Vice President Harris is also focusing on the pandemic by visiting a pop-up vaccination clinic at a Baptist church in Atlanta and attending a “vaccination mobilization event” at a local university.
The focus comes as coronavirus cases are declining and jurisdictions are dropping restrictions, but as the country is also on track to fall short of Biden’s goal of administering at least one vaccination shot to 70 percent of adults by July 4.
Here’s what to know:
- Biden called on Americans to commit to “eradicate systemic racism” in a proclamation issued Friday ahead of the observance of Juneteenth, the nation’s newest federal holiday.
- Former vice president Mike Pence was heckled onstage at a conference of social conservatives, with a dozen or so activists shouting “traitor” as he introduced himself.
- The White House laid down a tougher marker against raising the federal gas tax to help pay for an infrastructure package, saying it would violate the president’s promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000.
- Catholic bishops voted to create guidelines on the meaning of Communion, a move that could be an early step toward limiting the serving of the Eucharist to Biden and other politicians who support abortion rights.
- Biden announced his plan to nominate Christi A. Grimm as the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, seeking to elevate a longtime government employee whom then-President Donald Trump sought to supplant last year.
Biden pleads with Americans to get vaccinated as he acknowledges U.S. is falling short of his goal
As his self-imposed deadline of July 4 nears to have 70 percent of American adults receive at least one vaccine dose, Biden acknowledged the United States is falling short of that goal and pleaded with the unprotected public to go get their shot.
“I will give it to you straight, the good, the bad and the truth,” Biden said Friday. “And the truth is that deaths and hospitalizations are drastically down in places where people are getting vaccinated. But unfortunately, cases of hospitalizations are not going down in many places. In the lower vaccination rate states, they’re actually going up in some places.”
Biden warned that with new variants, those who remain unvaccinated remain at greater risk of death or becoming seriously ill.
“The best way to protect yourself against these variants [is] to get fully vaccinated. So please, please, if you have one shot, get the second shot as soon as you can. So you’re fully vaccinated. If you haven’t gotten vaccinated yet, get vaccinated now,” Biden pleaded.
Catholic Democrats in the House warn bishops against the ‘weaponization’ of communion
A group of 60 Catholic House Democrats sent a “statement of principles” to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as the bishops prepared to vote on restricting Communion to politicians who support abortion rights, warning them against the “weaponization of the Eucharist.”
The Democrats said they are guided by Catholic teachings like “helping the poor, disadvantaged, and the oppressed, protecting the least among us and ensuring that all Americans of every faith are given meaningful opportunities to share in the blessings of this great country.”
The Democrats wrote that while they support policies that encourage alternatives to abortion — such as adoption — and make it easier on women to raise children, such as health care and child-care services, they also represent a secular democracy and religious freedom for all Americans.
The Democrats urged the bishops not to move forward with denying Communion to elected officials based on their politics, saying the “weaponization of the Eucharist to Democratic lawmakers for their support of a woman’s safe and legal access to abortion is contradictory” considering there are elected officials who support policies contrary to the Church’s teachings, “including supporting the death penalty, separating migrant children from their parents, denying asylum to those seeking safety in the United States, limiting assistance for the hungry and food insecure, and denying rights and dignity to immigrants.”
Rep. Colin Allred, after birth of second child, advocates for more fathers to take paternity leave
Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) is on a mission to get more fathers to take paternity leave, arguing that it’s better for families, workplaces and the country.
The lawmaker was the first member of Congress to announce that he was taking paternity leave, after his first son was born. He recently took more time off after his second child was born.
Allred says guaranteed paid family leave needs to become more common.
“Two weeks wasn’t long enough with the first one for my wife, for me, for our son, Jordan,” he said in an interview on CBS’s “This Morning,” while holding baby Cameron Eber Allred in his arms. “I really felt like I needed longer.”
The former National Football League player said he always knew that he wanted to be a hands-on father. “It was really important to me,” he said. “I grew up without a father. My whole life I thought: ‘When I have a chance to be a father, I’m going to be a good dad. And I’m going to be there.’”
Taking paternity leave is a continuation of the commitment he and his wife made “to keep things as equal as possible,” he said.
While a growing number of Americans support paternity leave, only 9 percent of men take it, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
Part of the reason is because of how workplaces view gender and fatherhood — and the expectations (or lack of) that come with being a man with a family.
“There’s an expectation in the workplace that, you know, ‘You didn’t have the baby, so what do you need the time off for?’” Allred said. “And there’s also of course kind of the cultural expectation in many cases that the mom is going to, you know, do all the child care.”
“That’s just not working,” he added.
Support for expanded family leave seems to be a bipartisan value. Barack Obama and Donald Trump both spoke about the need for it during their presidencies. And President Biden has included it in his American Families Plan, but the $220 million price tag has made it unattractive to some lawmakers.
