Didn't realize we'd started a new thread. I was just going to post Day 2 since I'd forgotten yesterday, but I'll toss in day 1 as well:
https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2021/01/20/day-1/
[h=1]Day 1: "Democracy has prevailed."[/h]
! 1/ Biden was sworn as the 46th president of the United States, moments after Kamala Harris took her oath of office, making her the first woman and the first woman of color to serve as vice president. “This is America’s day,” Biden said as he began his Inaugural Address. “This is democracy’s day.” Biden – the oldest man to be sworn in as president at 78 – described today as “our historic moment of crisis and challenge,” as he called on the nation to end its “uncivil war” and embrace “Unity [as] the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you we will not fail.” Four years after Trump attacked the Washington establishment throughout his Inaugural Address, declaring that the “American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Biden offered a direct rebuttal: “We’ve learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile — and at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.” (New York Times / Washington Post / NBC News / Wall Street Journal / CNN / Politico)
! * Biden’s Inaugural Address, Annotated. (NPR)
- Biden inauguration live blogs: New York Times / Washington Post / NPR / The Guardian / Politico / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal / ABC News / NBC News / CNN
- Trump left a note for Biden in the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk. A Trump White House spokesperson did not reveal the contents of what Trump left for Biden to read. (Politico / USA Today)
- Melania Trump outsourced her “thank you” notes to the White House residence staff who cared for her and her family for the last four years. A low-level East Wing staffer wrote them “in her voice,” and she signed her name. (CNN)
- Biden inherits a country that is older, on shakier economic footing, and is more politically polarized. “The coronavirus pandemic halted the 11-year economic expansion and drove up unemployment just as the typical American household was starting to enjoy sustained income growth. Americans were living longer until the pandemic exacted a swift, deadly toll.” (Wall Street Journal)
- Trump will step into a financial minefield that appears to be unlike anything he has faced. “Baseless election fraud claims and the Capitol riot have compounded already-looming threats to his bottom line. And the cash lifelines he once relied on are gone.” (New York Times)
! 2/ Trump, who refused to concede, never congratulated Biden and skipped his successor’s swearing-in, held a small, socially distanced military-style send-off for himself before leaving for his Florida resort. “I hope they don’t raise your taxes,” Trump told the crowd of several hundred people at Joint Base Andrews. “But if they do, I told you so.” While Trump did not mention Biden by name, he did “wish the new administration great luck and great success.” Trump concluded his remarks, vowing to “be back in some form” and, as the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” began playing, Trump told his supporters: “Have a good life.” (Washington Post / Politico / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal / The Guardian)
! * Trump discussed forming a new political party and wants to call it the “Patriot Party.” (Wall Street Journal)
- The Proud Boys mock Trump, call him “extraordinarily weak” and a “total failure.” (New York Times)
- Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory struggled to square their falsehoods with the inauguration. As it became clear that their long-awaited mass arrests of Biden and other “deep-state” Democrats, followed by the restoration of the Trump presidency, QAnon believers began to wonder if they had been tricked. (Daily Beast / New York Times)
! 3/ Trump granted clemency to 143 people in his final hours as president, wiping away the convictions and prison sentences for a host of corrupt politicians and business executives. In total, Trump issued a batch of 73 pardons and 70 commutations, including a pardon for Stephen Bannon, his former White House chief strategist who was charged with defrauding donors to a private fundraising effort for construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and Elliott Broidy, who pleaded guilty in October to acting as an unregistered foreign agent and lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of foreign interests. Trump, however, did not preemptively pardon himself or his family. (Washington Post / New York Times / NBC News / CNN / New York Times / Washington Post / The Guardian)
! * Full list of Trump’s pardons and commuted sentences. (NBC News)
! 4/ Trump rescinded his administration’s ethics pledge intended to “drain the swamp.” In 2017, Trump signed an executive order that barred political appointees from lobbying the government or working for foreign countries related to their agency for five years. At the time Trump joked that his political appointees would “not be subject to those commitments after noon January 20, 2021.” However, in a late-night executive order issued in the final hours of his presidency, Trump rescinded the executive order. The Trump White House did not offer any justification for the reversal. (Washington Post / Politico / Bloomberg)
! * Trump extended post-presidency Secret Service protection to 14 members of his family who were not entitled to receive it, at no cost to them. (Washington Post)
