan — separate from the $20 million — to address virus concerns, including by expanding telehealth, and to help rebuild crumbling health care infrastructure. Other investments in rural health during the pandemic have included improving training for clinicians working at rural Veterans Affairs hospitals; more than $8 billion to help hospitals and doctors’ offices make up for lost revenues and increased expenses during that time; and $350 million to rural communities for food, medical supplies and vaccines. Even though telehealth has become more mainstream during the pandemic, challenges persist. It remains inaccessible in areas without internet or proper speeds. And there is still a lot of uncertainty about how using telemedicine more would affect insurers’ and hospitals’ bottom lines over time, not to mention patient outcomes. A large body of research supports the use of telehealth for communication and counselling, and for monitoring patients with chronic conditions, but more evidence is needed on its broader use. The University of Mississippi Medical Center will receive more than $3.5 million of the $20 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration, through two grant programs to improve health care in rural, medically underserved areas of the state that have widespread chronic disease and high poverty rates. The coronavirus pandemic increased not only the need for telehealth but also the amount that doctors and nurses get paid to use it. Early in the pandemic, Congress and the Trump administration expanded Medicare’s coverage of telehealth services for the duration of the public health emergency, although it is unclear whether the coverage will continue indefinitely. “There is now momentum; telehealth is now considered part of the mainstream of health care delivery,” said Dr. Saurabh Chandra, the chief telehealth officer at the Center for Telehealth at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “There were lots of loosening of regulations that allowed us to expand telehealth and do telehealth in a very short period of time.” Telehealth is not just for rural areas, Chandra said. It can be used in schools and correctional facilities, as well as in patients’ homes, nursing homes, doctors’ offices and hospitals. Among other things, telehealth technology has been crucial to stabilizing rural COVID-19 patients as they await transfer, through a program commonly called “tele-ICU.” The University of Mississippi Medical Center plans to start such a program — essentially a two-way video system that connects critically ill patients in rural hospital ICU beds with teams of doctors and nurses who specialize in caring for patients from a distance. Angela Turner-Ford, a Democratic state senator in Mississippi who is the chairwoman of the state’s legislative Black caucus, said that increasing access to telehealth would also help medical providers combat misinformation that had been circulating among the state’s Black residents and creating high vaccine hesitancy. If it were easier to connect with doctors regularly, many of the hesitant might change their minds, she said. “They are left to themselves and what someone may have told them that may not be reliable information,” Turner-Ford said. “If you don’t have that existing relationship with a practitioner, someone in that instance may have known who to call just to have a simple conversation.” Jennifer Yturriondobeitia, CEO of Cornerstone Whole Healthcare Organization, a nonprofit in Boise, Idaho, focused on improving rural health care, said the $350,000 it received will go toward telehealth for mental and substance abuse disorders. Idaho lacks treatment for these conditions, especially in rural areas, she said. Yturriondobeitia said her group had used telehealth in Idaho since 2015. Back then, patients drove to doctors’ offices to connect with distant specialized providers. Now the focus is on connecting patients with those providers from their own homes. In Oregon, the funding will help residents primarily in the Columbia River Gorge region. Five of the six counties that will benefit are in the vast rural area where mountain ranges form the boundary between Oregon and Washington. Poverty levels are high, and for some, a visit to the doctor can be an hour’s drive away. Nearly one-third of the population is Hispanic. “They don’t have enough primary care doctors, they don’t have enough mental health professionals, they don’t have enough anybody there,” said Dr. Nancy Elder, director of the Oregon Rural Practice-Based Research Network, which received $475,000. Chronic diabetes is also pervasive in the region. Elder said one way she believed the quality of care could be improved was by increasing the skills of the doctors and nurses already based there. The region’s award will be used for Project ECHO, a program that allows rural primary care clinicians to learn from specialists by video. The meetings begin with an educational presentation, followed by a discussion of real-life clinical obstacles the providers are facing. “They get access to expertise that they wouldn’t have,” said Maggie McLain McDonnell, director of the Oregon ECHO Network and Health Education Initiatives, “but they also get support so that they feel less alone in the challenges that they’re facing treating these patients.”

Biden administration seeks to expand telehealth in rural America

The Biden administration on Wednesday released a plan to produce almost half of the nation’s electricity from the sun by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change.

Solar energy provided less than four&nbsp;per cent of the country’s electricity last year and the administration’s target of 45&nbsp;per cent&nbsp;would represent a huge leap and will most likely take a fundamental reshaping of the energy industry. In a new report, the Energy Department said the country needed to double the amount of solar energy installed every year over the next four years compared with last year. And then it will need to double annual installations again by 2030.

Adding that many solar panels, on rooftops and on open ground, will not be easy. In February, a division of the Energy Department projected that the share of electricity produced by all renewable sources, including solar, wind and hydroelectric dams, would reach 42&nbsp;per cent&nbsp;by 2050 based on current trends and policies.

The new department blueprint is in line with what most climate scientists say is needed. Those experts say that reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2050 is essential to limiting the worst effects of global warming — and much greater use of renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines will be needed to achieve that goal.

But administration officials have provided only a broad outline for how they hope to get there. Many of the details will ultimately be decided by lawmakers in Congress, which is working on a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a much larger Democratic measure that could authorise $3.5 trillion in federal spending.

One thing going for the administration is that the cost of solar panels has fallen substantially over the last decade, making them the cheapest source of energy in many parts of the country. The use of solar and wind energy has also grown much faster in recent years than most government and independent analysts had predicted.

“One of the things we’re hoping that people see and take from this report is that it is affordable to decarbonise the grid,” said Becca Jones-Albertus, director of the Solar Energy Technology Office in the Energy Department. “The grid will remain reliable. We just need to build.”

The administration is making the case that the United States needs to act quickly because not doing anything to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels also has significant costs, particularly from extreme weather linked to climate change. In a Tuesday visit to inspect damage from the intense rainfall caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in New Jersey and New York, President Joe Biden said, “The nation and the world are in peril.”

Some recent natural disasters have been compounded by weaknesses in the energy system. Ida, for example, dealt a huge blow to the electric grid in Louisiana, where hundreds of thousands of people have been without power for days. Last winter, a storm left much of Texas without electricity for days, too. And in California, utility equipment has ignited several large wildfires, killing scores of people and destroying thousands of homes and businesses.

Even so, many analysts and even some in the solar industry are skeptical that the administration can achieve its green targets. In addition to the 45&nbsp;per cent solar target, Biden has said he wants to bring net planet-warming emissions from the power sector to zero by 2035. He also wants to add hundreds of offshore wind turbines to the seven currently in the waters off the nation’s coasts and have as many as half of all new cars sold be electric by 2030.

While renewable energy has grown fast, it contributes about 20 per cent of the country’s electricity. Natural gas and coal contribute about 60per cent.

“That kind of quick acceleration of deployment is only going to happen through smart policy decisions,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “That’s the part where having a goal is important, but having clear steps on how to get there is the issue.”

Challenges like trade disputes could also complicate Biden’s push for more solar power. China dominates the global supply chain for solar panels, and the administration recently began blocking imports connected with China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about the use of forced labor. While many solar companies say they are working to shift away from materials made in Xinjiang, energy experts say the import ban could slow the construction of solar projects throughout the country in the short term.

Biden wants to use tax credits to encourage the use of solar power systems and batteries at homes, businesses and utilities. The administration also wants local governments to make it quicker to obtain permits and build new solar projects — in some places it can take months to put panels on a single-family house, for example. And officials want to offer various incentives to utility companies to encourage the use of solar.

Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary, said part of the administration’s strategy would focus on its Clean Electricity Payment Program, which would reward utilities for adding more renewable energy to the electric grid, including rooftop solar. Many utility companies have fought against rooftop solar panels because they see a threat to their business and would rather build large solar farms that they own and control.

“Both have to happen, and the utilities will be incentivised to take down the barriers,” Granholm said. “We’ve got to do a series of things.”

The Biden administration on Wednesday released a plan to produce almost half of the nation’s electricity from the sun by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change.

The Biden administration on Wednesday released a plan to produce almost half of the nation’s electricity from the sun by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change. Solar energy provided less than four per cent of the country’s electricity last year and the administration’s target of 45 per cent would represent a huge leap and will most likely take a fundamental reshaping of the energy industry. In a new report, the Energy Department said the country needed to double the amount of solar energy installed every year over the next four years compared with last year. And then it will need to double annual installations again by 2030. Adding that many solar panels, on rooftops and on open ground, will not be easy. In February, a division of the Energy Department projected that the share of electricity produced by all renewable sources, including solar, wind and hydroelectric dams, would reach 42 per cent by 2050 based on current trends and policies. The new department blueprint is in line with what most climate scientists say is needed. Those experts say that reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2050 is essential to limiting the worst effects of global warming — and much greater use of renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines will be needed to achieve that goal. But administration officials have provided only a broad outline for how they hope to get there. Many of the details will ultimately be decided by lawmakers in Congress, which is working on a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a much larger Democratic measure that could authorise $3.5 trillion in federal spending. One thing going for the administration is that the cost of solar panels has fallen substantially over the last decade, making them the cheapest source of energy in many parts of the country. The use of solar and wind energy has also grown much faster in recent years than most government and independent analysts had predicted. “One of the things we’re hoping that people see and take from this report is that it is affordable to decarbonise the grid,” said Becca Jones-Albertus, director of the Solar Energy Technology Office in the Energy Department. “The grid will remain reliable. We just need to build.” The administration is making the case that the United States needs to act quickly because not doing anything to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels also has significant costs, particularly from extreme weather linked to climate change. In a Tuesday visit to inspect damage from the intense rainfall caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in New Jersey and New York, President Joe Biden said, “The nation and the world are in peril.” Some recent natural disasters have been compounded by weaknesses in the energy system. Ida, for example, dealt a huge blow to the electric grid in Louisiana, where hundreds of thousands of people have been without power for days. Last winter, a storm left much of Texas without electricity for days, too. And in California, utility equipment has ignited several large wildfires, killing scores of people and destroying thousands of homes and businesses. Even so, many analysts and even some in the solar industry are skeptical that the administration can achieve its green targets. In addition to the 45 per cent solar target, Biden has said he wants to bring net planet-warming emissions from the power sector to zero by 2035. He also wants to add hundreds of offshore wind turbines to the seven currently in the waters off the nation’s coasts and have as many as half of all new cars sold be electric by 2030. While renewable energy has grown fast, it contributes about 20 per cent of the country’s electricity. Natural gas and coal contribute about 60per cent. “That kind of quick acceleration of deployment is only going to happen through smart policy decisions,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “That’s the part where having a goal is important, but having clear steps on how to get there is the issue.” Challenges like trade disputes could also complicate Biden’s push for more solar power. China dominates the global supply chain for solar panels, and the administration recently began blocking imports connected with China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about the use of forced labor. While many solar companies say they are working to shift away from materials made in Xinjiang, energy experts say the import ban could slow the construction of solar projects throughout the country in the short term. Biden wants to use tax credits to encourage the use of solar power systems and batteries at homes, businesses and utilities. The administration also wants local governments to make it quicker to obtain permits and build new solar projects — in some places it can take months to put panels on a single-family house, for example. And officials want to offer various incentives to utility companies to encourage the use of solar. Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary, said part of the administration’s strategy would focus on its Clean Electricity Payment Program, which would reward utilities for adding more renewable energy to the electric grid, including rooftop solar. Many utility companies have fought against rooftop solar panels because they see a threat to their business and would rather build large solar farms that they own and control. “Both have to happen, and the utilities will be incentivised to take down the barriers,” Granholm said. “We’ve got to do a series of things.”

From 4% to 45%: Biden sets an ambitious blueprint for solar energy

US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman will meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin. This will make her the first highest-ranking official under Biden administration to visit China.

Senior US official Sherman to meet China Foreign Minister Wang Yi next week

The Biden administration intends to revive federal environmental protections for millions of streams, marshes and other bodies of water across the country that had been eliminated by former President Donald Trump in his quest to please homebuilders, farmers and ranchers.

The Environmental Protection Agency made the announcement Wednesday after it said it had found that the changes under Trump caused “significant environmental degradation.”

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/restoring-environmental-rules-rolled-back-by-trump-could-take-years-358684">Restoring environmental rules rolled back by Trump could take years</a>

The problem is particularly glaring in arid states such as New Mexico and Arizona, where nearly every one of more than 1,500 streams lost environmental protections under the Trump rules, said Michael Regan, administrator of the EPA. More than 300 development projects were able to go forward without regard to whether they were polluting streams or waterways under the changes made by Trump, the EPA said.

It marked the latest in a series of decisions by President Joe Biden to restore environmental protections that Trump had weakened or repealed, and it sets the stage for a regulatory and legal battle over an issue that has pitted environmental groups against agricultural interests for decades.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-using-last-days-to-lock-in-policies-and-make-bidens-task-more-difficult-344719">Trump using last days to lock in policies and make Biden’s task more difficult</a>

The effort also will be a test for Regan, who came to Washington with a reputation as a consensus builder who could find common ground between industry and environmentalists. In a statement Wednesday, Regan said the agency is “committed to establishing a durable definition of ‘waters of the United States’” and added that he intends to draw “from the lessons learned” from the Obama and Trump administrations.

By starting early to revise the policy, the Biden administration stands a greater chance of defending it against the legal challenges that are expected to come, said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University. “That makes it much more likely it will stick,” Revesz said.

Republicans on Wednesday criticized the move and vowed to fight it, saying Trump’s policy had protected farmers and removed what many felt were onerous cleanup burdens. “It’s a shame the Biden administration wants to undo the good work of the Trump administration,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said, adding that his state was “well-positioned in the event of overreach” to fight the Biden EPA’s plan. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, called it a “gut punch” to her state. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., dubbed it a “Biden administration power grab.”

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-administration-secretly-seized-phone-records-of-times-reporters-389303">Trump administration secretly seized phone records of Times reporters</a>&nbsp;

The original measure, known as the Waters of the United States rule, dates to the Obama administration and extended the range of bodies of water that were subject to the 1972 Clean Water Act, an issue that had for decades lacked clarity.

The Obama administration protected about 60 per cent of the nation’s waterways, including large bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River and Puget Sound, and smaller headwaters, wetlands, seasonal streams and streams that run temporarily underground. It limited the discharge of pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and industrial chemicals into those waters.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-revokes-trumps-ban-on-chinese-apps-tiktok-wechat-orders-criteria-based-decision-390430">Biden revokes Trump's ban on Chinese apps TikTok, WeChat; orders 'criteria-based decision'</a>

Trump repealed the policy in 2019, calling it “one of the most ridiculous regulations of all,” and claimed that his repeal caused farmers to weep in gratitude. One year later, his EPA finalized the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which removed protections for more than half of the nation’s wetlands and hundreds of thousands of miles of upland streams by narrowing the definition of what constitutes a “water of the United States.”

In doing so, Trump framed the change as the rightful return of power from the federal government to landowners and states. In a statement on Wednesday, Chuck Fowke, chairman of the National Association of Homebuilders, expressed concern that changes to the water rule will “add unnecessary requirements” that will hurt housing affordability.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-was-scared-biden-would-be-replaced-with-hillary-clinton-or-michelle-obama-book-claims-390209">Trump was scared Biden would be replaced with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama, book claims</a>

Tuesday’s announcement does not start the process of revising the regulation. That will come when the EPA officially promulgates a proposed new rule, possibly later this year. Wednesday’s action was a legal move in which the Department of Justice and Department of the Army formally requested repeal of the Trump-era rule.

“Communities deserve to have our nation’s waters protected,” Jaime Pinkham, acting assistant Army secretary for civil work, said in a statement. He said the Trump-era rule resulted in a significant drop in determinations of waters that would otherwise have been afforded protection.

