In a speech to Congress on the eve of his 100th day in office, President Biden outlined a sweeping case for massive spending he said was needed for the U.S. to emerge from the pandemic and prevail in global competition with China.
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100 Days, and What Comes After
In a pitch for lifting American workers, President Biden used his first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday to press his case that massive spending on infrastructure, education, technological initiatives and social services will ensure the United States emerges from the pandemic stronger than before. He rooted his proposals in working-class demands for steady paychecks, affordable child care and better schools. But he also framed them as part of a broader struggle between democracies and autocracies, saying they are needed for the U.S. to prevail in global competition with China.
Biden delivered his nationally televised prime-time speech — which came with the historic visual of him flanked by two California women and speaking before a nearly empty House — as he approached the end of his first 100 days in office, a period dominated by his efforts to extend economic relief, expand vaccine distribution and bring an end to the pandemic. Here are six key takeaways from his speech, from redefining the political middle to taking aim at the rich.
Indeed, after vowing in his inaugural address to “defeat the virus,” Biden has followed through on most of his promises for his first 100 days in this area. He’s also delivered on promises related to climate change and the economy. But he has taken only small steps so far to address racial injustice, the fourth crisis he identified, and has struggled to get a handle on immigration, disappointing progressives by keeping some of the Trump administration’s policies in place.
More Politics
— The key to Biden’s political success in an era of fierce partisan division is being “pleasantly boring,” columnist Mark Z. Barabak writes.
— Biden has continued a Trump-era pandemic policy known as Title 42, indefinitely closing the border. Experts say it has made stranded migrant children and parents easy prey for criminal groups that are known for kidnapping and extortion.
— Federal investigators executed a search warrant at the Manhattan home of Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been under investigation for several years over his business dealings in Ukraine.
— California’s sluggish population growth has lost the state a congressional seat. That should concern us, writes columnist George Skelton, who offers a cautionary tale from another state’s history.
— A photo and a Long Beach book drive led to a false story and attacks on Kamala Harris. Here is the story of how.
For more news and analysis, sign up for our Essential Politics newsletter, sent to your inbox three days a week.
‘He’s Not Doing Anything Wrong’
In a case drawing comparisons to the killing of George Floyd, authorities in the Bay Area city of Alameda are facing growing outrage after a body-camera video showed a police officer appearing to put a knee on the back of a 26-year-old Latino man for more than four minutes as he gasped for breath and eventually died.
The incident has drawn scrutiny in part because the man who died, Mario Gonzalez, appeared to pose no imminent threat to the officers when they arrived at a park April 19 after calls about an intoxicated man and a possible theft. One of the 911 callers told a dispatcher: “He seems like he’s tweaking. But he’s not doing anything wrong, he’s just scaring my wife.” Here is what we know now.
India’s ‘Continuing Nightmare’
The bodies have burned for so long at some crematoriums that the furnaces have started to melt. Firewood for funeral pyres is rationed, leaving the dead half-cremated on the banks of the Ganges. Gravediggers in New Delhi are in such high demand that families are hiring them while stricken loved ones are still alive.
Months after its leaders boasted of having defeated the coronavirus, India is being devastated by a trail of death and misery, as an explosion of cases fueled by the so-called double mutant variant of the virus pushes the healthcare system toward collapse. A record 350,000 new infections are reported daily. And experts are calling for new lockdowns and a nationwide mobilization to secure supplies of oxygen, hospital beds and medication.
“Everyone just feels helpless,” said Chaithra Kodmad, 28, an emergency room doctor in Bengaluru. The virus, she said, “doesn’t care what age you are, what caste you belong to. It doesn’t matter.”
More Top Coronavirus Headlines
— A steep drop in new coronavirus cases in Los Angeles County has the county poised to potentially reopen its economy to an extent that would have been unthinkable in the not-too-distant past.
— People with so-called long COVID are at risk from a possible second pandemic of opioid addiction, given the high rate of painkillers being prescribed to these patients, health experts say.
For more, sign up for Coronavirus Today, a special edition of The Times’ Health and Science newsletter.
The Signatories Behind the Recall
Recall backers have gathered more than 1.6 million valid voter signatures, enough to put a recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom on the ballot. So whose signatures were they?
A Times analysis of the data shows that although petitions were signed all across the state, the highest concentrations of signatures were found in the rural northeast — areas with low coronavirus case counts and where voters heavily favored former President Trump. We mapped where they were highest and charted them against case counts.
But as he faces the recall, new polling data may cheer Newsom: Although large majorities of parents believe children are falling behind academically, they still overwhelmingly approve of how he is handling the public education system, a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California has found.