- Trump declassified some documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. No documents, however, were immediately released. (New York Times)
! 5/ Trump administration officials said Homeland Security entered into last-minute agreements to “sabotage” the Biden administration’s efforts to unwind its immigration policies. Homeland Security signed legal agreements with state and local authorities in recent weeks that would require the agency to delay making changes for 180 days. (NBC News)
6/ Biden plans to make immediate and extensive use of executive orders to undo much of the last four years under Trump. On Day One, Biden is expected to sign 17 executive actions, memorandums, and proclamations from the Oval Office to address the pandemic, economic relief, immigration, climate change, and racial equity. Biden will also sign executive orders to extend bans on pandemic-related home evictions and foreclosures, revoke the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and reverse Trump’s travel ban on several largely Muslim and African countries. (Politico / Washington Post / New York Times / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal)
https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2021/01/21/day-2/
[h=1]Day 2: "The gravest damage."[/h]
! 1/ Biden marked the start of his presidency by signing or finalizing 17 executive orders, memorandums, and proclamations to roll back some of Trump’s policies. Hours after his inauguration, Biden began signing orders on a range of issues, which included defunding the construction of Trump’s border wall, reversing Trump’s travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries, ending the Trump administration’s efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census, recommitting to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, revoking the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and rejoining the Paris climate agreement. “There’s no time to start like today,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office as he began signing. “I’m going to start by keeping the promises I made to the American people.” Biden also signed an order appointing Jeffrey Zients as his Covid-19 response coordinator who will report to the president, in an effort to “aggressively” gear up the nation’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. One of Biden’s top advisers described the flurry of executive authority as an effort to “reverse the gravest damages” done to the country by Trump. (New York Times / NPR / CBS News / CNN / Washington Post / The Guardian / Politico / Wall Street Journal / New York Times)
! * Biden signed an executive order requiring all political appointees to sign an ethics pledge, including a ban on lobbying for two years after they leave the administration. (The Hill)
- Biden will reverse a Trump administration policy prohibiting funding for nongovernmental groups that provide or refer patients for abortions. (NPR)
- Biden revoked a Trump administration report that aimed to promote “patriotic education” in schools. Biden disbanded Trump’s presidential 1776 Commission and withdrew the report that it released Monday. (Associated Press)
! 2/ Biden, pledging a “full-scale wartime effort” to combat the coronavirus, signed at least 10 executive orders and directives on his second day in office aimed at addressing the pandemic. Biden’s national strategy will address testing, treating, and vaccinating people for Covid-19 by ordering federal agencies to invoke the Defense Production Act to boost the manufacture of necessary supplies of masks, gowns, gloves, rapid test kits, testing agents and material for vaccines. Biden will also require travelers to wear masks on planes, trains, buses, and at airports, as well as require a negative Covid-19 test before flying to the U.S. Other orders and directives will create a public dashboard with real-time national and state-level data on cases, testing, vaccinations, and hospitalizations, deploy FEMA to set up 100 community vaccination sites in the next 30 days, and create a Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force to “address the disproportionate and severe impact of Covid-19 on communities of color and other underserved populations.” (New York Times / NPR / Politico / NBC News / CNN / Bloomberg / CNBC / Associated Press / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal / New York Times)
! * [h=4] Dept. of “We Have It Totally Under Control.”[/h]
! 3/ Biden reversed Trump’s move to leave the World Health Organization – exactly one year after the United States recorded its first Covid-19 case. “I am honored to announce that the United States will remain a member of the World Health Organization,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told U.N.’s health agency. Dr. Fauci said the U.S. would re-engage at all levels and would join Covax, a program to distribute vaccines to poorer nations. The agency’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, thanks Biden and Dr. Fauci for recommitting to the Covid-19 fight, saying: “This is a good day for the WHO and a good day for global health.” (NPR / New York Times / Washington Post)