Environmental groups and Democrats in Congress praised the announcement and pressed the administration to work quickly to unravel the Trump policy. “Every day the ‘Dirty Water’ rule remains in effect, it causes irreparable harm to our health, to our environment, and to our economies,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said in a statement.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-administration-moves-to-unkink-supply-chain-bottlenecks-390215">Biden administration moves to unkink supply chain bottlenecks</a>

However, some legal experts said that by moving to repeal Trump’s measure and start over again, rather than building on the previous rule, the Biden administration might only prolong the back and forth that has gone on for years. “It could perpetuate this place we are in, in which each administration throws out what the last administration does, and that is not good for anyone who is interested in this issue,” said Kevin Minoli who served as a lawyer at the EPA in the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.

Regan has years of experience working with Republicans on the clean water rule, which was a major issue in North Carolina where he served as head of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality before leading the EPA.

When he testified before lawmakers in April, Regan vowed not to return to what many Republicans felt was the Obama administration’s overly expansive definition of a federal waterway. “We’ve learned lessons from both, we’ve seen complexities in both, and we’ve determined both rules necessarily did not listen to the will of the people,” he said. “We don’t have any intention of going back to the original Obama Waters of the US&nbsp;verbatim.”

The Biden administration’s decision to restore the federal protections is one in a string of reversals it is making to Trump-era environmental decisions, which were themselves reversals of Obama administration actions. The Trump administration repealed or weakened more than 100 environmental rules or laws, loosening or eliminating rules on climate change, clean air, chemical pollution, coal mining, oil drilling and endangered species protections.

The Biden administration intends to revive federal environmental protections for millions of streams, marshes and other bodies of water across the country that had been eliminated by former President Donald Trump in his quest to please homebuilders, farmers and ranchers.

The Biden administration intends to revive federal environmental protections for millions of streams, marshes and other bodies of water across the country that had been eliminated by former President Donald Trump in his quest to please homebuilders, farmers and ranchers. The Environmental Protection Agency made the announcement Wednesday after it said it had found that the changes under Trump caused “significant environmental degradation.” Also read | Restoring environmental rules rolled back by Trump could take years The problem is particularly glaring in arid states such as New Mexico and Arizona, where nearly every one of more than 1,500 streams lost environmental protections under the Trump rules, said Michael Regan, administrator of the EPA. More than 300 development projects were able to go forward without regard to whether they were polluting streams or waterways under the changes made by Trump, the EPA said. It marked the latest in a series of decisions by President Joe Biden to restore environmental protections that Trump had weakened or repealed, and it sets the stage for a regulatory and legal battle over an issue that has pitted environmental groups against agricultural interests for decades. Also read | Trump using last days to lock in policies and make Biden’s task more difficult The effort also will be a test for Regan, who came to Washington with a reputation as a consensus builder who could find common ground between industry and environmentalists. In a statement Wednesday, Regan said the agency is “committed to establishing a durable definition of ‘waters of the United States’” and added that he intends to draw “from the lessons learned” from the Obama and Trump administrations. By starting early to revise the policy, the Biden administration stands a greater chance of defending it against the legal challenges that are expected to come, said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University. “That makes it much more likely it will stick,” Revesz said. Republicans on Wednesday criticized the move and vowed to fight it, saying Trump’s policy had protected farmers and removed what many felt were onerous cleanup burdens. “It’s a shame the Biden administration wants to undo the good work of the Trump administration,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said, adding that his state was “well-positioned in the event of overreach” to fight the Biden EPA’s plan. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, called it a “gut punch” to her state. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., dubbed it a “Biden administration power grab.” Also read | Trump administration secretly seized phone records of Times reporters The original measure, known as the Waters of the United States rule, dates to the Obama administration and extended the range of bodies of water that were subject to the 1972 Clean Water Act, an issue that had for decades lacked clarity. The Obama administration protected about 60 per cent of the nation’s waterways, including large bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River and Puget Sound, and smaller headwaters, wetlands, seasonal streams and streams that run temporarily underground. It limited the discharge of pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and industrial chemicals into those waters. Also read | Biden revokes Trump's ban on Chinese apps TikTok, WeChat; orders 'criteria-based decision' Trump repealed the policy in 2019, calling it “one of the most ridiculous regulations of all,” and claimed that his repeal caused farmers to weep in gratitude. One year later, his EPA finalized the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which removed protections for more than half of the nation’s wetlands and hundreds of thousands of miles of upland streams by narrowing the definition of what constitutes a “water of the United States.” In doing so, Trump framed the change as the rightful return of power from the federal government to landowners and states. In a statement on Wednesday, Chuck Fowke, chairman of the National Association of Homebuilders, expressed concern that changes to the water rule will “add unnecessary requirements” that will hurt housing affordability. Also read | Trump was scared Biden would be replaced with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama, book claims Tuesday’s announcement does not start the process of revising the regulation. That will come when the EPA officially promulgates a proposed new rule, possibly later this year. Wednesday’s action was a legal move in which the Department of Justice and Department of the Army formally requested repeal of the Trump-era rule. “Communities deserve to have our nation’s waters protected,” Jaime Pinkham, acting assistant Army secretary for civil work, said in a statement. He said the Trump-era rule resulted in a significant drop in determinations of waters that would otherwise have been afforded protection. Environmental groups and Democrats in Congress praised the announcement and pressed the administration to work quickly to unravel the Trump policy. “Every day the ‘Dirty Water’ rule remains in effect, it causes irreparable harm to our health, to our environment, and to our economies,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said in a statement. Also read | Biden administration moves to unkink supply chain bottlenecks However, some legal experts said that by moving to repeal Trump’s measure and start over again, rather than building on the previous rule, the Biden administration might only prolong the back and forth that has gone on for years. “It could perpetuate this place we are in, in which each administration throws out what the last administration does, and that is not good for anyone who is interested in this issue,” said Kevin Minoli who served as a lawyer at the EPA in the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. Regan has years of experience working with Republicans on the clean water rule, which was a major issue in North Carolina where he served as head of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality before leading the EPA. When he testified before lawmakers in April, Regan vowed not to return to what many Republicans felt was the Obama administration’s overly expansive definition of a federal waterway. “We’ve learned lessons from both, we’ve seen complexities in both, and we’ve determined both rules necessarily did not listen to the will of the people,” he said. “We don’t have any intention of going back to the original Obama Waters of the US verbatim.” The Biden administration’s decision to restore the federal protections is one in a string of reversals it is making to Trump-era environmental decisions, which were themselves reversals of Obama administration actions. The Trump administration repealed or weakened more than 100 environmental rules or laws, loosening or eliminating rules on climate change, clean air, chemical pollution, coal mining, oil drilling and endangered species protections.

Biden administration to restore clean-water protections ended by Trump

The US Justice Department has announced plans to tighten the firearm regulations, especially on home-assembled, untraceable ‘ghost guns’.

As per the data, the department has recovered more than 23,000 firearms without a serial number, and which are usually made from kits bought online or even from parts printed on 3D printing. These kits for firearms are easily available at gun shows or illegal shops and do not require any background checks before being sold.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/girl-in-6th-grade-detained-after-idaho-school-shooting-injures-3-383417" hreflang="en">Girl in 6th grade detained after Idaho school shooting injures 3</a>

Manufacturers are also using the loopholes in the regulations to sell ‘ghost guns’ without a serial number making it easier for criminals to hide their weapons after committing a crime.

Out of this figure of 23,000, more than 325 have been successfully linked to a murder (or attempted murder) case, the department claimed.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/united-states-president-joe-biden-touts-115-billion-investment-plan-383504">Watch |</a>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/united-states-president-joe-biden-touts-115-billion-investment-plan-383504/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Now, US President Joe Biden has brought in stricter rules and regulations against gun violence, especially against ‘ghost guns’. The Justice Department has now instructed retailers to out serial numbers even on the parts being sold individually.

In addition to this, the department has also made it compulsory for retailers to perform background checks on buyers of kits that include parts needed to make a gun at home. To curb the issue of 3D printing, all federally licensed dealers will, from now on, have to emboss serial numbers even on the 3D-printed guns that they produce and sell.

“This proposed rule would help keep guns out of the wrong hands and make it easier for law enforcement to trace guns used to commit violent crimes,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. “Although this rulemaking will solve only one aspect of the problem, we have an obligation to do our part to keep our families and our neighborhoods safe from gun violence.”

The US Justice Department has announced plans to tighten the firearm regulations, especially on home-assembled, untraceable ‘ghost guns’. As per the data, the department has recovered more than 23,000 firearms without a serial number, and which are usually made from kits bought online or even from parts printed on 3D printing.

The US Justice Department has announced plans to tighten the firearm regulations, especially on home-assembled, untraceable ‘ghost guns’. As per the data, the department has recovered more than 23,000 firearms without a serial number, and which are usually made from kits bought online or even from parts printed on 3D printing. These kits for firearms are easily available at gun shows or illegal shops and do not require any background checks before being sold. Also read | Girl in 6th grade detained after Idaho school shooting injures 3 Manufacturers are also using the loopholes in the regulations to sell ‘ghost guns’ without a serial number making it easier for criminals to hide their weapons after committing a crime. Out of this figure of 23,000, more than 325 have been successfully linked to a murder (or attempted murder) case, the department claimed. Watch | Now, US President Joe Biden has brought in stricter rules and regulations against gun violence, especially against ‘ghost guns’. The Justice Department has now instructed retailers to out serial numbers even on the parts being sold individually. In addition to this, the department has also made it compulsory for retailers to perform background checks on buyers of kits that include parts needed to make a gun at home. To curb the issue of 3D printing, all federally licensed dealers will, from now on, have to emboss serial numbers even on the 3D-printed guns that they produce and sell. “This proposed rule would help keep guns out of the wrong hands and make it easier for law enforcement to trace guns used to commit violent crimes,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. “Although this rulemaking will solve only one aspect of the problem, we have an obligation to do our part to keep our families and our neighborhoods safe from gun violence.”

Biden enforces stricter rules against 'ghost guns' in US

Two days after a federal judge struck down a national moratorium on evictions, the Biden administration said Friday that it would accelerate the distribution of vast sums of rental aid that state and local governments have been slow to spend.

The Treasury Department issued new rules meant to make it easier for tenants to gain access to the $46.5 billion in aid. They simplify applications, cover an expanded list of costs like moving expenses and hotel stays, and require programs to help tenants even if their landlords refuse to participate.

Housing advocates praised the changes, which include an expansion of legal aid to tenants and a promise of advice to localities struggling to create the programs, which are intended to avert evictions caused by the economic shocks from the pandemic.

"Wow, this is huge," said Christina Rosales, the deputy director of Texas Housers. "I think this will mean more tenants get the help they need."

But with about 400 state and local governments operating programs with varying degrees of urgency, the immediate effect of the changes is unclear. Some states, including New York and Florida, have not even begun to accept applications.

The sums at stake rival the annual budget of the federal housing department. Congress approved $25 billion of emergency assistance in December and an additional $21.5 billion in March. But only a sliver of that money has reached landlord or tenants so far.

New York has $800 million to spend just from the December allocation, and Florida has $871 million. California, with $1.5 billion to spend, has been accepting applications since March. But it has approved awards of only about $72 million, or 5% of its funds, and paid out less than $5 million.

The Emergency Rental Assistance Program allocates money to states and to cities and counties with populations of at least 200,000 if they chose to run their own programs. Some have simply been slow to act: legislatures in New York and South Carolina did not authorize their programs until April.

Some landlords have declined to participate, betting they have more to gain by forcing out tenants in arrears and attracting those better able to pay.

Two days after a federal judge struck down a national moratorium on evictions, the Biden administration said Friday that it would accelerate the distribution of vast sums of rental aid that state and local governments have been slow to spend.

Two days after a federal judge struck down a national moratorium on evictions, the Biden administration said Friday that it would accelerate the distribution of vast sums of rental aid that state and local governments have been slow to spend. The Treasury Department issued new rules meant to make it easier for tenants to gain access to the $46.5 billion in aid. They simplify applications, cover an expanded list of costs like moving expenses and hotel stays, and require programs to help tenants even if their landlords refuse to participate. Housing advocates praised the changes, which include an expansion of legal aid to tenants and a promise of advice to localities struggling to create the programs, which are intended to avert evictions caused by the economic shocks from the pandemic. "Wow, this is huge," said Christina Rosales, the deputy director of Texas Housers. "I think this will mean more tenants get the help they need." But with about 400 state and local governments operating programs with varying degrees of urgency, the immediate effect of the changes is unclear. Some states, including New York and Florida, have not even begun to accept applications. The sums at stake rival the annual budget of the federal housing department. Congress approved $25 billion of emergency assistance in December and an additional $21.5 billion in March. But only a sliver of that money has reached landlord or tenants so far. New York has $800 million to spend just from the December allocation, and Florida has $871 million. California, with $1.5 billion to spend, has been accepting applications since March. But it has approved awards of only about $72 million, or 5% of its funds, and paid out less than $5 million. The Emergency Rental Assistance Program allocates money to states and to cities and counties with populations of at least 200,000 if they chose to run their own programs. Some have simply been slow to act: legislatures in New York and South Carolina did not authorize their programs until April. Some landlords have declined to participate, betting they have more to gain by forcing out tenants in arrears and attracting those better able to pay.

Biden administration moves to speed aid to renters

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview that aired on Sunday that China had recently acted "more aggressively abroad" and was behaving "increasingly in adversarial ways."

Asked by CBS News' "60 Minutes" if Washington was heading toward a military confrontation with Beijing, Blinken said: "It's profoundly against the interests of both China and the United States to, to get to that point, or even to head in that direction."

He added: "What we've witnessed over the last several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact."

Asked about the reported theft of hundreds of billions of dollars or more in U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property by China, Blinken said the Biden administration had "real concerns" about the IP issue.

He said it sounded like the actions "of someone who's trying to compete unfairly and increasingly in adversarial ways. But we're much more effective and stronger when we're bringing like-minded and similarly aggrieved countries together to say to Beijing: 'This can't stand and it won't stand.'"

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond on Sunday to a request for comment on Blinken's interview.

On Friday, President Joe Biden's administration said China had fallen short on its commitments to protect American intellectual property in the "Phase 1" U.S.-China trade deal signed last year.

The commitments were part of the sweeping deal between former President Donald Trump's administration and Beijing, which included regulatory changes on agricultural biotechnology and commitments to purchase some $200 billion in U.S. exports over two years.

Blinken arrived in London on Sunday for a G7 foreign ministers meeting where China is one of the issues on the agenda.

In the interview, Blinken said the United States was not aiming to "contain China" but to "uphold this rules-based order - that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we're going to stand up and - and defend it."

Biden has identified competition with China as his administration's greatest foreign policy challenge. In his first speech to Congress last Wednesday, he pledged to maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific and to boost U.S. technological development.

Blinken said he speaks to Biden "pretty close to daily."

Last month, Blinken said the United States was concerned about China's aggressive actions against Taiwan and warned it would be a "serious mistake" for anyone to try to change the status quo in the western Pacific by force.

The United States has a long-standing commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to ensure that self-governing Taiwan has the ability to defend itself and to sustain peace and security in the western Pacific, Blinken said.