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
In April 1971, the 1st Marine Division returned to Camp Pendleton after a five-year deployment in South Vietnam. On April 30, President Nixon visited the returning troops, declaring that they had come home with “mission accomplished.” According to a story in The Times the next day, he presented them with a Presidential Unit Citation.
He also announced that United States would be withdrawing at the rate of one division a month. The last U.S. ground troops would not leave until 1973. During the war, 7,012 men from the 1st Marine Division were killed in action.
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April 30, 1971: President Nixon and Marine Corps Gen. Leonard F. Chapman Jr. receive salutes from 1st Division Marines back at Camp Pendleton from Vietnam. (Fitzgerald Whitney / Los Angeles Times Archive/UCLA)
CALIFORNIA
— In next year’s election for L.A. County sheriff, a senior department official, Chief Eliezer Vera, has become an early challenger planning to try to unseat his boss, Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
— How do you turn some of the Pacific Ocean into drinking water without destroying marine life? Such unresolved questions continue to dog Poseidon Water and its proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant as regulators consider the $1-billion project — and its environmental impact.
— In Northern California, the drought emergency is thrown into stark relief by stunning drone photographs over Lake Oroville.
— A gunman who went on a shooting rampage in Los Angeles on Tuesday had an arsenal of weapons at his home and possessed a legally purchased AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, law enforcement sources told The Times.
— An off-duty Los Angeles police officer was shot in the chest Wednesday afternoon by a man who broke into his car inside a garage in Sherman Oaks and found the officer’s service weapon, according to LAPD Chief Michel Moore.
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NATION-WORLD
— Senate Democrats voted to reverse a Trump-era environmental rule that limits regulation of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and a major contributor to climate change — marking Democrats’ first use of the Congressional Review Act to overturn a policy put in place by a Republican president.
— A judge denied requests to release body-camera video in the case of a Black man killed by North Carolina deputies, saying he believed releasing the video could harm the ongoing investigation or threaten the safety of people involved. In Chicago, newly released video shows a man who was fleeing police had his back turned when an officer fatally shot him last month.
— Americans will have more time to get the Real ID that will be required for boarding flights and entering federal facilities after the Department of Homeland Security postponed the deadline to May 3, 2023.
— An American warship fired warning shots when vessels of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard came too close to a patrol in the Persian Gulf, marking a second tense encounter between the forces.
— The Justice Department has brought federal hate crimes charges in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, charging a father and son who armed themselves, chased and fatally shot the 25-year-old Black man running in their Georgia neighborhood.
HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS
— NewsNation promised an “unbiased” alternative to the big cable news channels but struggled with low ratings and internal strife. What went wrong?
— W.W. Norton is taking out of print Blake Bailey’s “Philip Roth: The Biography” and his 2014 memoir, “The Splendid Things We Planned,” after recent allegations of sexual misconduct against Bailey.
— “The Handmaid’s Tale” is far from perfect, but our TV critic explains why she’s not giving up on it yet.
— When he requested a hearing for Britney Spears to address the court directly in her conservatorship case, the pop star’s lawyer set in motion a June 23 court appearance that’s certain to send her #FreeBritney fans into overdrive.
BUSINESS
— It’s a hustle as old as humankind: Get something on the cheap; resell it for more. The pandemic has supercharged the gig, benefiting some but raising prices — and ethical concerns — for others.
— Even in a galaxy far, far away, Earth’s deadly pandemic has had an impact. As Disneyland reopens, the park is adapting Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance for the post-COVID world.
SPORTS
— Sure, Maya Brady is Tom Brady’s niece. But that isn’t why the UCLA star has riveted college sports — her skill has earned her Softball America freshman of the year and a reputation as UCLA’s power-hitting left-hander.
— In the NFL draft today, it’s generally accepted that quarterbacks Trevor Lawrence of Clemson and Zach Wilson of Brigham Young will be the first two picks, by Jacksonville and the New York Jets. But that’s when the drama starts.
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OPINION
— Biden’s plans aren’t radical; he’s merely making up for decades of federal neglect, The Times’ editorial board writes. And columnist LZ Granderson says that while Biden’s “free” community college sounds good, he’s asking the wrong question.
— Be cautious about what you read into the Chauvin verdict, columnist Harry Litman writes, saying that it underlines how much work there is left to do.
WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING
— French tacos are always plural. They contain French fries. They’re also a sandwich. This is the story of their unlikely rise. (The New Yorker)
— From 2020: Did Rudy Giuliani change, or did America? (The New York Times)
ONLY IN L.A.
How much would you pay for a digital lowrider? NFTs — that’s nonfungible tokens — represent a sprawling and chaotic new blockchain market that is rattling the bones of the contemporary art world. Digital work can be worth big money, but disruption is the draw for artist Mister Cartoon and the anonymous King Foo, who are part of a wave of Chicano creators diving into the world of NFTs.
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