Biden marks first 100 days in office

President Joe Biden marked his first 100 days in office on Thursday.

Let's run the numbers on that milestone:

• 60... executive orders. Biden has issued more than 60 executive actions in his first 100 days — primarily aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic and dismantling many of former President Trump's policies. Biden called the volume necessary to undo what he considers "bad policy" inherited from Trump, particularly on immigration.
• 11... new border facilities. The Department of Health and Human Services announced or opened 11 new facilities to try to get kids out of Border Patrol stations with jail-like conditions that are not meant for minors. The Biden administration continues to wrestle with how best to solve the border issue.
• 200 million... shots! The Biden administration doubled and surpassed its initial goal of 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in 100 days, reaching the 200 million benchmark on April 21.
• 53%... approval rating. Biden's approval rating sits at 53%, according to a new CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday. Among Democrats, that number is a sky-high 93%. Compare that with the meager 7% support from Republicans. 
• 2... biting incidents on White House grounds. Biden's younger dog, Major, has had two well-publicized incidents of bad behavior. He has since been sent to training off the White House grounds.

The Point: The numbers show that the Biden administration has been busy over the last 100 days.

President Biden said that the conviction of Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd provides an “opportunity to make some real progress to restore the soul of this country.”

“We can do it,” Biden told the crowd at his drive in rally in Duluth, Georgia.

“We can enact rational police reform. We can root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system,” Biden said.

Biden also pointed to his American Jobs Plan as a chance to bring “equity across the board” for all races.

Chauvin was convicted last week of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. 

In a victory lap marking his first 100 days in office, President Biden thanked supporters at tonight’s Duluth, Georgia, drive-in rally, but was interrupted by protesters.

"You know, we need to work and help them keep their seats, it's important. We won the first round, but there's more coming up," Biden told supporters.

On the narrow passage of his administration’s signature legislative accomplishment, Biden was circumspect, telling supporters, “And I want to stop here and give thanks to both your senators, Sens. [Jon] Ossoff and [Raphael] Warnock, for making it happen, because those two votes, had we not come back and you elected them, those two votes have made the difference, it passed by a single vote.”

“The American Rescue Plan would not have passed, so much have we gotten done, like getting checks to people, probably would not have happened, so, if you ever wonder if elections make a difference, just remember what you did here in Georgia, when you elected Ossoff and Warnock, you began to change that environment,” Biden said.

Biden's remarks were disrupted by protesters who called on the President to put an end to private detention centers. The interruption prompted Biden to say that he was "working on it."

The protesters began shouting at Biden to "end detentions now," which the President said was in reference to private detention centers. 

Biden told the protesters, "I agree with you. But I'm working on it, man. Give me another five days."

"There should be no private prisons period. Private detention centers," Biden concluded, "I promise you."

 

Facing a crisis of his own, before taking office President Biden made some big promises about what he hoped to accomplish within his first 100 days. Some key priorities included containing the pandemic and launching an economic recovery.

As his first 100 days in office come to a close, here's a look at how some of those promises measure up against reality:

Vaccines:

• Promise: Shortly before Biden took office, he set a goal for the US to have 100 million vaccine shots administered within his first 100 days, for an average of 1 million doses per day.
• Reality: While some early media coverage expressed skepticism about the feasibility, Biden was ultimately criticized for not aiming high enough with this goal. By Inauguration Day, the country was already on track to achieve the desired level of daily vaccinations without any additional action by the Biden administration. That being said, the Biden administration did facilitate partnerships with pharmaceutical manufacturers to ramp up vaccine production and increase availability, which likely helped the country maintain a fast pace of vaccinations. In March, after the US reached 100 million vaccinations, Biden announced he was doubling the goal, aiming for 200 million by the end of April. The US met that new goal on April 21. Though Biden should be commended for this accomplishment and exceeding his initial vaccination goals, the current pace seems unsustainable because many Americans remain wary of receiving the vaccine.

School reopenings:

• Promise: In addition to vaccines, a large part of the conversation on recovering from the coronavirus pandemic in the US has focused on how quickly schools can reopen for in-person learning. In December, Biden announced he hoped to get "the majority of our schools ... open by the end of my first 100 days." However, shortly after he took office, there was confusion over how the administration defined reopening. When pressed about his administration's stance on reopening during a Feb. 16 CNN town hall, Biden clarified that by the end of his first 100 days, "the goal will be five days a week" of in-person instruction or close to that for K-8 students in particular.
• Reality: Although the administration can take steps to make reopening schools easier and safer, the decision to reopen ultimately belongs to local communities. As of April 20, elementary and middle schools in a little more than half of the 101 largest school districts in the country are offering full five-day-a-week in-person instruction, according to CNN's tracking. However, it's worth noting that even if schools are open, some families remain reluctant to send their children back. According to the US Department of Education, closer to one-third of students returned to fully in-person instruction when given the option.

Economic relief plan

• Promise: Biden's agenda for his first 100 days in office included passage of a broad economic aid package responding to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to those close to the President and outside groups in contact with his top aides.
• Reality: Days before his inauguration, Biden unveiled the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and called for Congress to pass it before certain benefits expired on March 14. His proposal included funds for many of the measures in the previous coronavirus relief bills passed under the Trump administration. Despite criticism from Republicans over the bill's price tag and some of its provisions, the House passed it at the end of February. Through a process known as budget reconciliation, the Senate passed the bill without any Republican support after the longest roll call vote in recent Senate history. Biden signed it into law on March 11. Investment giant Goldman Sachs predicted Biden's stimulus plan might result in the fastest gross domestic product growth in decades.

For the last 100 days, President Biden and his top advisers have mounted an urgent, wartime effort to get millions of coronavirus vaccines into the arms of Americans in order to beat back a pandemic that has upended the world for the better part of year.

The effort, described to CNN during in-depth interviews with three of the administration's top Covid advisers and two other White House officials, has allowed the US to go from having one of the worst Covid responses in the world to being a global leader in getting shots in arms. The interviews reveal how the Biden team inherited a pandemic at its zenith with a high demand for vaccines and little supply, along with no long-term plan to vaccinate millions of Americans. The President, at times impatient, pressed his advisers harder on ways to improve the federal government's response to the virus.

Fully aware that success or failure in getting Americans vaccinated would make or break his presidency, Biden and his team set vaccination goals and jump started the federal response to meet them, deploying active-duty military and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with vaccinations, establishing a federal pharmacy program and funding community health centers, all to increase vaccine access. And the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan helped fund the vaccination effort, too. According to the White House, there are now 70,000 sites around the country where people can get vaccines.

"From day one, it's been about urgency, overwhelm the problem, we're at war with the virus," said Jeff Zients, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, in an interview with CNN's Gloria Borger.

When Biden came into office, the country was experiencing about 3,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of new cases per day, only about 15 million people were vaccinated and there was a scarce supply of shots. To turn it around, Biden's team brought a fresh urgency and a desire to lean on the scientific experts who had been ignored so much in the previous year.

Ever since Jan. 20, there has been a dispute between current administration officials and ones from the last over exactly what plans for vaccine distribution the Trump administration had left its successor.

"There was no plan to get shots into arms," Zients told CNN. "Those early doses of Moderna and Pfizer were being drop-shipped to states."

The Trump team disputes that there was no long-term plan, saying they handed the Biden administration the playbook.

"I have to say it's frustrating when they spend all of their time disparaging what we did. They say we didn't have a plan. We had 65 plans," said Paul Mango, a former Trump administration official who helped oversee the operation. He says their approach gave local leaders more control because of the administration's belief that they understood their communities better than the federal government ever could.

But the nation's top infectious disease specialist – who once disputed that the Biden team was starting from scratch – now says that the Biden team deserves credit for the current state of the vaccine roll out.

"There was not really a well-articulated, long-range playbook to get the vast majority of the people vaccinated," Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN. "That's where I think the full-court press of the Biden administration really, really stepped up to the plate and did it well."

You can read more about Biden's efforts to combat Covid-19 here.

As President Biden marks the milestone of his first 100 days in office, anti-death penalty advocates are growing frustrated with his silence and inaction on a campaign promise to end capital punishment.

While there haven't been any federal or state executions since Biden took office, about 2,500 men and women sit on death row in federal and state prisons across the country – and advocates say that, in the absence of an executive order from the White House, a state can at any moment schedule executions or the Justice Department can decide to calendar a federal inmate's death date.

Biden's plan to strengthen America's commitment to justice included a promise to pass legislation eliminating the death penalty on the federal level and to "incentivize states to follow the federal government's example. These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole."

During Biden's first 100 days in office, he has signed executive orders to reverse his predecessor's policies, signed a major economic stimulus bill and ramped up Covid vaccination rates. Virginia Democrats enacted legislation in March abolishing the state death penalty – the 23rd state, but the first southern one, to do so – yet Biden has remained focused on other agenda items.

The President has not directly addressed the death penalty since taking office – though White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in March that Biden continues to have "grave concerns" about the practice.

"President Biden made clear, as he did on the campaign trail, that he has grave concerns about whether capital punishment, as currently implemented, is consistent with the values that are fundamental to our sense of justice and fairness," Psaki said after the Supreme Court agreed to review a death penalty case involving the Boston Marathon bomber.

CNN reaching out to the White House for further comment and received the same statement from Psaki.

Abolishing the death penalty statute through Congress would prevent a future administration from restarting federal executions – as former President Trump did – but members of Congress, former and current law enforcement as well as civil and human rights groups are urging Biden to use his executive pen to pause the federal death penalty.

"There are mounting calls from criminal justice, law enforcement and other leaders for the President to seize this moment as an increasing number of governors in states like Virginia have moved in the direction to abolish the death penalty," said Miriam Krinsky, the executive director of the legal advocacy group Fair and Just Prosecution, one of dozens of legal organizations that sent letters to Biden urging him to take immediate action. "The death penalty should end in the federal landscape once and for all and in a way that can't be resurrected by a future administration."

You can read more on the issue here.

As early as December, President Biden was already pledging to get the majority of schools open by the end of his first 100 days in office.

Unlike other countries, the US leaves school control at the local level, and the challenges to providing in-person instruction are not the same everywhere, making it nearly impossible to create effective federal and even state-level guidance as the pandemic wears on. In some places, school authorities faced strong opposition from powerful teachers' unions.

At first there was confusion over how the administration defined reopening. When pressed about his administration's stance during a Feb.16 CNN town hall, Biden clarified that by the end of his first 100 days, "the goal will be five days a week" of in-person instruction or close to that for K-8 students in particular.

There are certainly more schools offering in-person instruction now than there were at the beginning of 2021. But it remains unclear whether a majority of schools are offering it five days a week for all students.

One estimate from the private data-tracking company Burbio says that about 65% of K-12 students are attending schools that offer in-person instruction each day, up from 33% the week Biden took office. About 29% currently attend schools offering hybrid models that include some in-person instruction, and less than 6% have only virtual options.

Younger students are more likely to be offered in-person learning. As of April 20, elementary and middle schools in a little more than half of the 101 largest school districts in the country are offering full five-day-a-week in-person instruction, according to CNN's tracking.

Some experts say the transition to in-person learning could have come more quickly, arguing that guidelines released by the CDC in February made it harder for schools to reopen. The CDC relaxed its physical distancing guidelines in March, recommending that most students maintain at least 3 feet of distance, accelerating the return to school for some.

We asked viewers from across the country to tell us what issues they'd like President Biden to focus on in the next 100 days and why. Several in the audience said they want the administration to act on education and student debt forgiveness.

Here's what they told us:

Sabrina, New York

"I would love to see President Biden address the student debt crisis. Most likely the pause on federal loan payments will end on October 1st and millions of borrowers will once again be living under the burden of these payments. President Biden mentioned student loan debt cancellation in his campaign and we have yet to hear him address this issue... He has the authority to take executive action (via the Higher Education Act) otherwise."

Al from Reading, Pennsylvania

"Student Loan forgiveness and Free 4 year State School education. The two reasons I voted for him. Not for me, I paid my dues, but for my Children."

Amanda from Austin, Texas

"I'd personally like to see the matters of student debt and health/medical debt being resolved. After all, a lot of my generation are personally being crushed by it as to the point of not being able to progress in our lives, to the point of not getting jobs due to our credit being ruined, because we cannot pay them back all the way, to not being able to get our first home or our first car. It is due to these things that we are being held back as a generation, if not more."

Randa, New Jersey

"I would like to see the President focus on student loan forgiveness, especially for healthcare workers who worked tirelessly during this pandemic without risk pay. Student loan debt is a huge burden in the United States and something needs to be done."

Kaitlyn, Wichita Falls, Texas

"I would like to see President Biden forgive student debt. A lot of current college students and aspiring college students feel discouraged to complete college on the issue of debt alone. I believe if student debt it forgiven, attitudes will be more positive when it comes to getting a college degree."

Wes, Washington, DC

"We NEED to get more trade schools opened; college is too expensive and for a lot of us, it’s not even an option. Government backed loans have ballooned school tuitions to unimaginable highs. Trade schools are often a LOT cheaper and will get younger people into trades."

Note: Some responses have been shortened for length.

President Biden kicked off his presidency by naming the most racially diverse Cabinet in US history, disbanding the 1776 commission and taking steps to address racial economic inequality, including signing executive orders that could potentially help bridge the gap in homeownership between people of color and White people, strengthen the fight against bigotry faced by Asian Americans and ease the anxiety of families with incarcerated relatives.

Biden signed an executive order in January repealing a Trump-era ban on most transgender Americans joining the military. The Pentagon said in March that its updated policies, which make it easier for transgender people to join and to access medical treatment while serving, go into effect April 30. The changes will also protect transgender people from discrimination within the services.

In the wake of last week's conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd, Biden called systemic racism "a stain on our nation's soul" and said he was heartened by the jury's verdict, the testimony of other police officers against Chauvin throughout the trial and the collective realization about the reality of systemic racism worldwide that has taken place since Floyd's death.

Yet his administration said in April that it would stand down on a campaign promise to create a White House-led commission on policing and instead move forward with efforts to pass police reform through legislative channels.

"The Biden-Harris Administration strongly supports the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and is working with Congress to swiftly enact meaningful police reform that brings profound, urgently needed change," Domestic Policy Council director Susan Rice said in a statement.