Taiwan has complained over the past few months of repeated missions by China's air force near the island, which China claims as its own.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview that aired on Sunday that China had recently acted "more aggressively abroad" and was behaving "increasingly in adversarial ways.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview that aired on Sunday that China had recently acted "more aggressively abroad" and was behaving "increasingly in adversarial ways." Asked by CBS News' "60 Minutes" if Washington was heading toward a military confrontation with Beijing, Blinken said: "It's profoundly against the interests of both China and the United States to, to get to that point, or even to head in that direction." He added: "What we've witnessed over the last several years is China acting more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That is a fact." Asked about the reported theft of hundreds of billions of dollars or more in U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property by China, Blinken said the Biden administration had "real concerns" about the IP issue. He said it sounded like the actions "of someone who's trying to compete unfairly and increasingly in adversarial ways. But we're much more effective and stronger when we're bringing like-minded and similarly aggrieved countries together to say to Beijing: 'This can't stand and it won't stand.'" The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond on Sunday to a request for comment on Blinken's interview. On Friday, President Joe Biden's administration said China had fallen short on its commitments to protect American intellectual property in the "Phase 1" U.S.-China trade deal signed last year. The commitments were part of the sweeping deal between former President Donald Trump's administration and Beijing, which included regulatory changes on agricultural biotechnology and commitments to purchase some $200 billion in U.S. exports over two years. Blinken arrived in London on Sunday for a G7 foreign ministers meeting where China is one of the issues on the agenda. In the interview, Blinken said the United States was not aiming to "contain China" but to "uphold this rules-based order - that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we're going to stand up and - and defend it." Biden has identified competition with China as his administration's greatest foreign policy challenge. In his first speech to Congress last Wednesday, he pledged to maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific and to boost U.S. technological development. Blinken said he speaks to Biden "pretty close to daily." Last month, Blinken said the United States was concerned about China's aggressive actions against Taiwan and warned it would be a "serious mistake" for anyone to try to change the status quo in the western Pacific by force. The United States has a long-standing commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to ensure that self-governing Taiwan has the ability to defend itself and to sustain peace and security in the western Pacific, Blinken said. Taiwan has complained over the past few months of repeated missions by China's air force near the island, which China claims as its own.

US Secretary of State Blinken says China acting 'more aggressively abroad': Report

The Biden administration has disclosed a set of rules secretly issued by President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> in 2017 for counterterrorism "direct action" operations — like drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional war zones — which the White House has suspended as it weighs whether and how to tighten the guidelines.

While the Biden administration censored some passages, the visible portions show that in the Trump era, commanders in the field were given latitude to make decisions about attacks so long as they fit within broad sets of "operating principles," including that there should be "near certainty"&nbsp;that civilians "will not be injured or killed in the course of operations."

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/father-of-vaccine-immigration-and-2024-presidential-run-donald-trump-attacks-biden-381492" hreflang="en">'Father of vaccine', immigration and 2024 presidential run: Donald Trump attacks Biden</a>

At the same time, however, the Trump-era rules were flexible about permitting exceptions to that and other standards, saying that "variations"&nbsp;could be made "where necessary" so long as certain bureaucratic procedures were followed in approving them.

In October, Judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District of New York had ordered the government turn over the 11-page document in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by The New York Times and by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Biden administration inherited that case and sought a delay but has now complied, providing a copy to both plaintiffs late Friday.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/oversight-board-delays-decision-on-donald-trumps-facebook-ban-378147" hreflang="en">Oversight Board delays decision on Donald Trump's Facebook ban</a>

The Biden administration suspended the Trump-era rules on its first day in office and imposed an interim policy of requiring White House approval for proposed strikes outside of the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the Biden team began a review of how both Obama- and Trump-era policies had worked — both on paper and in practice — with an eye toward developing its own policy.

The review, officials said, discovered that Trump-era principles to govern strikes in certain countries often made an exception to the requirement of "near certainty" that there would be no civilian casualties. While it kept that rule for women and children, it permitted a lower standard of merely "reasonable certainty"&nbsp;when it came to civilian adult men.

Thomas P. Bossert, who helped oversee interagency development of the Trump-era rules in 2017 when he was a top counterterrorism adviser to Trump, said he was proud of them and argued that the policy "should not be dismissed or replaced without careful consideration and an examination of the results it produced."

The Biden administration has disclosed a set of rules secretly issued by President Donald Trump in 2017 for counterterrorism "direct action" operations — like drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional war zones — which the White House has suspended as it weighs whether and how to tighten the guidelines.

The Biden administration has disclosed a set of rules secretly issued by President Donald Trump in 2017 for counterterrorism "direct action" operations — like drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional war zones — which the White House has suspended as it weighs whether and how to tighten the guidelines. While the Biden administration censored some passages, the visible portions show that in the Trump era, commanders in the field were given latitude to make decisions about attacks so long as they fit within broad sets of "operating principles," including that there should be "near certainty" that civilians "will not be injured or killed in the course of operations." Also read | 'Father of vaccine', immigration and 2024 presidential run: Donald Trump attacks Biden At the same time, however, the Trump-era rules were flexible about permitting exceptions to that and other standards, saying that "variations" could be made "where necessary" so long as certain bureaucratic procedures were followed in approving them. In October, Judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District of New York had ordered the government turn over the 11-page document in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by The New York Times and by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Biden administration inherited that case and sought a delay but has now complied, providing a copy to both plaintiffs late Friday. Also read | Oversight Board delays decision on Donald Trump's Facebook ban The Biden administration suspended the Trump-era rules on its first day in office and imposed an interim policy of requiring White House approval for proposed strikes outside of the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the Biden team began a review of how both Obama- and Trump-era policies had worked — both on paper and in practice — with an eye toward developing its own policy. The review, officials said, discovered that Trump-era principles to govern strikes in certain countries often made an exception to the requirement of "near certainty" that there would be no civilian casualties. While it kept that rule for women and children, it permitted a lower standard of merely "reasonable certainty" when it came to civilian adult men. Thomas P. Bossert, who helped oversee interagency development of the Trump-era rules in 2017 when he was a top counterterrorism adviser to Trump, said he was proud of them and argued that the policy "should not be dismissed or replaced without careful consideration and an examination of the results it produced."

Trump’s secret rules for drone strikes outside war zones are disclosed

The Biden administration this week is expected to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes, a move backed by civil rights groups that say Black Americans are hurt by the industry's aggressive targeting of the product, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The administration will seek to ban menthol and other flavours in mass-produced cigars, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The US Food and Drug Administration faces a Thursday court deadline to respond to a 2013 citizen's petition seeking a ban on menthols. Public health groups filed a lawsuit last year in federal district court in Northern California to require the FDA to respond to the petition.

The Post said it could be years before any ban would take effect, but the move would be praised by anti-smoking groups. Tobacco use remains a leading source of preventable illness and death in the country, particularly for people of colour.

The FDA declined to comment on the report from Post.

"There is not an open question on whether menthol in cigarettes is harmful - the evidence is overwhelming and consistent,” Joelle Lester, director of commercial tobacco control programs at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota, told the Post.

The law centre led a group of 19 public health organizations to file the 2013 petition.

Last week, tobacco stocks tumbled after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration is weighing whether to move forward on a menthol ban or a nicotine reduction in all cigarettes—or both. Such a ban could impact Altria Group, maker of Marlboros; Europe's Imperial Brands, maker of Gauloises and Winston cigarettes; and British American Tobacco, maker of Lucky Strike and Newport cigarettes.

Altria, Imperial Brands and British American Tobacco were not immediately available for comment on the Post report.

The Biden administration this week is expected to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes, a move backed by civil rights groups that say Black Americans are hurt by the industry's aggressive targeting of the product, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The Biden administration this week is expected to propose a ban on menthol cigarettes, a move backed by civil rights groups that say Black Americans are hurt by the industry's aggressive targeting of the product, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The administration will seek to ban menthol and other flavours in mass-produced cigars, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The US Food and Drug Administration faces a Thursday court deadline to respond to a 2013 citizen's petition seeking a ban on menthols. Public health groups filed a lawsuit last year in federal district court in Northern California to require the FDA to respond to the petition. The Post said it could be years before any ban would take effect, but the move would be praised by anti-smoking groups. Tobacco use remains a leading source of preventable illness and death in the country, particularly for people of colour. The FDA declined to comment on the report from Post. "There is not an open question on whether menthol in cigarettes is harmful - the evidence is overwhelming and consistent,” Joelle Lester, director of commercial tobacco control programs at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota, told the Post. The law centre led a group of 19 public health organizations to file the 2013 petition. Last week, tobacco stocks tumbled after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration is weighing whether to move forward on a menthol ban or a nicotine reduction in all cigarettes—or both. Such a ban could impact Altria Group, maker of Marlboros; Europe's Imperial Brands, maker of Gauloises and Winston cigarettes; and British American Tobacco, maker of Lucky Strike and Newport cigarettes. Altria, Imperial Brands and British American Tobacco were not immediately available for comment on the Post report.

Biden administration to announce plan to ban menthol cigarettes: Report

The US immigration enforcement agencies have been directed by the Biden administration on Monday to stop referring to migrants as “aliens,” a dated term that many people consider offensive.&nbsp;

The US govt has declared that words such as "alien" and "illegal alien" are out and "noncitizen" and "integration" are in.&nbsp; 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-caught-a-huge-number-of-migrants-at-mexico-border-in-march-report-says-375108">Also read | US caught a huge number of migrants at Mexico border in March, report says</a> 
 
Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said the directives were necessary to “set a tone and example” at an agency that includes the Border Patrol.

“We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact,” Miller said. “The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.”

Administration critics dismissed the new language guidelines.

“We use the term ‘illegal alien’ because they’re here illegally,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas. “This kind of weakness and obsession with political correctness is why we’re having a crisis on the border in the first place.”

As recently as last Thursday, CBP issued a press release out of Texas that described a Border Patrol operation in the Rio Grande Valley "resulting in the apprehension of ten illegal aliens.”

But a release Monday from California seemed to comply with the memo, describing the rescue of a “lost undocumented noncitizen” near Ocotillo, California.

The change in language comes as the Biden administration deals with a record number of children and teens, mostly from Central America, seeking to enter the U.S. at the southwest border.

Under the new guidelines, “unaccompanied alien children” would be referred to as “unaccompanied non-citizen children,” according to the memos. Employees are also directed to describe the “assimilation” of refugees and immigrants as “civic integration.”

CBP is turning away most adult migrants attempting to enter the U.S. under a public health order issued at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the Biden administration is allowing unaccompanied minors and some families to remain, at least temporarily, while authorities determine whether they can stay through the asylum process or under some other legal category.

(With inputs from agencies)

The US immigration enforcement agencies have been directed by the Biden administration on Monday to stop referring to migrants as “aliens,” a dated term that many people consider offensive.

The US immigration enforcement agencies have been directed by the Biden administration on Monday to stop referring to migrants as “aliens,” a dated term that many people consider offensive. The US govt has declared that words such as "alien" and "illegal alien" are out and "noncitizen" and "integration" are in. Also read | US caught a huge number of migrants at Mexico border in March, report says Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said the directives were necessary to “set a tone and example” at an agency that includes the Border Patrol. “We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact,” Miller said. “The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.” Administration critics dismissed the new language guidelines. “We use the term ‘illegal alien’ because they’re here illegally,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas. “This kind of weakness and obsession with political correctness is why we’re having a crisis on the border in the first place.” As recently as last Thursday, CBP issued a press release out of Texas that described a Border Patrol operation in the Rio Grande Valley "resulting in the apprehension of ten illegal aliens.” But a release Monday from California seemed to comply with the memo, describing the rescue of a “lost undocumented noncitizen” near Ocotillo, California. The change in language comes as the Biden administration deals with a record number of children and teens, mostly from Central America, seeking to enter the U.S. at the southwest border. Under the new guidelines, “unaccompanied alien children” would be referred to as “unaccompanied non-citizen children,” according to the memos. Employees are also directed to describe the “assimilation” of refugees and immigrants as “civic integration.” CBP is turning away most adult migrants attempting to enter the U.S. under a public health order issued at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the Biden administration is allowing unaccompanied minors and some families to remain, at least temporarily, while authorities determine whether they can stay through the asylum process or under some other legal category. (With inputs from agencies)

Call them non-citizens, not illegal aliens: Biden chucks migrant naming norms

Even before President Joe Biden took office, some of his closest aides were focused on a question that risked derailing his economic agenda: Would his plans for a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package and additional government spending overheat the economy and fuel runaway inflation?

To find the answer, a close circle of advisers now working at the White House and the Treasury Department projected the behaviors of shoppers, employers, stock traders and others if Biden’s plans succeeded. Officials as senior as Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, pored over the analyses in video calls and in-person meetings, looking for any hint that Biden’s plans could generate sustained price increases that could hamstring family budgets. It never appeared.

Those efforts convinced Biden’s team that there is little risk of inflation spiraling out of the Federal Reserve’s control — an outcome that Wall Street analysts, a few prominent Republicans and even liberal economists like former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers have said could flow from the trillions being pumped into the economy.

Traditional readings of price increases are beginning to turn upward as the recovery accelerates. On Tuesday, the Consumer Price Index rose 0.6%, its fastest monthly increase in more than a decade, while a less volatile index excluding food and energy rose a more muted 0.3%.

But Biden’s advisers believe any price spike is likely to be temporary and not harmful, essentially a one-time event stemming from the unique nature of a pandemic recession that ruptured supply chains and continues to depress activity in key economic sectors like restaurant dining and tourism.

The administration’s view mirrors the posture of top officials at the Fed, including its chairman, Jerome Powell, whose mandate includes maintaining price stability in the economy. Powell has said that the Fed expects any short-term price pops to be temporary, not sustained, and not the type of uptick that would prompt the central bank to raise interest rates rapidly — or anytime soon.

“What we see is relatively modest increases in inflation,” Powell said in March. “But those are not permanent things.”

Armed with their internal data and conclusions, administration officials have begun to push back on warnings that a stimulus-fueled surge in consumer spending could revive a 1970s-style escalation in wages and prices that could cripple the economy in the years to come.

Yet they remain wary of the inflation threat and have devised the next wave of Biden’s spending plans, a $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, to dispense money gradually enough not to stoke further price increases right away. Administration officials also continue to check on real-time measures of prices across the economy, multiple times a day.

“We think the likeliest outlook over the next several months is for inflation to rise modestly,” two officials at Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein and Ernie Tedeschi, wrote Monday in a blog post outlining some of the administration’s thinking. “We will, however, carefully monitor both actual price changes and inflation expectations for any signs of unexpected price pressures that might arise as America leaves the pandemic behind and enters the next economic expansion.”

Some Republicans call that posture dangerous. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chairman of his party’s campaign arm for the 2022 midterm elections, has called on Biden and Powell to present plans to fight inflation now.

“The president’s refusal to address this critical issue has a direct negative effect on Floridians and families across our nation, and hurts low- and fixed-income Americans the most,” Scott said in a news release last week. “It’s time for Biden to wake up from his liberal dream and realize that reckless spending has consequences, inflation is real and America’s debt crisis is growing. Inflation is rising and Americans deserve answers from Biden now.”

Economic teams in recent administrations spent little time worrying about inflation, because inflationary pressures have been tame for decades. It has fallen short of the Fed’s average target of 2% for 10 of the last 12 years, topping out at 2.5% in the midst of the longest economic expansion in history.

Shortly before the pandemic recession hit the United States in 2020, President Donald Trump’s economic team wrote that “price inflation remains low and stable” even with unemployment below 4%. As the economy struggled to climb out from the 2008 financial crisis under President Barack Obama, White House aides feared that prices might fall, instead of rise.

“Given the economic crisis, we worried about preventing deflation rather than inflation,” said Austan Goolsbee, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Obama’s first term.

The conversation has changed given the large amounts of money that the federal government is channeling into the economy, first under Trump and now under Biden. Since the pandemic took hold, Congress has approved more than $5 trillion in spending, including direct checks to individuals.

Biden’s aides are sufficiently worried about the risk of that spending fueling inflation that they shaped his infrastructure proposal, which has yet to be taken up by Congress, to funnel out $2.3 trillion over the course of eight years, which is slower than traditional stimulus.

Even before Summers and others raised economic concerns about Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief bill, officials were wrestling with their own worries about its inflation risks. They had internally concluded, with direction from Biden, that the biggest risk to the economy was going “too small” on the aid package — not spending enough to help vulnerable Americans survive continued stints of joblessness or lost income. But they wanted to know the risks of going “too big.”