“That’s one of the things, I think, that makes people so frustrated with Washington in general,” Allred said. “It’s that you can have a lot of agreement around something, but still it’s very difficult to get anything done and to get it through and to become law.”
Trump endorses Murkowski’s GOP rival in 2022 Senate race
Former president Donald Trump called Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) “bad for Alaska” in his endorsement Friday of a former state government official in the state’s 2022 Senate race.
Trump backed Kelly Tshibaka, former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, and said “she will” beat Murkowski, who entered the Senate in 2002. He said he plans to head to Alaska to campaign on Tshibaka’s behalf as he targets Republicans who voted for his impeachment and conviction after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“She is MAGA all the way, pro-energy, strong on the Border, tough on Crime and totally supports our Military and our great Vets,” Trump said of Tshibaka in a statement.
Murkowski has been a frequent critic of Trump, often drawing his wrath. Days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, she called for him to resign, saying: “I want him out. He has caused enough damage.”
In February, she was one of seven Republicans to vote to convict him on a charge of incitement of insurrection after his impeachment.
Trump said “Murkowski has got to go!” and assailed her for voting to confirm Deb Haaland, Biden’s choice to head the Interior Department, claiming that the vote would cost Alaska jobs.
Murkowski won reelection in 2010 as an independent in a three-way race after losing the Republican primary. She had an easier time winning another term in 2016.
White House puts down tougher marker against gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure
The Biden White House laid down a tougher marker against raising the federal gas tax to help pay for an infrastructure package, saying it would violate the president’s promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000.
A bipartisan group of senators who are working on their own infrastructure package have proposed indexing the gas tax to inflation to help pay for their plan.
“The President has been clear throughout these negotiations: he is adamantly opposed to raising taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates in an emailed statement. “After the extraordinarily hard times that ordinary Americans endured in 2020 — job losses, shrinking incomes, squeezed budgets — he is simply not going to allow Congress to raise taxes on those who suffered the most.”
“At long last, the economy is growing at a rate not seen for almost 40 years, employment is up, and wages are up. The President is firmly against any plan to reverse these hard-won gains by taxing middle class families for simply driving to work or taking their kids to school,” Bates continued.
Increasing the gas tax has been politically unpopular on both sides of the aisle for more than two decades even though transportation advocates have long argued it was the most efficient way to raise the much-needed funds to repair and replace America’s aging infrastructure.
The 18.4-cent federal gas tax, which goes into a highway trust fund that is only used for transportation projects, hasn’t been raised since 1993. The fund doesn’t raise enough to do maintenance on U.S. roads and bridges, let alone build anew, and has to borrow from the general treasury just to stay afloat.
Pence heckled at conference of social conservatives, with some shouting ‘traitor’
KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Former vice president Mike Pence was heckled Friday at a conference of social conservatives, with a dozen or so activists shouting “traitor” as he introduced himself.
“I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” Pence said, as cheers drowned out the hecklers at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority summit.
It wasn’t the first time Pence had faced conservatives furious at the results of the 2020 election and insistent that he should have acted to stop Congress from affirming President Biden’s win. Two days before the Jan. 6 certification of the 2020 electoral college vote, activists at a Pence rally in Georgia interrupted him and demanded he “do the right thing.”
On Jan. 6, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, with some shouting “hang Mike Pence.” Pence and his family were rushed out of a room near the Senate chamber by law enforcement and taken to a secure location.
The vast majority of activists at the annual conference, held since in 2010, stayed and cheered for Pence. The former vice president was delivering just his fourth speech since leaving office. Two weeks earlier, in New Hampshire, he said he would probably “never see eye to eye” with Trump on the ex-president’s effort to overturn the election and what occurred Jan. 6, but he pivoted to attacking Democrats for exploiting the backlash.
Pence did not mention the election confirmation here, instead largely updating the remarks he has made to other audiences and arguing that the Biden administration was undoing the work of a president who’d made America “greater than ever before.”
Catholic bishops vote on controversial Communion document that could impact Biden
Catholic bishops Friday voted to create guidelines on the meaning of Communion, a move that could be an early step toward limiting the serving of the Eucharist to Biden and other politicians who support abortion rights.
The vote came after a 3 ½ hour emotional discussion Thursday at the annual spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Multiple bishops clashed over how, or if, they should single out the church’s teaching on abortion.
The vote on whether to create a draft document about the meaning of the Eucharist, the bread-and-wine rite at the heart of Communion, needed a simple majority. The measure passed 168-55 with six abstentions.
Biden nominates an inspector general whom Trump tried to supplant last year after a critical pandemic report
Biden on Friday announced his plan to nominate Christi A. Grimm as the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, seeking to elevate a longtime government employee whom President Donald Trump sought to supplant last year.
In May 2020, Trump tried to install his own inspector general at HHS after Grimm, who was leading the office in an acting capacity, released a report on the shortages in testing and personal protective gear at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, Trump’s nominee, Jason Weida, an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston, was never confirmed by the Senate, and Grimm has continued to serve as principal deputy inspector general, the top-ranking filled position in the office.
In announcing Grimm’s nomination for the director post, the White House touted her work as “the senior-most executive for the largest federal Office of Inspector General.”
“Ms. Grimm has more than 20 years of experience leading organizations, individuals, and teams to deploy creative solutions, overcome challenges, and achieve positive outcomes,” the White House said in a statement.
Harris visits vaccine pop-up, urges people to ‘get the word out’
Harris stopped at a vaccination pop-up location at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the famous Black congregation in Atlanta, to celebrate those receiving their shots and to encourage them to get their family and friends to do the same.
“What you are doing truly is about leadership. These vaccines are safe and effective. It will save your life and lives of people that you love,” Harris said. “It’s also about ‘Love thy neighbor,’ and that’s what this vaccine is about. … We just need to get the word out. One of the most important ways is friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor. … Please help us get the word out.”
The Biden administration is racing to meet its goal of 70 percent of American adults receiving at least one vaccine shot by July 4.
Harris addressed some of the issues that may be keeping people from getting the vaccine, such as skepticism of the science, fear of needles, or child-care and transportation limitations.
“Well, who really likes needles? … When I got my shot, I looked the other way. I didn’t want to look at that needle. But it happens like that and then it’s over,” Harris said.
Harris said the Biden administration is working with YMCAs and ride-sharing companies to provide free services to relieve the burdens that might be holding people back from getting the vaccine.
“We’re dealing with the realities of life,” she said, “even as we’re trying to preserve and save lives.”
Analysis: Here’s how Juneteenth looks outside the Beltway
The federal government came late to the notion of formally setting aside a day to commemorate Juneteenth, an annual celebration of the end of slavery in the United States.
Biden signed legislation Thursday establishing a yearly federal holiday to mark the day in 1865 when word of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, issued two and a half years earlier, finally reached Texas.
Analysis: The slow-building conservative effort to turn Ashli Babbitt into a martyr
But increasingly, key elements of the conservative movement have expressed another relevant objection involving Capitol Police officers’ conduct that day: suggesting Ashli Babbitt was a martyr.
Babbitt was the 35-year-old veteran whom a Capitol Police officer shot and killed while she was breaking into a sensitive area of the Capitol. In April, the Capitol Police officer who shot her was cleared of any wrongdoing in the shooting. But of late, pressing for answers on Babbitt’s death has become a cause celebre among some conservative activists.
Biden to speak about pandemic as country is on track to fall short of his vaccination goal
Biden plans Friday to mark the milestone of the United States administering 300 million coronavirus vaccination shots in 150 days during a speech from the White House.
He is also expected to acknowledge there is more work to be done and talk about the administration’s efforts to “achieve equity in our pandemic response,” according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the speech ahead of its delivery.
The speech, scheduled for the State Dining Room, comes as coronavirus cases are declining and jurisdictions are dropping restrictions, but as the country is also on track to fall short of Biden’s goal of administering at least one vaccination shot to 70 percent of adults by July 4.
Vaccination rates vary enormously across states: Some states have given at least one dose to two-thirds of the people, while others have given it to slightly more than one-third.
Declaring June a “national month of action,” the administration sought to incentivize Americans who are hesitant about getting vaccinated with perks including free food delivery, baseball tickets, Xboxes and chances to win cruise tickets, groceries for a year and free airline flights.
The White House also announced the launch of a handful of community-based outreach initiatives, including blanketing local media, providing colleges with resources, and launching an effort to recruit 1,000 Black-owned barbershops and beauty salons across the country.
Later Friday, Biden plans to travel to Wilmington, Del., where he is scheduled to spend the weekend at home.
State GOP lawmakers pushing more restrictive food assistance policies
States around the country are attempting to make it harder for needy families to access federal food-assistance programs.
Republican lawmakers in Ohio, Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana and others have proposed more restrictive policies to qualify for food assistance, cutting off benefits to those who have saved a little money or who drive a halfway decent car, or adding paperwork requirements to document tiny changes in income and efforts to find work.
The moves come even as more than 20 million adults reported their households sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the week ending June 7, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Analysis: Juneteenth is here, but Congress has yet to act on several policies addressing racial inequities
Congress might have acted quickly to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday, but lawmakers have yet to act on many of the policy priorities Black communities have asked for.
Flanked by several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with other lawmakers who championed passage of the Juneteenth legislation, Biden told the cameras that establishing the holiday “will go down for me as one of the greatest honors I will have as president.”
Symbolism aside, Congress has stalled on crucial legislative fights on voting rights, police reform, and other policies that Black communities have long advocated for.