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Biden Signs Juneteenth Holiday Into Law
On Thursday, President Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, a federal holiday. The measure was passed in the House and Senate with bipartisan support.
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“Throughout history, Juneteenth has been known by many names: Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day, Emancipation Day, and today, a national holiday. [applause] When we establish a national holiday, it makes an important statement. National holidays are something important. These are days when we as a nation have decided to stop and take stock, and often to acknowledge our history.” “Juneteenth marks both a long, hard night of slavery, of subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come. This is a day of profound, in my view, profound weight and profound power. A day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take. What I’ve long called America’s original sin. At the same time, I also remember the extraordinary capacity to heal and hope. And to emerge from those painful moments and a bitter, bitter version of ourselves. Thank you, man.” “Thank you.” “All right.” [applause]
President Biden on Thursday signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, the day after the House voted overwhelmingly to enshrine June 19 as the national day to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.
The Senate rushed the measure through with no debate earlier this week after clearing away a longstanding Republican objection, and the House approved it on Wednesday by a vote of 415 to 14, with 14 Republicans opposed. Mr. Biden said signing the law was one of the greatest honors he will have as president. Ms. Harris also signed the legislation in her capacity as President of the Senate, an administration official said.
“Throughout history, Juneteenth has been known by many names: Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day, Emancipation Day and, today, a national holiday,” Ms. Harris said at a White House ceremonial bill signing. National holidays, Ms. Harris said, “are days when we as a nation have decided to stop and take stock, and often to acknowledge our history.”
Mr. Biden called it “a day of, in my view, profound weight and profound power,” noting it was the first new national holiday established since Martin Luther King Day in 1983. By making it a federal holiday, Mr. Biden said, “all Americans can feel the power of this day, and learn from our history, and celebrate progress and grapple with the distance we’ve come but the distance we have to travel.”
The law goes into effect immediately, making Friday the first federal Juneteenth holiday in American history. The federal Office of Personnel Management announced on Thursday that most federal employees would observe it on Friday, since June 19 falls on a Saturday this year.
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House Signs Bill Recognizing Juneteenth as a Federal Holiday
The House held an official signing ceremony to make Juneteenth, the 19th of June, an official federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.
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“This step is important, obviously, to the Congressional Black Caucus, but this is an important step for America as we ensure that one of the most momentous events in our history finally takes its official place of honor in our nation. Again, over the past 156 years, Juneteenth, as Juneteenth is — has evolved as a day not only of celebration, but of reflection, reminding us of a history much stained by brutality and injustice.” “Juneteenth came about because of a lack of communication. Congress passed the Emancipation Act in 1862 to free the slaves here in the District of Columbia. Abraham Lincoln sat down and wrote the Emancipation Proclamation to be effective Jan. 1, 1863. But because of a lack of communication, it was not until June 19, 1865, that the word got to Texas. If we learn, as I said yesterday, the art and value of communication, we will save a whole lot of hardship for the American people.”
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery. Its name stems from June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger in Galveston, Texas, issued General Order No. 3, which announced that in accordance with the Emancipation Proclamation, “all slaves are free.” Months later, the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery in the final three border states that had not been subjected to President Abraham Lincoln’s order.
Mr. Biden singled out Opal Lee, an activist who at the age of 89 walked from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, in an effort to get Juneteenth named a national holiday. The president called her “a grandmother of the movement to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.”
He also framed the holiday as part of his administration’s efforts to address racial equity throughout the federal government.
“The promise of equality is not going to be fulfilled until we become real, it becomes real in our schools and on our main streets and in our neighborhoods,” he said. He pressed Americans to celebrate the new holiday as a day “of action on many fronts.”
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House Votes to Repeal 2002 Authorization for Iraq Invasion
In bipartisan action, the House voted on Thursday to revoke the authorization it gave in 2002 to invade Iraq, a step that would rein in presidential war-making powers.
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“Repealing the 2002 A.U.M.F. will defend Congress’s constitutional authorities and our American democracy system of separation of powers. Under the Constitution, it is the Congress who has the sole duty to declare war. We must reassert that authority to decide if and when our country goes to war.” “We cannot allow this outdated A.U.M.F. to be used as a blank check for future wars. It is long past time for Congress to reassert its constitutional role in authorizing and providing oversight over United States military action.” “I’m all for updating this thing. But to completely do away with it, and just give this president Article II authorities to do whatever he wants without any congressional review, in my judgment, is the wrong step forward.” “This shortsighted and purely political effort to repeal the authority without a replacement sends the wrong message and will embolden the Islamic terror groups and the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, Iran. I urge my colleagues to vote ‘no’ on this bill until we have a viable replacement that addresses the threat of Iran and its proxies.” “On this vote, the ‘yeas’ are 268 and the ‘nays’ are 161. The bill is passed.”
The House voted on Thursday to revoke the authorization it gave in 2002 to invade Iraq, a step that would rein in presidential war-making powers for the first time in a generation.
The strong bipartisan action reflected growing determination on Capitol Hill to revisit the broad authority that Congress provided to President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11 attacks through measures that successive presidents have used to justify military action around the world.
The 2002 authorization was repeatedly applied well beyond its original intent, including in a campaign much later against the Islamic State in Iraq and for the killing of the Iranian general Qassim Suleimani last year.
The vote was 268 to 161, with 49 Republicans joining 219 Democrats. The debate now moves to the Senate, which is expected to take up similar legislation as the United States military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of fighting there.
“To this day, our endless war continues costing trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in a war that goes way beyond any scope that Congress conceived, or intended,” Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, who has fought for nearly two decades to remove the authorizations, said on the House floor.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on Wednesday that he would put a similar measure on the Senate floor. A blueprint written by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, will be considered next week by the Foreign Relations Committee.
President Biden said this week that he backed the House measure, making him the first president to accept such an effort to constrain his authority to carry out military action since the war in Afghanistan began 20 years ago. Mr. Biden’s decision came on the heels of announcing a full troop withdrawal from the country.
Democrats and progressive activists who have been working for months on a sweeping voting rights bill quickly embraced on Thursday a new, far narrower plan suddenly put forward by Senator Joe Manchin III, their party’s sole holdout on the issue.
Their decision to do so did nothing to improve the chances that the legislation could get through the Senate, but it reflected another significant goal for Democrats: uniting the party around what it has billed as its highest priority and showing that, were it not for Republican opposition and the filibuster, the elections overhaul would become law.
Much to the growing consternation of Senate Republicans, the alternative ideas put forward by Mr. Manchin — a centrist from West Virginia and the only Democrat who has refused to support what is known as S. 1 — quickly gained traction with progressive Democrats and activists, most notably Stacey Abrams, the voting rights champion in Georgia.
On Thursday, she praised his plan, even though it is more limited in scope than the original Democratic measure. The proposal would make Election Day a holiday, require 15 days of early voting and ban partisan gerrymandering, among other steps.
“What Senator Manchin is putting forward are some basic building blocks that we need to ensure that democracy is accessible, no matter your geography,” Ms. Abrams, a former candidate for Georgia governor, said on CNN.
Given her national standing on the issue, her endorsement was a huge boost for Mr. Manchin’s approach — though it only hardened Republican opposition to a measure they have made clear that they intend to block at all costs.
Senator Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who is a leading opponent of the Democratic bill, said at a news conference on Thursday that her enthusiasm for Mr. Manchin’s proposal transformed it into the Abrams alternative.
But as far as Senate Democrats are concerned, it is Mr. Manchin whose support is most important. The reason is the magic number of 50.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has hesitated to bring top Democratic priorities to the floor this year without the backing of all 50 senators. Given the Senate’s even partisan split, it takes every Democrat and Democratic-leaning independent, plus the tiebreaking power of Vice President Kamala Harris, to guarantee a majority. Then, if Republicans mount a filibuster, Democrats can point out that they had the votes to approve legislation, bolstering their argument that the Senate rules are being abused by Republicans and unfairly impeding highly popular policy changes.
And a filibuster there will be. With Mr. Manchin suddenly within reach for the Democrats, Republicans on Thursday escalated their attacks on the voting rights bill, portraying it as a power-grabbing abomination. They were not impressed by the West Virginian’s tinkering.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, assailed Mr. Manchin’s approach, pointedly noting in a statement that it was backed by Ms. Abrams.
“It still retains S. 1’s rotten core,” he said.
The Affordable Care Act on Thursday survived a third major challenge in the Supreme Court, likely ending the existential fight over Obamacare that has dominated American politics and jurisprudence for more than a decade.
The Affordable Care Act has now survived three major Supreme Court challenges — what Justice Samuel Alito described in a dissenting opinion as an “epic trilogy.”
President Biden hailed the decision as a “big win for the American people,” in a Twitter post shortly after the ruling was announced.
He threw in a tongue-in-cheek reference to his famous expletive-laced hot-mic comment to President Barack Obama after the law was passed, adding, “it remains, as ever, a BFD. And it’s here to stay.”
Despite the court’s recent tilt to the right, the law has gone from winning the support of a slim 5-4 majority in its favor in the first case, to a more stable 7-2 verdict in this latest decision. Obamacare is also winning in the court of public opinion.
It enjoys higher-than-ever public support, with most Americans now favoring the law. Enrollment in the health law’s programs is at an all-time high. Democrats have moved from defending the 2010 law to expanding its benefits. While Obamacare remains a contentious word in some Republican circles, the health law is no longer a priority of the party or a galvanizing issue among its voters.
The court’s ruling on Thursday marked judicial acceptance of the A.C.A.’s survival, but was also constitutionally narrow.
A seven-justice majority ruled that the plaintiffs, Republican officials seeking to roll back Obamacare after unsuccessful attempts in Congress, had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.
The court did not tackle the larger issues in the case: whether the bulk of the sprawling 2010 health care law, Mr. Obama’s defining domestic legacy, could stand without a provision that initially required most Americans to obtain insurance or pay a penalty.
In the years since the enactment of the law in 2010, Republicans have worked hard to destroy it, but attempts to repeal it failed, as did two earlier Supreme Court challenges, in 2012 and 2015, and the law has become increasingly popular and woven into the nation’s health care system.
The case, California v. Texas, No. 19-840, was brought by Republican officials who said the mandate requiring health insurance coverage became unconstitutional after Congress in 2017 eliminated the penalty for failing to obtain coverage because the mandate could no longer be justified as a tax.
The argument was based on the court’s 2012 ruling, in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by what was at the time the court’s four-member liberal wing, said the mandate was authorized by Congress’s power to assess taxes.
The new challenge was largely successful in the lower courts. A federal judge in Texas ruled that the entire law was invalid, but he postponed the effects of his ruling until the case could be appealed.
Here are two other decisions the high court announced on Thursday:
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The court unanimously ruled that Philadelphia may not bar a Catholic agency that refused to work with same-sex couples from screening potential foster parents.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for six members of the court, said that since the city allowed exceptions to its policies for some other agencies it must also do so in this instance. The Catholic agency, he wrote, “seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”
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The Court ruled in favor of two American corporations accused of complicity in child slavery on Ivory Coast cocoa farms. The decision was the latest in a series of rulings imposing strict limits on lawsuits brought in federal court based on human rights abuses abroad.
The case was brought by six citizens of Mali who said they were trafficked into slavery as children. They sued Nestlé USA and Cargill, saying the firms had aided and profited from the practice of forced child labor.
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said the companies’ activities in the United States were not sufficiently tied to the asserted abuses.
Two men who have been held for years without charge at Guantánamo Bay following detention by the C.I.A. have been approved for transfer to other countries, bringing to 11 the number of detainees cleared to be sent elsewhere even as the State Department has yet to name someone to negotiate with other governments to take them.
Both of the men, Abdulsalam al-Hela, 53, and Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj, 47, are Yemeni citizens, and present a particular challenge to the Biden administration as it seeks places to resettle cleared detainees as part of its aim of closing the military operation holding 40 detainees at the U.S. naval station in Cuba.
The latest decisions were disclosed on Thursday by the interagency Periodic Review Board. Beyond the 11 detainees who have been approved for transfer, 12 have been charged with war crimes, including a prisoner who pleaded guilty as part of an agreement that will permit his transfer.
Now the administration needs to find governments willing to take the detainees who have been cleared to be repatriated or sent to third countries.
The board has decided six cases since President Biden was elected, and all of those detainees were approved for transfers, including the oldest man held at Guantánamo, a 74-year-old Pakistani man with heart disease and other geriatric ailments.
No detainee, however, has been released since the Trump administration repatriated a confessed Qaeda terrorist to Saudi Arabia in May 2018 as part of a plea agreement. Releases require diplomatic and security agreements between the United States and the country that agrees to receive a board-cleared detainee.
The other 17 prisoners are held as “law of war detainees,” essentially P.O.W.s of the global war the United States declared after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They have hearings scheduled for later this year.
Senate Democrats have begun privately weighing a sprawling economic package as much as $6 trillion — including $3 trillion that is paid for — even as a bipartisan group of senators works to draw support for a much narrower infrastructure plan that would devote $579 billion in new money to fund physical public works projects.
The details of both plans remain in flux, as lawmakers work to maneuver some, if not all, of President Biden’s economic agenda around the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate and razor-thin margins in the House. For now, the divergent efforts are proceeding in parallel, with Republicans and Democrats pushing forward on their compromise proposal and Democrats preparing to use the fast-track budget process known as reconciliation to avoid a filibuster of their far larger plan and push it through over Republican opposition.
At a meeting on Wednesday convened by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, Democrats on the Budget Committee discussed taking unilateral action on a package as large as $6 trillion, with half of it paid for, should the bipartisan talks fail to produce a deal, according to four people familiar with the discussion. The details of the emerging discussions were reported earlier by Politico.
The Democrats also discussed potentially including measures to expand Medicare, including lowering the eligibility age to 60 and expanding benefits for all beneficiaries to cover dental, hearing and vision care, according to three of the people, who disclosed details on condition of anonymity because they are still in flux.
Democrats also discussed incorporating revisions to immigration law in the package, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, told reporters on Wednesday, calling it a “big-picture” discussion given that the strict budgetary rules governing the reconciliation process could force lawmakers to modify or jettison priorities in the package.
But Democrats acknowledged that a final package might be smaller and narrower than the ambitious proposals discussed on Wednesday, given that all 50 senators who caucus with the Democrats and nearly every House Democrat will have to support the measure for it to become law.
“If you’re doing a package like this and try to get 50 out of 50, there’s two ways to get 50 out of 50: take out things that people don’t like, or add in things that they like so much that they’re willing to support things that they don’t love,” Mr. Kaine said.
The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that led to at least five highly effective shots in record time. Now it’s pouring more than $3 billion on a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus early in the course of infection, potentially saving many lives in the years to come.
The new program, announced on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services, will speed up the clinical trials of a few promising drug candidates. If all goes well, some of those first pills could be ready by the end of the year. The Antiviral Program for Pandemics will also support research on entirely new drugs — not just for the coronavirus, but for viruses that could cause future pandemics.
A number of other viruses, including influenza, H.I.V. and hepatitis C, can be treated with a simple pill. But despite more than a year of research, no such pill exists to treat someone with a coronavirus infection before it wreaks havoc. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program for accelerating Covid-19 research, invested far more money in the development of vaccines than of treatments, a gap that the new program will try to fill.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key backer of the program, said he looked forward to a time when Covid-19 patients could pick up antiviral pills from a pharmacy as soon as they tested positive for the coronavirus or develop Covid-19 symptoms. His support for research on antiviral pills stems from his own experience fighting AIDS three decades ago.
At the start of the pandemic, researchers began testing existing antivirals in people hospitalized with severe Covid-19. But many of those trials failed to show any benefit from the antivirals. In hindsight, the choice to work in hospitals was a mistake. Scientists now know that the best time to try to block the coronavirus is in the first few days of the disease, when the virus is replicating rapidly and the immune system has not yet mounted a defense.
Many people crush their infection and recuperate, but in others, the immune system misfires and starts damaging tissues instead of viruses. It’s this self-inflicted damage that sends many people with Covid-19 to the hospital, as the coronavirus replication is tapering off. So a drug that blocks replication early in an infection might very well fail in a trial on patients who have progressed to later stages of the disease.
So far, only one antiviral has demonstrated a clear benefit to people in hospitals: remdesivir. Originally investigated as a potential cure for Ebola, the drug seems to shorten the course of Covid-19 when given intravenously to patients. In October, it became the first — and so far, the only — antiviral drug to gain full F.D.A. approval to treat the disease.
Yet remdesivir’s performance has left many researchers underwhelmed. In November, the World Health Organization recommended against using the drug.
Remdesivir might work more effectively if people could take it earlier in the course of Covid-19 as a pill. But in its approved formulation, the compound doesn’t work orally. It can’t survive the passage from the mouth to the stomach to the circulatory system.
Researchers from around the world are testing other antivirals already known to work in pill form. One such compound, called molnupiravir, was developed in 2003 by researchers at Emory University and has been tested against viruses including influenza and dengue.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The U.S. Embassy in Kabul went into lockdown on Thursday, citing a surge in coronavirus cases that has swamped the medical facilities that remain open to American diplomats as the U.S. military and international forces depart the country.
“Military hospital I.C.U. resources are at full capacity, forcing our health units to create temporary on-compound Covid-19 wards to care for oxygen-dependent patients,” the embassy said in a management notice released on Thursday.
The notice said that one person associated with the embassy had died, several had been medically evacuated and 114 people were infected and in isolation. The document said that 95 percent of the current cases were in people who were “unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated,” even though vaccines were available at the embassy. It noted that 90 percent of the Afghans and people from other countries on the embassy staff had been vaccinated.
In Washington, the State Department’s spokesman, Ned Price, said the embassy could not require its employees to be vaccinated and confirmed that nearly all of the cases in this “significant outbreak” were among those who were not fully immunized. He said that Covid vaccines had been made available to the Kabul embassy workers over the last several months.
Embassy operations have been adjusted as a result of the outbreak, Mr. Price said, with employees required to work from home and take all necessary precautions, including wearing masks and social distancing, as Afghanistan grapples with what he described as its third wave of coronavirus.
The embassy and U.S. military forces in Afghanistan contended with an earlier coronavirus outbreak, one that paralyzed the advising mission for the Afghan military and prompted a lockdown of the diplomatic mission.
The notice on Thursday warned that “failure to abide by the Mission’s Covid policies will result in consequences up to and including removal from the post on the next available flight.”
The embassy suspended issuing visas last week because of a surge of coronavirus cases in Afghanistan. The seemingly minor decision has had a significant impact on Afghans who have worked for the U.S. military and government and who are desperately trying to complete their visa process so they can emigrate to the United States.
Many of those applicants have been threatened by the Taliban, and the security situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating amid the withdrawal of American and international military forces. President Biden announced in April that all forces would be out by Sept. 11.
The Afghan ministry of public health recorded more than 2,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, along with 101 deaths, the most in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic. Overall, 98,844 cases have been reported in the country.
However, those official figures reflect only a small fraction of the country’s actual number of infections and deaths. Testing is severely limited, Afghanistan’s struggling health system is nonexistent in some rural areas, and transportation to hospitals and clinics is often restricted because of fighting and roadside bombs.
President Biden’s approval rating has taken a dip in recent weeks — but it’s not even close to the drop in support for Congress’s performance, as negotiations over legislation in Washington have ground to a virtual standstill.
That’s the top-line takeaway from a national poll released on Wednesday by Monmouth University. But here’s the secondary message: Democrats are the ones growing most disillusioned, and fast.