They tested whether an uptick in inflation might cause people and financial markets to expect rapid price increases in the years to come, upending decades of what economists call “well-anchored” expectations for prices and potentially creating a situation where higher expectations led to higher inflation. They estimated the odds that the Fed would react to such moves by quickly and steeply raising interest rates, potentially slamming the brakes on growth and causing another recession.

The informal group that initially gathered to research those questions included Bernstein; David Kamin, a deputy director of the National Economic Council; Michael Pyle, Vice President Kamala Harris’ chief economic adviser; and two Treasury officials, Nellie Liang and Ben Harris. More members have joined over time, including Tedeschi.

The group reports regularly to Yellen and other senior officials including Brian Deese, who heads the National Economic Council, and Cecilia Rouse, who leads the Council of Economic Advisers. Its work has informed economic briefings of Biden and Harris.

“The president and the vice president, their job is to deliver good economic outcomes for the American people,” Pyle said in an interview. “Part of what delivering strong economic outcomes to the American people means is ensuring that their team is fully on top of both the tail winds to the U.S. economy but also the risks that are out there. And this is one of them.”

Pyle and his colleagues looked at financial market measures of inflation expectations, including one called the five-year, five-year forward, which currently shows investors expecting lower inflation levels over the next several years than they expected in 2018.

At the same time, officials at the Treasury’s Office of Economic Policy conducted a series of modeling exercises to “stress test” the virus relief package and how it might change those price and expectation measures if put in place. They considered scenarios in which consumers quickly spent their aid money, which included $1,400 checks, and scenarios in which they did not spend much of it at all right away. They talked with large banks about trends in customers’ cash balances and how quickly people were returning to the workforce. Yellen, a former Fed chair, helped adjust the models herself.

The exercises produced a wide range of possibilities for inflation. But they never suggested it would rise so rapidly that the Fed could not easily handle it by adjusting interest rates or other monetary policy tools. They saw no risk of a sharp return to recession — and no reason to pull back from spending proposals that administration officials believe will help the economy heal faster and help historically disadvantaged groups, like Black and Hispanic workers, regain jobs and income.

“We’re going to see some heat in this economy,” Pyle said. “That heat is going to be good and redound to the benefit of wages and labor market conditions overall and particularly for a number of communities that have been at the margins of the labor market for too long.”

If the data proves that forecast wrong, officials say privately, they will be quick to adapt. But they will not say how. If inflation were to accelerate in a sustained and surprising way, some officials suggest, the administration would trust the Fed to step in to contain it.

There is no plan, as of yet, for Biden to consider inflation-fighting actions of his own.

Even before President Joe Biden took office, some of his closest aides were focused on a question that risked derailing his economic agenda: Would his plans for a $1.

Even before President Joe Biden took office, some of his closest aides were focused on a question that risked derailing his economic agenda: Would his plans for a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package and additional government spending overheat the economy and fuel runaway inflation? To find the answer, a close circle of advisers now working at the White House and the Treasury Department projected the behaviors of shoppers, employers, stock traders and others if Biden’s plans succeeded. Officials as senior as Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, pored over the analyses in video calls and in-person meetings, looking for any hint that Biden’s plans could generate sustained price increases that could hamstring family budgets. It never appeared. Those efforts convinced Biden’s team that there is little risk of inflation spiraling out of the Federal Reserve’s control — an outcome that Wall Street analysts, a few prominent Republicans and even liberal economists like former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers have said could flow from the trillions being pumped into the economy. Traditional readings of price increases are beginning to turn upward as the recovery accelerates. On Tuesday, the Consumer Price Index rose 0.6%, its fastest monthly increase in more than a decade, while a less volatile index excluding food and energy rose a more muted 0.3%. But Biden’s advisers believe any price spike is likely to be temporary and not harmful, essentially a one-time event stemming from the unique nature of a pandemic recession that ruptured supply chains and continues to depress activity in key economic sectors like restaurant dining and tourism. The administration’s view mirrors the posture of top officials at the Fed, including its chairman, Jerome Powell, whose mandate includes maintaining price stability in the economy. Powell has said that the Fed expects any short-term price pops to be temporary, not sustained, and not the type of uptick that would prompt the central bank to raise interest rates rapidly — or anytime soon. “What we see is relatively modest increases in inflation,” Powell said in March. “But those are not permanent things.” Armed with their internal data and conclusions, administration officials have begun to push back on warnings that a stimulus-fueled surge in consumer spending could revive a 1970s-style escalation in wages and prices that could cripple the economy in the years to come. Yet they remain wary of the inflation threat and have devised the next wave of Biden’s spending plans, a $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, to dispense money gradually enough not to stoke further price increases right away. Administration officials also continue to check on real-time measures of prices across the economy, multiple times a day. “We think the likeliest outlook over the next several months is for inflation to rise modestly,” two officials at Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein and Ernie Tedeschi, wrote Monday in a blog post outlining some of the administration’s thinking. “We will, however, carefully monitor both actual price changes and inflation expectations for any signs of unexpected price pressures that might arise as America leaves the pandemic behind and enters the next economic expansion.” Some Republicans call that posture dangerous. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chairman of his party’s campaign arm for the 2022 midterm elections, has called on Biden and Powell to present plans to fight inflation now. “The president’s refusal to address this critical issue has a direct negative effect on Floridians and families across our nation, and hurts low- and fixed-income Americans the most,” Scott said in a news release last week. “It’s time for Biden to wake up from his liberal dream and realize that reckless spending has consequences, inflation is real and America’s debt crisis is growing. Inflation is rising and Americans deserve answers from Biden now.” Economic teams in recent administrations spent little time worrying about inflation, because inflationary pressures have been tame for decades. It has fallen short of the Fed’s average target of 2% for 10 of the last 12 years, topping out at 2.5% in the midst of the longest economic expansion in history. Shortly before the pandemic recession hit the United States in 2020, President Donald Trump’s economic team wrote that “price inflation remains low and stable” even with unemployment below 4%. As the economy struggled to climb out from the 2008 financial crisis under President Barack Obama, White House aides feared that prices might fall, instead of rise. “Given the economic crisis, we worried about preventing deflation rather than inflation,” said Austan Goolsbee, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Obama’s first term. The conversation has changed given the large amounts of money that the federal government is channeling into the economy, first under Trump and now under Biden. Since the pandemic took hold, Congress has approved more than $5 trillion in spending, including direct checks to individuals. Biden’s aides are sufficiently worried about the risk of that spending fueling inflation that they shaped his infrastructure proposal, which has yet to be taken up by Congress, to funnel out $2.3 trillion over the course of eight years, which is slower than traditional stimulus. Even before Summers and others raised economic concerns about Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief bill, officials were wrestling with their own worries about its inflation risks. They had internally concluded, with direction from Biden, that the biggest risk to the economy was going “too small” on the aid package — not spending enough to help vulnerable Americans survive continued stints of joblessness or lost income. But they wanted to know the risks of going “too big.” They tested whether an uptick in inflation might cause people and financial markets to expect rapid price increases in the years to come, upending decades of what economists call “well-anchored” expectations for prices and potentially creating a situation where higher expectations led to higher inflation. They estimated the odds that the Fed would react to such moves by quickly and steeply raising interest rates, potentially slamming the brakes on growth and causing another recession. The informal group that initially gathered to research those questions included Bernstein; David Kamin, a deputy director of the National Economic Council; Michael Pyle, Vice President Kamala Harris’ chief economic adviser; and two Treasury officials, Nellie Liang and Ben Harris. More members have joined over time, including Tedeschi. The group reports regularly to Yellen and other senior officials including Brian Deese, who heads the National Economic Council, and Cecilia Rouse, who leads the Council of Economic Advisers. Its work has informed economic briefings of Biden and Harris. “The president and the vice president, their job is to deliver good economic outcomes for the American people,” Pyle said in an interview. “Part of what delivering strong economic outcomes to the American people means is ensuring that their team is fully on top of both the tail winds to the U.S. economy but also the risks that are out there. And this is one of them.” Pyle and his colleagues looked at financial market measures of inflation expectations, including one called the five-year, five-year forward, which currently shows investors expecting lower inflation levels over the next several years than they expected in 2018. At the same time, officials at the Treasury’s Office of Economic Policy conducted a series of modeling exercises to “stress test” the virus relief package and how it might change those price and expectation measures if put in place. They considered scenarios in which consumers quickly spent their aid money, which included $1,400 checks, and scenarios in which they did not spend much of it at all right away. They talked with large banks about trends in customers’ cash balances and how quickly people were returning to the workforce. Yellen, a former Fed chair, helped adjust the models herself. The exercises produced a wide range of possibilities for inflation. But they never suggested it would rise so rapidly that the Fed could not easily handle it by adjusting interest rates or other monetary policy tools. They saw no risk of a sharp return to recession — and no reason to pull back from spending proposals that administration officials believe will help the economy heal faster and help historically disadvantaged groups, like Black and Hispanic workers, regain jobs and income. “We’re going to see some heat in this economy,” Pyle said. “That heat is going to be good and redound to the benefit of wages and labor market conditions overall and particularly for a number of communities that have been at the margins of the labor market for too long.” If the data proves that forecast wrong, officials say privately, they will be quick to adapt. But they will not say how. If inflation were to accelerate in a sustained and surprising way, some officials suggest, the administration would trust the Fed to step in to contain it. There is no plan, as of yet, for Biden to consider inflation-fighting actions of his own.

The Biden administration is quietly keeping tabs on inflation

US&nbsp;President Joe Biden's special envoy Ricardo Zuñiga said on Tuesday that the&nbsp;White House is looking to create legal ways for Central American migrants to reach the country.

Zuñiga, Biden's envoy to the so-called Northern Triangle countries in Central America, said on a visit to Guatemala that the White House was looking to offer protection to migrants amid a push by Biden to reshape the US&nbsp;border policy.

Also see|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/border-agents-traffickers-and-migrants-mix-on-busy-rio-grande-in-us-374818">Border agents, traffickers and migrants mix on busy Rio Grande in US</a>

A jump in&nbsp;immigration&nbsp;from the three Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador has posed one of the biggest political challenges to the new Biden administration.

A day after meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Zuñiga met most of his government's senior cabinet ministers to discuss how to improve security as well as economic and societal conditions that drive Guatemalans to migrate.

"We are here to also talk about the need and the efforts of the White House to create legal means for migration so that people do not have to use irregular and dangerous routes," Zuñiga said in a press conference.

"We also want to make sure that there are ways and means of accessing protection for people who require that protection," he added.

Murders and kidnappings of Central American migrants along their treacherous journey to the United States, especially in Mexico, has led to the criticism that the Biden administration and US&nbsp;policies expose migrants to such great risks.

Zuñiga will also visit El Salvador later this week and discussed migration "in a comprehensive fashion" with Honduran Foreign Minister Lisandro Rosales last Friday, according to a ministry statement on Monday.

US&nbsp;authorities caught more than 171,000 migrants along the US-Mexico border in March, the highest monthly total in two decades and the latest sign of the mounting humanitarian challenge confronting Biden's administration.

The US&nbsp;risks losing its status as the world’s largest economy to China by the end of the decade if it doesn’t increase legal immigration, according to a study released Wednesday by a tech industry group that favors admitting more foreign workers.

The report projects that the American economy will be three-quarters the size of China’s by 2050 under current U.S. population trends and immigration levels.

&nbsp;

US President Joe Biden's special envoy Ricardo Zuñiga said on Tuesday that the White House is looking to create legal ways for Central American migrants to reach the country.

US President Joe Biden's special envoy Ricardo Zuñiga said on Tuesday that the White House is looking to create legal ways for Central American migrants to reach the country. Zuñiga, Biden's envoy to the so-called Northern Triangle countries in Central America, said on a visit to Guatemala that the White House was looking to offer protection to migrants amid a push by Biden to reshape the US border policy. Also see| Border agents, traffickers and migrants mix on busy Rio Grande in US A jump in immigration from the three Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador has posed one of the biggest political challenges to the new Biden administration. A day after meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Zuñiga met most of his government's senior cabinet ministers to discuss how to improve security as well as economic and societal conditions that drive Guatemalans to migrate. "We are here to also talk about the need and the efforts of the White House to create legal means for migration so that people do not have to use irregular and dangerous routes," Zuñiga said in a press conference. "We also want to make sure that there are ways and means of accessing protection for people who require that protection," he added. Murders and kidnappings of Central American migrants along their treacherous journey to the United States, especially in Mexico, has led to the criticism that the Biden administration and US policies expose migrants to such great risks. Zuñiga will also visit El Salvador later this week and discussed migration "in a comprehensive fashion" with Honduran Foreign Minister Lisandro Rosales last Friday, according to a ministry statement on Monday. US authorities caught more than 171,000 migrants along the US-Mexico border in March, the highest monthly total in two decades and the latest sign of the mounting humanitarian challenge confronting Biden's administration. The US risks losing its status as the world’s largest economy to China by the end of the decade if it doesn’t increase legal immigration, according to a study released Wednesday by a tech industry group that favors admitting more foreign workers. The report projects that the American economy will be three-quarters the size of China’s by 2050 under current U.S. population trends and immigration levels.

White House aiming to create legal ways for Central Americans to migrate

As the Biden administration overturns the legacy of former president Donald Trump it has taken another huge step in that direction by lifting Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor this has effectively random trumps move as ineffective and inappropriate and most importantly US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said the United States still disagree with the court's move on Afghanistan and Israel and objected ICC's effort.

United States: Biden administration effort to undo trumps legacy

North Korea on Saturday said the administration of US President Joe Biden had taken a wrong first step and revealed "deep-seated hostility" by criticising its self-defensive missile test.

North Korea on Friday said it had launched a new type of tactical short-range ballistic missile. Biden, in response, said the test violated UN Security Council resolutions.

The US president, however, added&nbsp;he remained open to diplomacy with Pyongyang.

The nuclear-armed North has a long history of using weapons tests to ramp up tensions, in a carefully calibrated process to try to forward its objectives.

Pyongyang had been biding its time since the new administration took office in Washington, not even officially acknowledging its existence until last week.

Ri Pyong Chol, secretary of the North's ruling Worker's Party's Central Committee, Biden's remarks were an "undisguised encroachment on our state's right to self-defence and provocation," and that the test was self-defensive against threats posed by South Korea and the United States with their joint military exercises and advanced weapons.

He added Washington might face "something that is not good" if it continues to make "thoughtless remarks."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/north-korea-fires-suspected-ballistic-missile-into-the-sea-reports-say-37296">Also read |&nbsp;North Korea fires suspected ballistic missile into the sea, reports say</a>&nbsp;

"We express our deep apprehension over the U.S. chief executive faulting the regular testfire, exercise of our state's right to self-defence, as the violation of U.N. 'resolutions' and openly revealing his deep-seated hostility," Ri said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

"I think that the new US administration obviously took its first step wrong."

He further accused the Biden administration of "exploiting every opportunity" to provoke Pyongyang by branding it as a "security threat."

The test came just days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed to work to denuclearise North Korea and criticised its "systemic and widespread" human rights abuses during a visit to Seoul with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

North Korea has also slammed the South Korea-US military exercises which ended last week, even though they were repeatedly scaled back to facilitate a restart of denuclearization talks with Pyongyang.

Ri said Washington insisted on a "gangster-like logic" to be able to bring strategic nuclear assets to South Korea and test intercontinental ballistic missiles at its convenience, but ban North Korea from testing even a tactical weapon.

Experts, to this end, said Ri's remarks meant North Korea would potentially ramp up military tension in the coming months by developing and testing advanced weapons.

Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report on Friday that commercial satellite imagery showed North Korea has continued to produce uranium concentrate, used to build nuclear weapons, over the past eight months, though it has not tested any bombs since 2017.

Thursday's launch, and an earlier test of short-range, non-ballistic missiles at the weekend, came after joint exercises by the US and South Korean militaries and a visit to the region by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

(with inputs from agencies)

North Korea on Saturday said the administration of US President Joe Biden had taken a wrong first step and revealed "deep-seated hostility" by criticising its self-defensive missile test.

North Korea on Saturday said the administration of US President Joe Biden had taken a wrong first step and revealed "deep-seated hostility" by criticising its self-defensive missile test. North Korea on Friday said it had launched a new type of tactical short-range ballistic missile. Biden, in response, said the test violated UN Security Council resolutions. The US president, however, added he remained open to diplomacy with Pyongyang. The nuclear-armed North has a long history of using weapons tests to ramp up tensions, in a carefully calibrated process to try to forward its objectives. Pyongyang had been biding its time since the new administration took office in Washington, not even officially acknowledging its existence until last week. Ri Pyong Chol, secretary of the North's ruling Worker's Party's Central Committee, Biden's remarks were an "undisguised encroachment on our state's right to self-defence and provocation," and that the test was self-defensive against threats posed by South Korea and the United States with their joint military exercises and advanced weapons. He added Washington might face "something that is not good" if it continues to make "thoughtless remarks." Also read | North Korea fires suspected ballistic missile into the sea, reports say "We express our deep apprehension over the U.S. chief executive faulting the regular testfire, exercise of our state's right to self-defence, as the violation of U.N. 'resolutions' and openly revealing his deep-seated hostility," Ri said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. "I think that the new US administration obviously took its first step wrong." He further accused the Biden administration of "exploiting every opportunity" to provoke Pyongyang by branding it as a "security threat." The test came just days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed to work to denuclearise North Korea and criticised its "systemic and widespread" human rights abuses during a visit to Seoul with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. North Korea has also slammed the South Korea-US military exercises which ended last week, even though they were repeatedly scaled back to facilitate a restart of denuclearization talks with Pyongyang. Ri said Washington insisted on a "gangster-like logic" to be able to bring strategic nuclear assets to South Korea and test intercontinental ballistic missiles at its convenience, but ban North Korea from testing even a tactical weapon. Experts, to this end, said Ri's remarks meant North Korea would potentially ramp up military tension in the coming months by developing and testing advanced weapons. Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report on Friday that commercial satellite imagery showed North Korea has continued to produce uranium concentrate, used to build nuclear weapons, over the past eight months, though it has not tested any bombs since 2017. Thursday's launch, and an earlier test of short-range, non-ballistic missiles at the weekend, came after joint exercises by the US and South Korean militaries and a visit to the region by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. (with inputs from agencies)

North Korea accuses Biden admin of 'provocation' after missile test

The United States and Taiwan on Thursday&nbsp;signed their first agreement under the Biden administration, establishing a Coast Guard Working Group to coordinate policy, following China's passing of a law that allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels.

The new government of US&nbsp;President Joe Biden has moved to reassure Chinese-claimed Taiwan that its commitment to the island is rock solid.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/coronavirus-update-taiwan-says-no-to-vaccines-from-china-372977/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The de facto Taiwanese ambassador to the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim, signed the agreement in Washington on Thursday, her office said in a statement.

"It is our hope that with the new Coast Guard Working Group, both sides will forge a stronger partnership and jointly contribute even more to a free and open Indo-Pacific region."

US&nbsp;Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Sung Kim was at the signing ceremony, the office said.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/natural-partners-us-says-promoting-chip-cooperation-with-taiwan-is-priority-373170">'Natural partners': US says promoting chip cooperation with Taiwan is priority</a>

The American Institute in Taiwan, which handles US&nbsp;ties with the island, said the United States supported "Taiwan's meaningful participation and contributions to issues of global concern, including in maritime security and safety".

Taiwan is upgrading its coast guard with new ships, which can be drafted into naval service in the event of war, as the island deals with increasing encroachments from Chinese fishing boats and sand dredgers in Taiwan-controlled waters.

While the United States, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, it is the island's most important international backer and arms supplier.

China passed a law in January that for the first time explicitly allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels, causing concern regionally and in Washington. China has rebuffed those worries.

Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said on Friday China's new law had shocked the region and that those with "common values" needed to work together to protect peace.

"This unilateral request for the coast guard to use force will cause great tension and pressure on neighbouring countries," he told reporters.

China also has maritime sovereignty disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and with several Southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea.

The United States and Taiwan on Thursday signed their first agreement under the Biden administration, establishing a Coast Guard Working Group to coordinate policy, following China's passing of a law that allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels.

The United States and Taiwan on Thursday signed their first agreement under the Biden administration, establishing a Coast Guard Working Group to coordinate policy, following China's passing of a law that allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels. The new government of US President Joe Biden has moved to reassure Chinese-claimed Taiwan that its commitment to the island is rock solid. The de facto Taiwanese ambassador to the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim, signed the agreement in Washington on Thursday, her office said in a statement. "It is our hope that with the new Coast Guard Working Group, both sides will forge a stronger partnership and jointly contribute even more to a free and open Indo-Pacific region." US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Sung Kim was at the signing ceremony, the office said. Also read| 'Natural partners': US says promoting chip cooperation with Taiwan is priority The American Institute in Taiwan, which handles US ties with the island, said the United States supported "Taiwan's meaningful participation and contributions to issues of global concern, including in maritime security and safety". Taiwan is upgrading its coast guard with new ships, which can be drafted into naval service in the event of war, as the island deals with increasing encroachments from Chinese fishing boats and sand dredgers in Taiwan-controlled waters. While the United States, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, it is the island's most important international backer and arms supplier. China passed a law in January that for the first time explicitly allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels, causing concern regionally and in Washington. China has rebuffed those worries. Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang said on Friday China's new law had shocked the region and that those with "common values" needed to work together to protect peace. "This unilateral request for the coast guard to use force will cause great tension and pressure on neighbouring countries," he told reporters. China also has maritime sovereignty disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and with several Southeast Asian countries in the South China Sea.

US, Taiwan sign first agreement under Biden administration after China law

The US Senate took the historic step Wednesday of confirming paediatrician Rachel Levine as President Joe Biden's assistant secretary of health, making her the highest-ranking transgender official to serve in the federal government.

Levine was leading the Pennsylvania Department of Health when Biden tapped her for the national post in January, in a notable first for the LGBTQ community.&nbsp;

The pick was also a contrast to policies of previous president Donald Trump that were seen as discriminatory.

The confirmation vote was 52 to 48, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in support of Levine, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine.

As assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, the 63-year-old will be part of the team leading the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to the deaths of more than 545,000 people in the United States.

The Senate last week confirmed California attorney general Xavier Becerra as the new health secretary, the first Latino to head the department.

"Dr. Levine becoming the first openly transgender American to earn the confirmation of the Senate is a watershed moment in US history," Matt Hill, a White House spokesman, said on Twitter.

"A government of the people, by the people, and for the people — ALL people."

Lambda Legal, which promotes civil rights of the lesbian, gay and transgender community, celebrated Levine's confirmation as marking "the return of science, competence, and empathy to one of the most important institutions in our government and at one of the most critical public health moments in our nation's history."

Biden became the first president-elect to thank transgender supporters during his election victory speech, on November 7 in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

The US Senate took the historic step Wednesday of confirming paediatrician Rachel Levine as President Joe Biden's assistant secretary of health, making her the highest-ranking transgender official to serve in the federal government.

The US Senate took the historic step Wednesday of confirming paediatrician Rachel Levine as President Joe Biden's assistant secretary of health, making her the highest-ranking transgender official to serve in the federal government. Levine was leading the Pennsylvania Department of Health when Biden tapped her for the national post in January, in a notable first for the LGBTQ community. The pick was also a contrast to policies of previous president Donald Trump that were seen as discriminatory. The confirmation vote was 52 to 48, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in support of Levine, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine. As assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, the 63-year-old will be part of the team leading the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to the deaths of more than 545,000 people in the United States. The Senate last week confirmed California attorney general Xavier Becerra as the new health secretary, the first Latino to head the department. "Dr. Levine becoming the first openly transgender American to earn the confirmation of the Senate is a watershed moment in US history," Matt Hill, a White House spokesman, said on Twitter. "A government of the people, by the people, and for the people — ALL people." Lambda Legal, which promotes civil rights of the lesbian, gay and transgender community, celebrated Levine's confirmation as marking "the return of science, competence, and empathy to one of the most important institutions in our government and at one of the most critical public health moments in our nation's history." Biden became the first president-elect to thank transgender supporters during his election victory speech, on November 7 in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

In a first, transgender woman Rachel Levine confirmed to US health post 

Since the migrant crisis has been alarmingly increasing in the US, the newly-elected <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">President</a> has appointed his trusted right-hand woman to be in charge of migration for the country.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Biden </a>has given <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris</a> the responsibility of tackling the influx of migrants on the Mexican border.&nbsp;

"I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this," Biden said at a White House meeting. "When she speaks, she speaks for me."

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-to-hold-first-press-conference-after-breaking-100-year-record-without-one-372963">Biden to hold 1st press conference after breaking 100-year record without one</a>

The President also cautioned the Vice President that the responsibility is a tough but important one, to which Harris assured that while she is aware "that this is a challenging situation", she will put in her best to bring the country out of this crisis and help the migrants.

This is the first time Harris has been assigned a specific portfolio since she took over the office on January 20 — which earlier belonged to Mike Pence.

Biden administration has also announced that the San Diego Convention Center will be added to the list of shelters for the incoming migrant children. The centre will be able to accommodate nearly 1,400 children.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/united-states-president-joe-biden-appoints-harris-to-lead-efforts-to-tackle-crisis-373009">Watch |</a>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/united-states-president-joe-biden-appoints-harris-to-lead-efforts-to-tackle-crisis-373009/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Talking about the crisis, Harris acknowledged that the country is stuck in a huge problem, but assured quick and reliable solutions.

"It's a huge problem. I'm not going to pretend it's not," she said in an interview.

However, she also added that the Biden administration is having to work through the damage done by the previous administration over a period of four years — an administration that ruled with anti-immigration agenda.

"We have to reconstruct it. It's not going to happen overnight," Harris said.

Since the migrant crisis has been alarmingly increasing in the US, the newly-elected President has appointed his trusted right-hand woman to be in charge of migration for the country.

Since the migrant crisis has been alarmingly increasing in the US, the newly-elected President has appointed his trusted right-hand woman to be in charge of migration for the country. Biden has given Kamala Harris the responsibility of tackling the influx of migrants on the Mexican border. "I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this," Biden said at a White House meeting. "When she speaks, she speaks for me." Also read | Biden to hold 1st press conference after breaking 100-year record without one The President also cautioned the Vice President that the responsibility is a tough but important one, to which Harris assured that while she is aware "that this is a challenging situation", she will put in her best to bring the country out of this crisis and help the migrants. This is the first time Harris has been assigned a specific portfolio since she took over the office on January 20 — which earlier belonged to Mike Pence. Biden administration has also announced that the San Diego Convention Center will be added to the list of shelters for the incoming migrant children. The centre will be able to accommodate nearly 1,400 children. Watch | Talking about the crisis, Harris acknowledged that the country is stuck in a huge problem, but assured quick and reliable solutions. "It's a huge problem. I'm not going to pretend it's not," she said in an interview. However, she also added that the Biden administration is having to work through the damage done by the previous administration over a period of four years — an administration that ruled with anti-immigration agenda. "We have to reconstruct it. It's not going to happen overnight," Harris said.

'She speaks for me': Biden appoints Kamala Harris to handle immigration crisis

The Biden administration, with hundreds of billions of dollars to spend to end the COVID crisis, has set a series of aggressive bench marks to determine whether the economy has fully recovered, including returning to historically low unemployment and helping more than 1 million Black and Hispanic women return to work within a year.

But restoring economic activity, which was central to President Joe Biden’s pitch for his $1.9 trillion stimulus package, faces logistical and epidemiological challenges unlike any previous recovery. Infectious new variants of the virus are spreading. Strained supply chains are holding up the distribution of rapid COVID-19 tests, which could be critical to safely reopening schools, workplaces, restaurants, theaters and concert venues.

Then there are questions of whether the money can reach schools and child care providers quickly enough to make a difference for parents who were forced to quit their jobs to care for their children.

The money from the rescue plan “will absolutely allow us to pull forward that end date,” said Charlie Anderson, the director of economic policy and budget for the White House’s coronavirus response team. “It’s very hard to tell how much, but I can tell you it will absolutely supercharge what we’re doing.”

Privately, Biden’s aides are tracking health and economic data — like the capacity levels of day care centers — to gauge their success. They are also setting broad targets, like a return to a 4% unemployment rate, which would be just above the nation’s pre-pandemic rate, by next year.

Similar promises came back to bite Biden in 2009, as vice president, when he oversaw a considerably smaller economic stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama to lift the country from the Great Recession. Shortly before he and Obama took office that January, their advisers predicted the measure would keep unemployment from rising above 8% — a projection that haunted the administration as the economy slogged on for years.

This recovery is showing more favorable signs for the Biden administration. Economic optimism is rising as the pace of vaccinations steadily increases. Unemployment has already fallen from its pandemic peak of 14.8% in April to 6.2% in February. Federal Reserve officials expect the unemployment rate to slip below 4% by next year and the economy to grow faster this year than in any year since the Reagan administration, thanks in part to Biden’s rescue package.

The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, told reporters last week that federal spending to combat the crisis was “going to wind up very much accelerating the return to full employment.”

He added, “It’s going to make a huge difference in people’s lives, and it has already.”

But risks remain. For the economy to fully bounce back, Americans need to feel confident in returning to shopping, traveling, entertainment and work. No matter how much cash the administration pumps into the economy, recovery could be stalled by the emergence of new variants, the reluctance of some Americans to get vaccinated and, in the coming weeks, spotty compliance with social distancing guidelines and other public health measures before a critical mass of Americans is inoculated.

“We’re being really cautious about our expectations about the speed” of the economic rebound, said Heather Boushey, a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. “Part of this is establishing trust with the American people that we contain the virus, and that it’s safe, and then the economic activity will come up.”

Americans will also have to be willing to change their habits. As new infections have declined, so too has coronavirus testing. But public health experts say more testing — not less — will be critical for the economy to recover. When Biden ran for office, and again after he was sworn in, he promised to create a “pandemic testing board,” akin to the wartime production board that President Franklin D. Roosevelt created to help bring the country out of the Great Depression. Biden described the approach as a “full-scale wartime effort.”

His coronavirus testing coordinator, Carole Johnson, said the board, composed of officials from across government agencies, had been meeting to discuss how to work with the private sector to expand testing capacity, and to lay out plans to spend tens of billions of dollars from the stimulus bill for testing and other mitigation measures.

“We know that we’re going to continue to need to grow as we go forward,” she said of the nation’s testing capacity.

Biden made grand promises in pushing his American Rescue Plan to swift passage in Congress this month.

“This is what this moment comes down to,” he said in February. “Are we going to pass a big enough package to vaccinate people, to get people back to work, to alleviate the suffering in this country this year? That’s what I want to do.”

Biden got virtually everything he wanted. Now administration officials must make good on his vow.

The legislation he signed centers on $1,400 direct payments to low- and middle-income Americans, expanded unemployment benefits, aid to renters facing eviction and a variety of programs to help the poor. The president and his aides have said that spending is intended to help the most vulnerable people in the country stay in their homes and keep food on the table.

But Congress will not continue borrowing trillions of dollars to tide citizens over indefinitely. The economy will not fully rebound from the recession brought on by the virus until the pandemic is over.

To that end, hundreds of billions of dollars in the bill are earmarked to speed vaccinations, bolster testing, help businesses return to full capacity sooner and ease the return to work for Americans — disproportionately women of color — who were forced to leave their jobs to care for young children.

