- President Biden and his administration marked their 100th day in office today following the President's joint address to Congress yesterday.
- We looked at some of the administration's big agenda items and upcoming goals.
President Joe Biden marked his first 100 days in office on Thursday.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
Here's what they told us:
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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.