Back in April, when Mr. Biden was making big legislative strides, 83 percent of Democrats said they thought the country was moving in the right direction, according to a Monmouth survey at the time. But in Wednesday’s poll, just 59 percent of Democrats said that.
The share of Democrats saying the country was on the wrong track rose by 20 percentage points, to 32 percent.
“People are anxious — and look, Biden had such success at the outset with the Covid relief package that it probably got people’s expectations up very high about how much could be done and how soon,” Bob Shrum, the director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, said in an interview. “Now reality is intruding.”
Support for the president’s large-scale spending plans remains high. Sixty-eight percent of Americans support the American Jobs Plan, his $2 trillion infrastructure plan, and 61 percent back the American Families Plan, his similarly large-scale proposal to invest in health care, child care and education.
But that support isn’t reflected in Congress, where Mr. Biden’s party holds the barest of control of both chambers — and where even some Democratic lawmakers haven’t fully gotten behind his proposals.
The resulting standstill in Washington has left many Democrats feeling impatient. In the April poll, 63 percent of Democratic respondents said they approved of the job that Congress was doing. But that number has now been cut in half: Just 32 percent of Democrats gave Congress positive marks in the Monmouth survey released Wednesday.
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday proposed further restrictions on purchases of telecommunications equipment that pose national security risks, strengthening its opposition to Chinese providers of 5G wireless and other technologies.
The F.C.C. voted unanimously to explore the proposal to ban U.S. companies from all future purchases of telecommunications equipment from companies like Huawei and ZTE of China. It also proposed the agency consider revoking prior authorizations of equipment purchases from the list of five companies deemed threats to national security.
The agency’s actions demonstrate the bipartisan push in Washington to beat back China’s stronghold on parts of the telecommunications and technology supply chain. President Biden has continued the Trump administration’s tough stance against China’s use of its government-connnected technology companies to surveil its own citizens and to stake a leadership role in cutting-edge technologies like 5G and automated manufacturing and driving.
The proposals set into motion a longer process that includes public comment and an eventual vote. Rural telecommunications companies that have relied on providers like ZTE for wireless technology have protested restrictions.
Jessica Rosenworcel, the acting chair of the F.C.C., said the proposal was intended to secure U.S. networks.
“Insecure network equipment can undermine our 5G future, providing foreign actors with access to our communications,” she said. “This, in turn, may mean the ability to inject viruses and malware in our network traffic, steal private data, engage in intellectual property theft, and surveil companies and government agencies.”
Huawei criticized the agency’s proposal.
“Blocking the purchase of equipment, based on a ‘predictive judgment,’ related to country of origin or brand is without merit, discriminatory and will do nothing to protect the integrity of U.S. communications networks or supply chains,” a Huawei representative said.
The agency will begin to take public comments on the proposal and then go before the four commissioners for a final vote, probably in several weeks. It will need a majority of votes to pass and is expected to gain unanimous support.
House Republican leaders would like everyone to know that the nation is in crisis: an economic crisis; an energy crisis; a border security crisis with its attendant homeland security crisis, a humanitarian crisis and a public health crisis.
As Americans groggily emerge from their pandemic-driven isolation, they could be forgiven for not seeing the situation as quite so dire. But there is a method to all the remonstrance: Over the past four years, Republicans have learned that grievance, loudly expressed, carries political weight.
The idea is that with Democrats in control of the White House, House and Senate, next year’s midterm elections will be a referendum on one-party control, not on Republican governing plans, said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a former chairman of the House Republicans’ campaign arm.
At least this early in the election cycle, he said, Republicans need to seed a sense of instability, overreach and fear.
The strategy is also predicated on the adage that the best defense is a good offense. By focusing on an array of real or imagined disasters, Republicans avoid addressing the crisis in democracy that Mr. Trump created with his efforts to nullify the election.
June 18, 2021 at 09:00AM
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Biden Signs Juneteenth Bill, Saying 'All Americans Can Feel the Power of This Day' - The New York Times
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