Those provisions include nearly $30 billion to ramp up vaccine deployment, support struggling community health centers and hire 100,000 public health workers. It also has nearly $50 billion for more COVID-19 testing, $122 billion for schools and both direct spending and expanded tax credits meant to increase the availability of child care.

In keeping with Biden’s focus on racial equity across a wide range of policy endeavors, administration officials say they will look at how quickly women of color rejoin the labor force to gauge how well equity efforts are working.

None of that spending is guaranteed to immediately change the course of the crisis. Schools, for example, are not required by the legislation to spend their additional dollars to reopen sooner, although administration officials are confident the money will help more students return to in-person learning in the coming months.

Sometime next month, vaccine distribution will enter a new phase. The supply of doses will exceed the number of people looking for shots and public officials are likely to focus more on convincing reluctant Americans to agree to be vaccinated.

Perhaps no spending effort will challenge the administration as much as increased testing.

Right now, testing is largely used as a diagnostic tool to detect whether someone is infected. Moving forward, testing is expected to function more as a screening tool that helps Americans feel more comfortable returning to normalcy.

The rescue plan includes nearly $48 billion for the administration to expand testing, contact tracing and other measures to track and contain the spread of the virus.

The administration has not said how it will spend all of that money, although the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it would invest $10 billion in coronavirus screening for schools, with the goal of returning to in-person learning by the end of the school year. An additional $2.25 billion will go toward coronavirus testing in underserved communities.

“We’re going to need widespread testing for this virus probably for the next several years,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “Right now, it’s all about just management of disease. But over time, as the pandemic gets under control, there are a whole series of things we want to do where testing will add a layer of confidence — everything from getting on an airplane to going into a restaurant to going to a concert.”

But there are obstacles to that plan, including a shortage of the kind of rapid tests that are necessary to screen a large population. Michael Mina, an immunologist and epidemiologist at Harvard University, said onerous Food and Drug Administration regulations were delaying the approval of new rapid antigen tests that could fill that gap.

“I feel very firmly that the Biden administration is hampered by a regulatory framework that is not in a position to actually tackle this pandemic, that is holding up the tools that are required to effectively curb transmission, to keep schools and businesses safe,” he said.

Biden, who criticized his predecessor President Donald Trump for interfering with the work of the FDA, is hardly in a position to intervene in a regulatory matter. But his coronavirus testing coordinator, Johnson, said in an interview that the administration was closely tracking the supply chains for tests to determine what it could do to ensure widespread testing at schools become a reality.

“We make policy decisions informed by where the supply is,” she said.

Administration officials are also closely tracking the CDC’s infection data to guide their spending decisions and determine how to measure success. The uncertainty in the models based on that data, they say, underscores the challenge ahead of them: Four weeks from now, the nation could have as many as 511,000 new weekly cases — or as few as 138,000.

The Biden administration, with hundreds of billions of dollars to spend to end the COVID crisis, has set a series of aggressive bench marks to determine whether the economy has fully recovered, including returning to historically low unemployment and helping more than 1 million Black and Hispanic women return to work within a year.

The Biden administration, with hundreds of billions of dollars to spend to end the COVID crisis, has set a series of aggressive bench marks to determine whether the economy has fully recovered, including returning to historically low unemployment and helping more than 1 million Black and Hispanic women return to work within a year. But restoring economic activity, which was central to President Joe Biden’s pitch for his $1.9 trillion stimulus package, faces logistical and epidemiological challenges unlike any previous recovery. Infectious new variants of the virus are spreading. Strained supply chains are holding up the distribution of rapid COVID-19 tests, which could be critical to safely reopening schools, workplaces, restaurants, theaters and concert venues. Then there are questions of whether the money can reach schools and child care providers quickly enough to make a difference for parents who were forced to quit their jobs to care for their children. The money from the rescue plan “will absolutely allow us to pull forward that end date,” said Charlie Anderson, the director of economic policy and budget for the White House’s coronavirus response team. “It’s very hard to tell how much, but I can tell you it will absolutely supercharge what we’re doing.” Privately, Biden’s aides are tracking health and economic data — like the capacity levels of day care centers — to gauge their success. They are also setting broad targets, like a return to a 4% unemployment rate, which would be just above the nation’s pre-pandemic rate, by next year. Similar promises came back to bite Biden in 2009, as vice president, when he oversaw a considerably smaller economic stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama to lift the country from the Great Recession. Shortly before he and Obama took office that January, their advisers predicted the measure would keep unemployment from rising above 8% — a projection that haunted the administration as the economy slogged on for years. This recovery is showing more favorable signs for the Biden administration. Economic optimism is rising as the pace of vaccinations steadily increases. Unemployment has already fallen from its pandemic peak of 14.8% in April to 6.2% in February. Federal Reserve officials expect the unemployment rate to slip below 4% by next year and the economy to grow faster this year than in any year since the Reagan administration, thanks in part to Biden’s rescue package. The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, told reporters last week that federal spending to combat the crisis was “going to wind up very much accelerating the return to full employment.” He added, “It’s going to make a huge difference in people’s lives, and it has already.” But risks remain. For the economy to fully bounce back, Americans need to feel confident in returning to shopping, traveling, entertainment and work. No matter how much cash the administration pumps into the economy, recovery could be stalled by the emergence of new variants, the reluctance of some Americans to get vaccinated and, in the coming weeks, spotty compliance with social distancing guidelines and other public health measures before a critical mass of Americans is inoculated. “We’re being really cautious about our expectations about the speed” of the economic rebound, said Heather Boushey, a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers. “Part of this is establishing trust with the American people that we contain the virus, and that it’s safe, and then the economic activity will come up.” Americans will also have to be willing to change their habits. As new infections have declined, so too has coronavirus testing. But public health experts say more testing — not less — will be critical for the economy to recover. When Biden ran for office, and again after he was sworn in, he promised to create a “pandemic testing board,” akin to the wartime production board that President Franklin D. Roosevelt created to help bring the country out of the Great Depression. Biden described the approach as a “full-scale wartime effort.” His coronavirus testing coordinator, Carole Johnson, said the board, composed of officials from across government agencies, had been meeting to discuss how to work with the private sector to expand testing capacity, and to lay out plans to spend tens of billions of dollars from the stimulus bill for testing and other mitigation measures. “We know that we’re going to continue to need to grow as we go forward,” she said of the nation’s testing capacity. Biden made grand promises in pushing his American Rescue Plan to swift passage in Congress this month. “This is what this moment comes down to,” he said in February. “Are we going to pass a big enough package to vaccinate people, to get people back to work, to alleviate the suffering in this country this year? That’s what I want to do.” Biden got virtually everything he wanted. Now administration officials must make good on his vow. The legislation he signed centers on $1,400 direct payments to low- and middle-income Americans, expanded unemployment benefits, aid to renters facing eviction and a variety of programs to help the poor. The president and his aides have said that spending is intended to help the most vulnerable people in the country stay in their homes and keep food on the table. But Congress will not continue borrowing trillions of dollars to tide citizens over indefinitely. The economy will not fully rebound from the recession brought on by the virus until the pandemic is over. To that end, hundreds of billions of dollars in the bill are earmarked to speed vaccinations, bolster testing, help businesses return to full capacity sooner and ease the return to work for Americans — disproportionately women of color — who were forced to leave their jobs to care for young children. Those provisions include nearly $30 billion to ramp up vaccine deployment, support struggling community health centers and hire 100,000 public health workers. It also has nearly $50 billion for more COVID-19 testing, $122 billion for schools and both direct spending and expanded tax credits meant to increase the availability of child care. In keeping with Biden’s focus on racial equity across a wide range of policy endeavors, administration officials say they will look at how quickly women of color rejoin the labor force to gauge how well equity efforts are working. None of that spending is guaranteed to immediately change the course of the crisis. Schools, for example, are not required by the legislation to spend their additional dollars to reopen sooner, although administration officials are confident the money will help more students return to in-person learning in the coming months. Sometime next month, vaccine distribution will enter a new phase. The supply of doses will exceed the number of people looking for shots and public officials are likely to focus more on convincing reluctant Americans to agree to be vaccinated. Perhaps no spending effort will challenge the administration as much as increased testing. Right now, testing is largely used as a diagnostic tool to detect whether someone is infected. Moving forward, testing is expected to function more as a screening tool that helps Americans feel more comfortable returning to normalcy. The rescue plan includes nearly $48 billion for the administration to expand testing, contact tracing and other measures to track and contain the spread of the virus. The administration has not said how it will spend all of that money, although the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it would invest $10 billion in coronavirus screening for schools, with the goal of returning to in-person learning by the end of the school year. An additional $2.25 billion will go toward coronavirus testing in underserved communities. “We’re going to need widespread testing for this virus probably for the next several years,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “Right now, it’s all about just management of disease. But over time, as the pandemic gets under control, there are a whole series of things we want to do where testing will add a layer of confidence — everything from getting on an airplane to going into a restaurant to going to a concert.” But there are obstacles to that plan, including a shortage of the kind of rapid tests that are necessary to screen a large population. Michael Mina, an immunologist and epidemiologist at Harvard University, said onerous Food and Drug Administration regulations were delaying the approval of new rapid antigen tests that could fill that gap. “I feel very firmly that the Biden administration is hampered by a regulatory framework that is not in a position to actually tackle this pandemic, that is holding up the tools that are required to effectively curb transmission, to keep schools and businesses safe,” he said. Biden, who criticized his predecessor President Donald Trump for interfering with the work of the FDA, is hardly in a position to intervene in a regulatory matter. But his coronavirus testing coordinator, Johnson, said in an interview that the administration was closely tracking the supply chains for tests to determine what it could do to ensure widespread testing at schools become a reality. “We make policy decisions informed by where the supply is,” she said. Administration officials are also closely tracking the CDC’s infection data to guide their spending decisions and determine how to measure success. The uncertainty in the models based on that data, they say, underscores the challenge ahead of them: Four weeks from now, the nation could have as many as 511,000 new weekly cases — or as few as 138,000.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion challenge: End the coronavirus crisis faster

The first engagement between the Joe Biden administration & China ended up being an ill-tempered & undiplomatic sparring match. How did diplomacy become about name-calling & bickering? WION's Palki Sharma gets you a report.

Gravitas: U.S & China engage in undiplomatic sparring match

As US and Chinese officials began talks in <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/ahead-of-talks-in-alaska-us-sanctions-chinese-and-hong-kong-officials-371076">Alaska</a> for the first time under the Biden administration, China top diplomat Yang Jiechi threatened "firm actions" against "US interference".

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/china-not-holding-high-expectations-from-us-china-in-person-talks-371529/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

"China is firmly opposed to US interference in <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/canadians-to-stand-trial-in-china-for-spying-what-we-know-371488">China's</a> internal affairs, we have expressed our staunch opposition to such interference and we will take firm actions in response," Jiechi who is the director of the Chinese Communist Party's central foreign affairs commission official said.&nbsp;

"What we need to do is to abandon the Cold War mentality, and the zero sum game approach" Jiechi added.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hit back saying China's actions "threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability" during the meeting in Anchorage.

Blinken said the US will discuss "deep concerns with actions by China, including Xinjiang",&nbsp;"genocide" against Uyghur Muslims including dialogue on "Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyberattacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies."&nbsp;

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, "This is not supposed to be the way one should welcome his guests" as the two sides clashed openly in face-to-face talks.

Yang lashed out at the US delegation, saying: "The United States uses its military force and financial hegemony to carry out long arm jurisdiction and suppress other countries, it abuses so-called notions of national security to obstruct normal trade exchanges, and incite some countries to attack China."

"Let me say here that in front of the Chinese side, the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength," Yang said, adding, "the US&nbsp;side was not even qualified to say such things, even 20 years or 30 years back, because this is not the way to deal with the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/three-chinese-telecom-firms-face-threat-to-work-in-us-as-regulator-begins-probe-371444">Chinese</a> people."

The United States accused the Chinese diplomatic leaders of "grandstanding" while focussing on "public theatrics and dramatics over substance".

As US and Chinese officials began talks in Alaska for the first time under the Biden administration, China top diplomat Yang Jiechi threatened "firm actions" against "US interference".

As US and Chinese officials began talks in Alaska for the first time under the Biden administration, China top diplomat Yang Jiechi threatened "firm actions" against "US interference". Watch: "China is firmly opposed to US interference in China's internal affairs, we have expressed our staunch opposition to such interference and we will take firm actions in response," Jiechi who is the director of the Chinese Communist Party's central foreign affairs commission official said. "What we need to do is to abandon the Cold War mentality, and the zero sum game approach" Jiechi added. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hit back saying China's actions "threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability" during the meeting in Anchorage. Blinken said the US will discuss "deep concerns with actions by China, including Xinjiang", "genocide" against Uyghur Muslims including dialogue on "Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyberattacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies." Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, "This is not supposed to be the way one should welcome his guests" as the two sides clashed openly in face-to-face talks. Yang lashed out at the US delegation, saying: "The United States uses its military force and financial hegemony to carry out long arm jurisdiction and suppress other countries, it abuses so-called notions of national security to obstruct normal trade exchanges, and incite some countries to attack China." "Let me say here that in front of the Chinese side, the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength," Yang said, adding, "the US side was not even qualified to say such things, even 20 years or 30 years back, because this is not the way to deal with the Chinese people." The United States accused the Chinese diplomatic leaders of "grandstanding" while focussing on "public theatrics and dramatics over substance".

'Abandon Cold War mentality': US, Chinese officials clash during talks in Alaska

Congresswoman Deb Haaland was approved by the US Senate Monday to join President Joe Biden's administration, making her the first native American to become a cabinet secretary.

She was confirmed by a vote of 51-40 to the position of Secretary of the Interior, overseeing a massive agency responsible for roughly one-fifth of land in the United States -- including its many tribal reservations.

Haaland, 60, who hails from New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo tribe, already made history in 2018 when she became one of the first two native American women elected to US Congress.

"Rep Haaland's confirmation represents a gigantic step forward in creating a government that represents the full richness and diversity of this country because Native Americans were for far too long neglected at the cabinet level and in so many other places," the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said ahead of the vote.

"In elevating Rep. Haaland to lead the Department of Interior, we reset the relationship between the federal government and tribal nations to one of cooperation, mutual respect and trust."

Haaland's appointment was backed by a petition signed by some 120 tribal representatives, who urged Biden to make history by picking the congresswoman.

When her name first began to circulate for the position, Haaland noted she thought it was time for the world to start listening to indigenous communities regarding climate change and the environment.

"My ancestors have sacrificed a tremendous amount to keep my customs and traditions for me," she told AFP in 2018, during her first Congress run.&nbsp;

"So I want to make sure that I am bringing that perspective to the table in anything I do."

Haaland has been a member of the House of Representatives since January 2019.

A single mother, she overcame alcoholism in her youth and for a time had to use government food stamps to survive.

Before Haaland, the only other Native American to serve in a US administration was Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover's vice president between 1929 and 1933, who liked to say he was "one-eighth Kaw Indian and 100 per cent Republican."

Congresswoman Deb Haaland was approved by the US Senate Monday to join President Joe Biden's administration, making her the first native American to become a cabinet secretary.

Congresswoman Deb Haaland was approved by the US Senate Monday to join President Joe Biden's administration, making her the first native American to become a cabinet secretary. She was confirmed by a vote of 51-40 to the position of Secretary of the Interior, overseeing a massive agency responsible for roughly one-fifth of land in the United States -- including its many tribal reservations. Haaland, 60, who hails from New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo tribe, already made history in 2018 when she became one of the first two native American women elected to US Congress. "Rep Haaland's confirmation represents a gigantic step forward in creating a government that represents the full richness and diversity of this country because Native Americans were for far too long neglected at the cabinet level and in so many other places," the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said ahead of the vote. "In elevating Rep. Haaland to lead the Department of Interior, we reset the relationship between the federal government and tribal nations to one of cooperation, mutual respect and trust." Haaland's appointment was backed by a petition signed by some 120 tribal representatives, who urged Biden to make history by picking the congresswoman. When her name first began to circulate for the position, Haaland noted she thought it was time for the world to start listening to indigenous communities regarding climate change and the environment. "My ancestors have sacrificed a tremendous amount to keep my customs and traditions for me," she told AFP in 2018, during her first Congress run. "So I want to make sure that I am bringing that perspective to the table in anything I do." Haaland has been a member of the House of Representatives since January 2019. A single mother, she overcame alcoholism in her youth and for a time had to use government food stamps to survive. Before Haaland, the only other Native American to serve in a US administration was Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover's vice president between 1929 and 1933, who liked to say he was "one-eighth Kaw Indian and 100 per cent Republican."

Deb Haaland becomes first native American cabinet secretary

Joe Biden came to office promising a complete review of America's North Korea policy. But it seems he's already hit the first roadblock. There is radio silence from North Korea, Pyongyang has so far ignored all advances made by the Biden administration.

North Korea ignoring Biden administration's outreach

The Biden administration has said it is willing to reconsider the objections or adverse decisions to foreign workers on visas like H-1B due to the three policy memos by the previous Trump administration which now have been rescinded.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Friday announced "it may reopen and/or reconsider adverse decisions" on Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, made based on three rescinded policy memos.

USCIS will generally process motions based on filing order, and consistent with current policy guidance, the federal agency said.

USCIS said it would generally use its discretion to accept a motion to reopen filed more than 30 days after the decision, if filed before the end of the validity period requested on the petition or labour condition application, whichever is earlier, and the decision was based on one or more policies in the three rescinded H-1B memoranda.

On June 17, 2020, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum 602-0114, which officially rescinded two prior policy memoranda. First titled "Determining Employer-Employee Relationship for Adjudication of H-1B Petitions, Including Third-Party Site Placements," that was issued on January 8, 2010; and second "Contracts and Itineraries Requirements for H-1B Petitions Involving Third-Party Worksites," issued on February 22, 2018.

On February 3, 2021, the agency issued Policy Memorandum 602-0142.1, which officially rescinded PM-602-0142, "Rescission of the December 22, 2000 'Guidance memo on H1B computer related positions'," issued on March 31, 2017. Both Policy Memorandum 602-0114 and Policy Memorandum 602-0142.1 state that they apply to "any pending or new [H-1B Petitions], including motions on and appeals of revocations and denials of H-1B classification."

USCIS said a petitioner may request that it reopen and/or reconsider adverse decisions based on the three rescinded policy memos by properly filing Form I-290B, Notice of Appeal or Motion, accompanied by the appropriate fee.

In addition, USCIS has the discretionary authority to accept and consider untimely motions under certain circumstances as explained in the form instructions and permitted by regulation.

"Petitioners who received an adverse decision on an H-1B petition based on the now-rescinded policy memoranda should consider whether there is time remaining in the validity period requested on the previously filed H-1B petition and the relevant labour condition application," USCIS said.

(with inputs)

The Biden administration has said it is willing to reconsider the objections or adverse decisions to foreign workers on visas like H-1B due to the three policy memos by the previous Trump administration which now have been rescinded.

The Biden administration has said it is willing to reconsider the objections or adverse decisions to foreign workers on visas like H-1B due to the three policy memos by the previous Trump administration which now have been rescinded. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Friday announced "it may reopen and/or reconsider adverse decisions" on Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, made based on three rescinded policy memos. USCIS will generally process motions based on filing order, and consistent with current policy guidance, the federal agency said. USCIS said it would generally use its discretion to accept a motion to reopen filed more than 30 days after the decision, if filed before the end of the validity period requested on the petition or labour condition application, whichever is earlier, and the decision was based on one or more policies in the three rescinded H-1B memoranda. On June 17, 2020, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum 602-0114, which officially rescinded two prior policy memoranda. First titled "Determining Employer-Employee Relationship for Adjudication of H-1B Petitions, Including Third-Party Site Placements," that was issued on January 8, 2010; and second "Contracts and Itineraries Requirements for H-1B Petitions Involving Third-Party Worksites," issued on February 22, 2018. On February 3, 2021, the agency issued Policy Memorandum 602-0142.1, which officially rescinded PM-602-0142, "Rescission of the December 22, 2000 'Guidance memo on H1B computer related positions'," issued on March 31, 2017. Both Policy Memorandum 602-0114 and Policy Memorandum 602-0142.1 state that they apply to "any pending or new [H-1B Petitions], including motions on and appeals of revocations and denials of H-1B classification." USCIS said a petitioner may request that it reopen and/or reconsider adverse decisions based on the three rescinded policy memos by properly filing Form I-290B, Notice of Appeal or Motion, accompanied by the appropriate fee. In addition, USCIS has the discretionary authority to accept and consider untimely motions under certain circumstances as explained in the form instructions and permitted by regulation. "Petitioners who received an adverse decision on an H-1B petition based on the now-rescinded policy memoranda should consider whether there is time remaining in the validity period requested on the previously filed H-1B petition and the relevant labour condition application," USCIS said. (with inputs)

Biden admin to reconsider objections to H1B visas during Trump regime

A US group on Thursday opposed the move of the Biden administration to reverse some decisions of the previous Trump administration with regard to H-1B visas, in particular going back to the lottery system for allocation of this most sought-after work visa for foreign technology professionals.

The rule, Modification of Registration Requirement for Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions, requires that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) prioritise the higher-paid and higher-skilled foreign workers for H-1B cap-subject visas, thus ensuring US businesses have access to the best pool of foreign workers, while also discouraging wage suppression and creating unfair competition to American workers.

In its comment submitted to the Department of Homeland Security, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) asserted that the implementation of the Trump administration rule would reduce abuse of the H-1B program by unscrupulous employers while also protecting American workers.

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group.

"FAIR strongly supports the substance of the final rule and urges DHS to implement the rule without delay. As DHS has reiterated throughout the rulemaking process, prioritising wage levels in the registration selection process incentivises employers to offer higher wages, or to petition for positions requiring higher skills and higher-skilled aliens that are commensurate with higher wage levels, to increase the likelihood of selection for an eventual petition," the comments note.

"President (Joe) Biden often portrays himself as a man from the 'working class' who is a tireless defender of the American worker," said FAIR president Dan Stein.

"Yet his administration is set to postpone, by at least a year, an important rule change that prevents unscrupulous employers from using the H-1B program to undercut American wages while ensuring that companies that truly need skilled foreign workers have access to the best and the brightest," he alleged.

Current DHS policies require USCIS to select registrations on a purely random basis, utilizing a lottery system, when demand for H-1B visas exceeds the numerical limit set by statute, note the comments.

"This random lottery selection process places no weight on wage or skill levels and fails to ensure businesses actually have access to the best and brightest workers possible. Worse, the lottery creates a scenario where American workers could be replaced by foreign workers who can be paid significantly less or who possess considerably lower skills," said Stein.

FAIR strongly urged DHS to implement these critical reforms without undue delay.

"This final rule will allow DHS to more effectively protect US workers against competition from foreign labor at a time when US workers need protection more than ever. The acute fiscal harm that US workers are facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic will only be exacerbated if employers are encouraged to continue to underpay H-1B beneficiaries because of an outdated and illogical current wage structure," it said.&nbsp;

A US group on Thursday opposed the move of the Biden administration to reverse some decisions of the previous Trump administration with regard to H-1B visas, in particular going back to the lottery system for allocation of this most sought-after work visa for foreign technology professionals.

A US group on Thursday opposed the move of the Biden administration to reverse some decisions of the previous Trump administration with regard to H-1B visas, in particular going back to the lottery system for allocation of this most sought-after work visa for foreign technology professionals. The rule, Modification of Registration Requirement for Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions, requires that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) prioritise the higher-paid and higher-skilled foreign workers for H-1B cap-subject visas, thus ensuring US businesses have access to the best pool of foreign workers, while also discouraging wage suppression and creating unfair competition to American workers. In its comment submitted to the Department of Homeland Security, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) asserted that the implementation of the Trump administration rule would reduce abuse of the H-1B program by unscrupulous employers while also protecting American workers. Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. "FAIR strongly supports the substance of the final rule and urges DHS to implement the rule without delay. As DHS has reiterated throughout the rulemaking process, prioritising wage levels in the registration selection process incentivises employers to offer higher wages, or to petition for positions requiring higher skills and higher-skilled aliens that are commensurate with higher wage levels, to increase the likelihood of selection for an eventual petition," the comments note. "President (Joe) Biden often portrays himself as a man from the 'working class' who is a tireless defender of the American worker," said FAIR president Dan Stein. "Yet his administration is set to postpone, by at least a year, an important rule change that prevents unscrupulous employers from using the H-1B program to undercut American wages while ensuring that companies that truly need skilled foreign workers have access to the best and the brightest," he alleged. Current DHS policies require USCIS to select registrations on a purely random basis, utilizing a lottery system, when demand for H-1B visas exceeds the numerical limit set by statute, note the comments. "This random lottery selection process places no weight on wage or skill levels and fails to ensure businesses actually have access to the best and brightest workers possible. Worse, the lottery creates a scenario where American workers could be replaced by foreign workers who can be paid significantly less or who possess considerably lower skills," said Stein. FAIR strongly urged DHS to implement these critical reforms without undue delay. "This final rule will allow DHS to more effectively protect US workers against competition from foreign labor at a time when US workers need protection more than ever. The acute fiscal harm that US workers are facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic will only be exacerbated if employers are encouraged to continue to underpay H-1B beneficiaries because of an outdated and illogical current wage structure," it said.

US group opposes Biden administration's steps on H1B visas

The Biden administration published revised guidelines Wednesday for nursing home visits during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing guests to go inside to see residents regardless of whether they or the residents have been vaccinated.

The recommendations, released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with comment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are the first revision to the federal government’s nursing home guidance since September. And they arrived as more than 3 million vaccine doses had been administered in nursing homes, the agency said.

Federal officials said in the new guidance that outdoor visits were still preferable because of a lower risk of transmission, even when residents and guests have been fully vaccinated.

The guidance was also the latest indication that the pandemic in the United States was easing, with coronavirus cases continuing to decrease across the nation, though the seven-day average remains at more than 58,000. The CDC released long-awaited guidance Monday for Americans who have been fully vaccinated, telling them that it was safe to gather in small groups at home without masks or social distancing.

About 62.5 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, including about 32.9 million people who have been fully vaccinated by Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson’s single-dose vaccine or the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

In a statement laying out the reasons for updating the recommendations, Dr. Lee A. Fleisher, the chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, cited the millions of vaccines administered to nursing home residents and staff and a decline in coronavirus cases in nursing homes.

“CMS recognizes the psychological, emotional and physical toll that prolonged isolation and separation from family have taken on nursing home residents and their families,” he said.

Earlier in the pandemic, the coronavirus raced through tens of thousands of long-term care facilities in the United States, killing more than 150,000 residents and employees and accounting for more than a third of all virus deaths since late spring. But since the arrival of vaccines, new cases and deaths in nursing homes have fallen steeply, outpacing national declines, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

The eight pages of recommendations, which are not legally binding, did come with suggested limits, saying that “responsible indoor visitation” should be allowed at all times unless a guest is visiting an unvaccinated resident in a county where the COVID-19 positivity rate is higher than 10% and less than 70% of residents in the nursing home have been fully vaccinated. The guidance also says to limit visits if residents have COVID-19 or are in quarantine.

So-called compassionate care visits — when a resident’s health has severely deteriorated — should be allowed regardless of vaccination status or the county’s positivity rate, the guidance said.

When a positive case is identified in a nursing home, visits should be halted and residents and staff tested, the guidance said. Visits can resume in other parts of the facility if there are no positive tests there, but if cases are discovered in other areas, nursing homes should suspend all visits.

The Biden administration published revised guidelines Wednesday for nursing home visits during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing guests to go inside to see residents regardless of whether they or the residents have been vaccinated.

The Biden administration published revised guidelines Wednesday for nursing home visits during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing guests to go inside to see residents regardless of whether they or the residents have been vaccinated. The recommendations, released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with comment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are the first revision to the federal government’s nursing home guidance since September. And they arrived as more than 3 million vaccine doses had been administered in nursing homes, the agency said. Federal officials said in the new guidance that outdoor visits were still preferable because of a lower risk of transmission, even when residents and guests have been fully vaccinated. The guidance was also the latest indication that the pandemic in the United States was easing, with coronavirus cases continuing to decrease across the nation, though the seven-day average remains at more than 58,000. The CDC released long-awaited guidance Monday for Americans who have been fully vaccinated, telling them that it was safe to gather in small groups at home without masks or social distancing. About 62.5 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, including about 32.9 million people who have been fully vaccinated by Johnson &amp; Johnson’s single-dose vaccine or the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. In a statement laying out the reasons for updating the recommendations, Dr. Lee A. Fleisher, the chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, cited the millions of vaccines administered to nursing home residents and staff and a decline in coronavirus cases in nursing homes. “CMS recognizes the psychological, emotional and physical toll that prolonged isolation and separation from family have taken on nursing home residents and their families,” he said. Earlier in the pandemic, the coronavirus raced through tens of thousands of long-term care facilities in the United States, killing more than 150,000 residents and employees and accounting for more than a third of all virus deaths since late spring. But since the arrival of vaccines, new cases and deaths in nursing homes have fallen steeply, outpacing national declines, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. The eight pages of recommendations, which are not legally binding, did come with suggested limits, saying that “responsible indoor visitation” should be allowed at all times unless a guest is visiting an unvaccinated resident in a county where the COVID-19 positivity rate is higher than 10% and less than 70% of residents in the nursing home have been fully vaccinated. The guidance also says to limit visits if residents have COVID-19 or are in quarantine. So-called compassionate care visits — when a resident’s health has severely deteriorated — should be allowed regardless of vaccination status or the county’s positivity rate, the guidance said. When a positive case is identified in a nursing home, visits should be halted and residents and staff tested, the guidance said. Visits can resume in other parts of the facility if there are no positive tests there, but if cases are discovered in other areas, nursing homes should suspend all visits.

US releases new COVID-19 guidance for nursing homes, permitting indoor visits

WASHINGTON — Days after President Joe Biden took office, the Bureau of Land Management put a scenic landscape of a winding river at the top of its website, which during the previous administration had featured a photograph of a huge wall of coal.

At the Department of Homeland Security, the phrase “illegal alien” is being replaced with “noncitizen.” The Interior Department now makes sure that mentions of its stakeholders include “Tribal” people (with a capital “T,” as preferred by Native Americans, it said). The most unpopular two words in the Trump lexicon — “climate change” — are once again appearing on government websites and in documents; officials at the Environmental Protection Agency have even begun using the hashtag #climatecrisis on Twitter.

And across the government, LGBTQ references are popping up everywhere. Visitors to the White House website are now asked whether they want to provide their pronouns when they fill out a contact form: she/her, he/him or they/them.

It is all part of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to rebrand the government after four years of former President Donald Trump, in part by stripping away the language and imagery that represented his anti-immigration, anti-science and anti-gay rights policies and replacing them with words and pictures that are more inclusive and better match the current president’s sensibilities.

“Biden is trying to reclaim the vision of America that was there during the Obama administration, a vision that was much more diverse, much more religiously tolerant, much more tolerant of different kinds of gender dispositions and gender presentations,” said Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor of anthropology at UCLA and an author of “Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies.”

Mendoza-Denton said Trump sought to “remake reality through language” during a tumultuous tenure. As she writes in her book, the former president “changed some of the deepest expectations about presidential language, not just when it comes to style, but also the relationship between words and reality.”

Now officials in Biden’s administration are using Trump’s own tactics to adjust reality again, this time by erasing the words his predecessor used and by explicitly returning to ones that had been banished.

“The president has been clear to all of us: Words matter, tone matters and civility matters,” said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. “And bringing the country together, getting back our seat at the global table means turning the page from the actions but also the divisive and far too often xenophobic language of the last administration.”

Some shift in the language used by government agencies is not uncommon when a new administration arrives in Washington. In addition to their symbolic power, the revisions can help usher in new policies. Allowing the phrase “climate change” gives a green light to government scientists, while banning the use of “illegal alien” can alter the real-life engagements between immigrants and border agents.

But rarely has the contrast been quite so stark as it is between Biden and Trump. The rhetorical overhaul is underway in all corners of the government as executive orders are drafted, news releases are modified, scores of federal forms are tweaked, and online portals are revamped.

Stephen Miller, who pursued similar changes at the beginning of the Trump administration as a top policy adviser, said the embrace of what he called politically correct language by officials in Biden’s government reflected the importance of framing important issues for the public.

In addition to the changes on websites, he noted that Biden’s executive orders had been filled with words and phrases that would never have come from Trump’s mouth, including “equity,” “environmental justice,” “pathway to citizenship,” “pro-choice” and “undocumented immigrant.”

“The struggle over the lexicon is actually the central struggle,” said Miller, who wrote many of Trump’s speeches and was the architect of his assault on the immigration system. “Equity is meant to harken to this idea that America is a nation that believes in everybody having this fundamental dignity of treatment. But the other side would say, ‘What you call equity, I call discrimination.’ ”

Trump administration officials like Miller sought to engineer similar shifts in language when they were in office. Miller fought in 2017 for the use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” during that year’s presidential address to Congress, arguing that it conveyed a seriousness of purpose by Trump in fighting terrorism. Critics said that using the phrase falsely suggested that all Muslims are terrorists.

And Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development, proposed removing the phrase “inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination” from the department’s mission statement. He later backed down.

For the Biden administration, the vocabulary shift was immediate.

Hours after taking office, officials responsible for updating WhiteHouse.gov removed pages highlighting Trump’s 1776 Commission, which likened progressivism to fascism and attacked liberals who charge that the founding of the United States was tainted by slavery.

At the same time, the president’s aides restored the Spanish-language version of the website, which had been taken down by Trump’s digital team, and hired sign language interpreters for the livestream of the press secretary’s daily briefing. References to presidents as “he” were changed to “they” on some parts of the site.

At the State Department, the incoming secretary, Antony Blinken, moved quickly to erase what Mike Pompeo, his predecessor, called an “ethos” statement for U.S. diplomats, which included a pledge to be a “champion of American diplomacy” and to work with “unfailing professionalism.” Many longtime members of the department saw it as an insulting warning to the so-called deep state who Pompeo and Trump believed were undermining their agenda.

In its place, Blinken issued a statement that said “the ethos of public service permeates the workforce” and declared that State Department employees “do not need a reminder of the values we share.”

And officials at the Bureau of Land Management, in addition to overhauling their website, have restored boilerplate language at the bottom of all documents, including the assertion that the agency’s mission is “to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of America’s public lands.”

Melissa Schwartz, the Interior Department’s top communications official, said such changes were part of a new policy of encouraging voices that had not been heard during the Trump administration.

“The words we choose are critical and set the tone, whether it’s press releases or social media or all-staff messages,” she said. “At Interior, that means not just acknowledging the disproportionate impact that the climate crisis is having on communities of color and Indigenous peoples but an embrace of the science and solutions that will help us tackle it.”

Biden administration officials say the effort to modify the language used by government officials recognizes the powerful messages that certain words and phrases send.

The term “alien” is written into immigration statutes and has been widely used in government for decades to describe foreigners, even showing up in memos from Obama-era officials. But it has increasingly been at the center of an ideological tug of war about whether it unfairly stigmatizes immigrants and whether those in the United States without authorization should be called “undocumented” rather than “illegal.”

Three years ago, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered officials in his department to use the term “illegal alien” in all communications when describing someone who did not come to the United States through legal means. In a memo, Justice Department officials wrote that “the word ‘undocumented’ is not based in U.S. code and should not be used to describe someone’s illegal presence in the country.”

Now the Biden administration is explicitly reversing that position. On Feb. 12, officials at Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles citizenship, said employees should not use the word “alien” in “outreach efforts, internal documents and in overall communication with stakeholders, partners and the general public.” The move, the agency’s acting director said, “aligns our language practices with the administration’s guidance on the federal government’s use of immigration terminology.”

A few days later, the White House went further. In his legislative proposal for a far-reaching immigration overhaul, Biden would strip the word “alien” from the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and substitute it with “noncitizen,” a suggestion that infuriates anti-immigration groups.

“It’s kind of Orwellian — that’s what it is, really,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors limits on immigration. “The war against the word ‘alien’ is a continuation of this effort to destigmatize illegal immigration that started in the mid-1970s. This is in a sense the culmination of that process.”

Some changes are still pending.

The website of the Department of Homeland Security’s citizenship office, USCIS.gov, still bears the mission statement that Trump administration officials modified in 2018 to remove “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants” and replace it with “fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits.” That could soon switch course.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump’s aides had taken down the part of the website devoted to climate change. As of mid-February, the site had not yet been restored. But given Biden’s embrace of the subject, officials said they expected that to happen soon.

But the Treasury Department is already moving ahead with plans to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, a decision that had been delayed during the Trump administration.

And at the Interior Department, employees have been told that they can use phrases like “science-based evidence” again. In a call with the agency’s public relations officials Jan. 21, Schwartz had a message for her colleagues.

“Climate change is real, and science is back, and you should feel free to talk about both in your press releases,” she said. “I release you!”

WASHINGTON — Days after President Joe Biden took office, the Bureau of Land Management put a scenic landscape of a winding river at the top of its website, which during the previous administration had featured a photograph of a huge wall of coal.

WASHINGTON — Days after President Joe Biden took office, the Bureau of Land Management put a scenic landscape of a winding river at the top of its website, which during the previous administration had featured a photograph of a huge wall of coal. At the Department of Homeland Security, the phrase “illegal alien” is being replaced with “noncitizen.” The Interior Department now makes sure that mentions of its stakeholders include “Tribal” people (with a capital “T,” as preferred by Native Americans, it said). The most unpopular two words in the Trump lexicon — “climate change” — are once again appearing on government websites and in documents; officials at the Environmental Protection Agency have even begun using the hashtag #climatecrisis on Twitter. And across the government, LGBTQ references are popping up everywhere. Visitors to the White House website are now asked whether they want to provide their pronouns when they fill out a contact form: she/her, he/him or they/them. It is all part of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to rebrand the government after four years of former President Donald Trump, in part by stripping away the language and imagery that represented his anti-immigration, anti-science and anti-gay rights policies and replacing them with words and pictures that are more inclusive and better match the current president’s sensibilities. “Biden is trying to reclaim the vision of America that was there during the Obama administration, a vision that was much more diverse, much more religiously tolerant, much more tolerant of different kinds of gender dispositions and gender presentations,” said Norma Mendoza-Denton, a professor of anthropology at UCLA and an author of “Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies.” Mendoza-Denton said Trump sought to “remake reality through language” during a tumultuous tenure. As she writes in her book, the former president “changed some of the deepest expectations about presidential language, not just when it comes to style, but also the relationship between words and reality.” Now officials in Biden’s administration are using Trump’s own tactics to adjust reality again, this time by erasing the words his predecessor used and by explicitly returning to ones that had been banished. “The president has been clear to all of us: Words matter, tone matters and civility matters,” said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. “And bringing the country together, getting back our seat at the global table means turning the page from the actions but also the divisive and far too often xenophobic language of the last administration.” Some shift in the language used by government agencies is not uncommon when a new administration arrives in Washington. In addition to their symbolic power, the revisions can help usher in new policies. Allowing the phrase “climate change” gives a green light to government scientists, while banning the use of “illegal alien” can alter the real-life engagements between immigrants and border agents. But rarely has the contrast been quite so stark as it is between Biden and Trump. The rhetorical overhaul is underway in all corners of the government as executive orders are drafted, news releases are modified, scores of federal forms are tweaked, and online portals are revamped. Stephen Miller, who pursued similar changes at the beginning of the Trump administration as a top policy adviser, said the embrace of what he called politically correct language by officials in Biden’s government reflected the importance of framing important issues for the public. In addition to the changes on websites, he noted that Biden’s executive orders had been filled with words and phrases that would never have come from Trump’s mouth, including “equity,” “environmental justice,” “pathway to citizenship,” “pro-choice” and “undocumented immigrant.” “The struggle over the lexicon is actually the central struggle,” said Miller, who wrote many of Trump’s speeches and was the architect of his assault on the immigration system. “Equity is meant to harken to this idea that America is a nation that believes in everybody having this fundamental dignity of treatment. But the other side would say, ‘What you call equity, I call discrimination.’ ” Trump administration officials like Miller sought to engineer similar shifts in language when they were in office. Miller fought in 2017 for the use of the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” during that year’s presidential address to Congress, arguing that it conveyed a seriousness of purpose by Trump in fighting terrorism. Critics said that using the phrase falsely suggested that all Muslims are terrorists. And Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development, proposed removing the phrase “inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination” from the department’s mission statement. He later backed down. For the Biden administration, the vocabulary shift was immediate. Hours after taking office, officials responsible for updating WhiteHouse.gov removed pages highlighting Trump’s 1776 Commission, which likened progressivism to fascism and attacked liberals who charge that the founding of the United States was tainted by slavery. At the same time, the president’s aides restored the Spanish-language version of the website, which had been taken down by Trump’s digital team, and hired sign language interpreters for the livestream of the press secretary’s daily briefing. References to presidents as “he” were changed to “they” on some parts of the site. At the State Department, the incoming secretary, Antony Blinken, moved quickly to erase what Mike Pompeo, his predecessor, called an “ethos” statement for U.S. diplomats, which included a pledge to be a “champion of American diplomacy” and to work with “unfailing professionalism.” Many longtime members of the department saw it as an insulting warning to the so-called deep state who Pompeo and Trump believed were undermining their agenda. In its place, Blinken issued a statement that said “the ethos of public service permeates the workforce” and declared that State Department employees “do not need a reminder of the values we share.” And officials at the Bureau of Land Management, in addition to overhauling their website, have restored boilerplate language at the bottom of all documents, including the assertion that the agency’s mission is “to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of America’s public lands.” Melissa Schwartz, the Interior Department’s top communications official, said such changes were part of a new policy of encouraging voices that had not been heard during the Trump administration. “The words we choose are critical and set the tone, whether it’s press releases or social media or all-staff messages,” she said. “At Interior, that means not just acknowledging the disproportionate impact that the climate crisis is having on communities of color and Indigenous peoples but an embrace of the science and solutions that will help us tackle it.” Biden administration officials say the effort to modify the language used by government officials recognizes the powerful messages that certain words and phrases send. The term “alien” is written into immigration statutes and has been widely used in government for decades to describe foreigners, even showing up in memos from Obama-era officials. But it has increasingly been at the center of an ideological tug of war about whether it unfairly stigmatizes immigrants and whether those in the United States without authorization should be called “undocumented” rather than “illegal.” Three years ago, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered officials in his department to use the term “illegal alien” in all communications when describing someone who did not come to the United States through legal means. In a memo, Justice Department officials wrote that “the word ‘undocumented’ is not based in U.S. code and should not be used to describe someone’s illegal presence in the country.” Now the Biden administration is explicitly reversing that position. On Feb. 12, officials at Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles citizenship, said employees should not use the word “alien” in “outreach efforts, internal documents and in overall communication with stakeholders, partners and the general public.” The move, the agency’s acting director said, “aligns our language practices with the administration’s guidance on the federal government’s use of immigration terminology.” A few days later, the White House went further. In his legislative proposal for a far-reaching immigration overhaul, Biden would strip the word “alien” from the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and substitute it with “noncitizen,” a suggestion that infuriates anti-immigration groups. “It’s kind of Orwellian — that’s what it is, really,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors limits on immigration. “The war against the word ‘alien’ is a continuation of this effort to destigmatize illegal immigration that started in the mid-1970s. This is in a sense the culmination of that process.” Some changes are still pending. The website of the Department of Homeland Security’s citizenship office, USCIS.gov, still bears the mission statement that Trump administration officials modified in 2018 to remove “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants” and replace it with “fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits.” That could soon switch course. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump’s aides had taken down the part of the website devoted to climate change. As of mid-February, the site had not yet been restored. But given Biden’s embrace of the subject, officials said they expected that to happen soon. But the Treasury Department is already moving ahead with plans to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, a decision that had been delayed during the Trump administration. And at the Interior Department, employees have been told that they can use phrases like “science-based evidence” again. In a call with the agency’s public relations officials Jan. 21, Schwartz had a message for her colleagues. “Climate change is real, and science is back, and you should feel free to talk about both in your press releases,” she said. “I release you!”

The words that are in and out with the Biden administration

US President Joe Biden's administration will&nbsp;distribute 25 million masks starting next month.

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday&nbsp;"In the month of March, we will begin to deliver millions of masks to food banks and community health centres around the country.''

"We will deliver more than 25 million masks across the country, these masks will be available in more than 1300 community health centres, and 60,000 food pantries nationwide.

Zients also said that the Biden&nbsp;administration is anticipating the&nbsp;distribution of&nbsp;at least three million doses of Johnson &amp; Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine should it receive emergency use authorization (EUA).

Around 44.5 million people in the United States had received at least one dose of two-shot vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech or Moderna, as of Tuesday morning as the&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;administration tries to accelerate an unprecedented campaign to vaccinate most American adults.

About 19 per cent&nbsp;of total global coronavirus deaths have occurred in the United States, an outsized figure given that the nation accounts for just 4 per cent&nbsp;of the world’s population.

The country has the highest overall death figure, reflecting&nbsp;the lack of a unified, national response last year, when the administration of former President Donald Trump mostly left states to their own devices in tackling the greatest public health crisis in a century.&nbsp;

Biden, a Democrat, took office on Jan. 20 after defeating Trump, a Republican, in the 2020 presidential election, in part by arguing he would do a better job of addressing the pandemic.

Trump downplayed the pandemic in its early stages and repeatedly predicted rosier numbers about the expected death toll in the United States than came to fruition.

&nbsp;

US President Joe Biden's administration will distribute 25 million masks starting next month. White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday "In the month of March, we will begin to deliver millions of masks to food banks and community health centres around the country.

US President Joe Biden's administration will distribute 25 million masks starting next month. White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday "In the month of March, we will begin to deliver millions of masks to food banks and community health centres around the country.'' "We will deliver more than 25 million masks across the country, these masks will be available in more than 1300 community health centres, and 60,000 food pantries nationwide. Zients also said that the Biden administration is anticipating the distribution of at least three million doses of Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine should it receive emergency use authorization (EUA). Around 44.5 million people in the United States had received at least one dose of two-shot vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech or Moderna, as of Tuesday morning as the Biden administration tries to accelerate an unprecedented campaign to vaccinate most American adults. About 19 per cent of total global coronavirus deaths have occurred in the United States, an outsized figure given that the nation accounts for just 4 per cent of the world’s population. The country has the highest overall death figure, reflecting the lack of a unified, national response last year, when the administration of former President Donald Trump mostly left states to their own devices in tackling the greatest public health crisis in a century. Biden, a Democrat, took office on Jan. 20 after defeating Trump, a Republican, in the 2020 presidential election, in part by arguing he would do a better job of addressing the pandemic. Trump downplayed the pandemic in its early stages and repeatedly predicted rosier numbers about the expected death toll in the United States than came to fruition.

US to distribute 25 million masks for protection against coronavirus

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