4/ The Biden administration identified 12 “immediate supply shortfalls” in the Trump administration’s pandemic response plans, including a nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan. Biden called the vaccine rollout “a dismal failure thus far,” adding “we didn’t get into this mess overnight,” and that “things are going to continue to get worse before they get better.” The shortfalls identified by the Biden team include a lack of N95 surgical masks and isolation gowns, swabs, reagents and pipettes used in testing. “What we’re inheriting from the Trump administration is so much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeff Zients, the Biden administration’s Covid-19 czar, said in a call. “We don’t have the visibility that we would hope to have into supply and allocations.” Meanwhile, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the CDC, warned that the Covid-19 vaccine would not be widely available by late February, as the Trump administration previously promised. The CDC also expects the U.S. to see another 100,000 or more Covid-19 deaths by next month, bringing the death toll to 508,000 by February 13. Dr. Anthony Fauci added that his “best-case scenario” is getting 85% of Americans vaccinated by the end of summer. (New York Times / CNN / Daily Beast / NBC News / CNN / Washington Post)
5/ Around 900,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week. While down slightly from last week, jobless claims remain above the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000. (Politico / NBC News / Wall Street Journal)
6/ Senate Republicans refused to agree to a power-sharing agreement unless Democrats promised to preserve the filibuster. Mitch McConnell has pressed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to keep the 60-vote threshold on most legislation as part of their agreement. Democrats, however, have rejected the proposal, saying it would be a mistake to take the filibuster off the table now that they’re in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House for the first time in more than a decade. The stalemate is slowing down confirmation of Biden’s nominees, Trump’s impeachment trial, and more. (Politico / Wall Street Journal / Axios)
! * * *
! [h=3]️ Notables.[/h]
! 1. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was “ready” to transmit the House’s impeachment charge against Trump to the Senate “soon,” declining to provide an exact date for doing so. Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, proposed delaying the impeachment trial until February to give Trump’s lawyers more time to prepare. The question of who will represent Trump also remains unanswered. (New York Times / ABC News / Washington Post / CNN)
- The Biden administration is seeking a five-year extension to its nuclear arms treaty with Russia, which expires Feb. 5. Letting the treaty expire would allow both countries to deploy an unlimited number of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers, and missiles. (Washington Post)
- The Senate confirmed Avril Haines as the director of national intelligence. Haines is the first woman to become director of national intelligence, where she’ll oversees 18 intelligence agencies and units, including the CIA and the National Security Agency. (Wall Street Journal / Politico / Axios)
- Biden will keep FBI Director Christopher Wray in his role. Wray was appointed in 2017 after Trump fired James Comey. (CNN / Politico / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal)
- Trump’s Pentagon blocked members of Biden’s incoming administration from accessing information about current operations, including the troop drawdowns, upcoming operations in Africa, and the Covid-19 vaccine distribution program. (Politico)
- The Senate Armed Services Committee approved a waiver for Lloyd Austin’s nomination for defense secretary. The full Senate is expected to confirm Austin, who would be the first Black defense secretary. Austin required a waiver because the law requires that he be out of uniform for seven years before becoming Pentagon chief. Austin retired in 2016. (Politico)
- Trump appointee Michael Pack resigned as the CEO of the federal agency over the Voice of America. On Pack’s first day as head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, he sidelined or fired senior leaders at the agency and the chiefs of all the government-sponsored foreign broadcast networks. Biden named senior VOA news executive Kelu Chao as acting CEO. (NPR)
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger resigned at Biden’s request. (The Hill)
- The Biden administration fired the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, a Trump appointee who was seen as a foe by worker advocates and labor unions, after Peter Robb refused a request from the new administration to resign. (Bloomberg Law / Washington Post / New York Times)
- China imposed sanctions on 28 former Trump administration officials, including outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The statement from China’s foreign ministry was released just minutes after Biden took office, which the new administration called “unproductive and cynical.” (NPR / NBC News)
- Seven Senate Democrats filed an ethics complaint against Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz for their objections to the 2020 presidential election results. Democrats are requesting an investigation for their “objections to the electors after the violent attack” on Jan. 6. that “lent legitimacy to the mob’s cause and made future violence more likely.” (Politico)
Also, I skipped ahead to get here, but has anybody spotted that "Brand New Day" is a song from Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog?