It’s Wednesday for you, but for me it means…
But before I can achieve the above, we must plow through the rest of Tuesday’s tweets and see what Wednesday’s might bring…
When Biden Bits was posted for Tuesday, President Biden had 1 tweet. He made up for that one tweet by adding; 15 tweets giving him a Tuesday tweeting total of 16 tweets and 0 retweets.
The full fact-sheet on the; Consequences of Lack of Funding for Efforts to Combat COVID-19 if Congress Does Not Act
The U.S. has made tremendous progress in our fight against COVID-19. Over the past 14 months, the Biden Administration has made vital investments – using resources Congress provided on a bipartisan basis – to make sure the American people have free and widely available access to lifesaving tools: vaccines, booster shots, treatments, tests, and high-quality masks. As we enter a new moment in the pandemic, Congress has not provided us with the funding we need to continue the COVID-19 response and minimize the pandemic’s impact to the Nation and our economy. With cases rising abroad, scientific and medical experts have been clear that in the next couple of months there could be increasing cases of COVID-19 here in the U.S as well. As the Administration has warned, failure to fund these efforts now will have severe consequences as we will not be equipped to deal with a future surge. Waiting to provide funding once we’re in a surge will be too late.
Without funding, the United States will not have enough additional boosters or variant specific vaccines, if needed, for all Americans. The federal government is unable to purchase additional life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments and will run out of supply to send to states as soon as late May. The federal government cannot purchase sufficient quantities of treatments for immunocompromised individuals. And, the federal government will be unable to sustain the testing capacity we built over the last 14 months, as we head into the second half of the year.
Earlier this month, President Biden laid out a comprehensive plan to ensure that the country can continue to move forward safely and remain prepared to fight new variants and future surges of the virus. And the Administration has been clear that we need Congress to provide additional resources, including $22.5 billion in immediate emergency funding. Inaction will set us back in this fight, leave us less prepared, and cost us more lives.
Consequences of lack of critical funding include:
White House.gov. 03/15/2022.
- Inability to Secure Sufficient Booster Doses and Variant Specific Vaccines, If Needed: The federal government does not have adequate resources to purchase enough booster vaccine doses for all Americans, if additional doses are needed. The shortages will be even more acute if we need a variant-specific booster vaccine, since we will not have any existing supply.
- Providers No Longer Able to Submit Claims for Testing, Treating, and Vaccinating the Uninsured: The fund that reimburses doctors and other medical providers for caring for uninsured individuals will start to be scaled back this month and end completely in early April. Specifically, one week from today – March 22 — the Uninsured Program will stop accepting new claims for testing and treatment due to lack of sufficient funds. Providers will no longer be able to submit claims for providing these services to uninsured individuals, forcing providers to either absorb the cost or turn away people who are uninsured, increasing the disparity in access to critically needed health care and putting additional burdens on safety net providers. Three weeks from today—April 5—the Uninsured Program will also stop accepting vaccination claims due to a lack of sufficient funds.
- Ending the Purchase of Monoclonal Antibody Treatments, Scaling Back State/Territory Allocations: The federal government has no more funding f0r additional monoclonals, including a planned order for March 25. To date, the federal government has been able to provide these life-saving treatments free of charge to Americans and work with states to make sure they get to as many people as possible who need them. In order to keep these treatments free and available to the American people for as long as possible, the Administration will now have to stretch our current supply and, starting next week, will be forced to cut state allocations of our limited existing supply of life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments by more than 30%.
- Halting Critical Testing, Vaccine, Treatment Efforts: The President’s National Preparedness Plan was clear that the federal government must invest in next-generation vaccines and treatments and maintain our testing capacity in order to fight COVID-19 in the future. Now, without additional funding, we do not have the ability to:
- Purchase additional oral antiviral pills beyond the 20 million already secured.
- Pre-purchase promising new antivirals. The reason why the Administration has been able to secure more oral antiviral pills than any other country is because we committed to purchasing them early, even prior to an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). As even more effective pills potentially become available, the federal government is no longer able to make advance purchase commitments to ensure America is one of the first countries in line.
- Accelerate the creation of a next-generation, pan-COVID vaccine that would provide broad protection against a range of variants. Vaccines are the most effective tool to prevent COVID-19, and the Administration does not have the funding for necessary investments in research and to support the development of promising new vaccine candidates. Such next-generation vaccines hold potential to broaden protection against known and future variants, reduce dosing through single-dose primary regimens with extended duration of protection (i.e., longer interval between boosters or possible elimination of boosters altogether), and reduce costs by increasing manufacturing yields and extending shelf life.
- Maintain our domestic testing capacity beyond June. After spending the last year building up our testing capacity, that progress will be squandered, the Administration will be unable to help keep domestic manufacturers online starting in June. That means, heading into the second half of the year, there will be significantly diminished domestic testing capacity and we may be unprepared for surges.
- Scaling Back Planned Purchases of Preventive Treatments for Immunocompromised: The federal government has been planning to move forward with a purchase of preventative treatments for the immunocompromised as soon as March 31 that would begin delivery in September, once the treatments are manufactured. However, absent additional funding the federal government will now be forced to scale back that purchase of treatments for our most vulnerable. Because these treatments take more than 6 months to manufacture, the United States will likely not have enough of these treatments by the end of the year. And being unable to make additional purchase commitments now likely means that fewer treatments will be available next year as well.
- Reducing Ability to Rapidly Identify and Assess Emerging Variants. Robust surveillance and research are critical to identify, understand and monitor emerging variants. With reduced capability to perform adequate surveillance, the country will be prone to being “blindsided” by future variants. In the absence of funding to immediately assess lab-based efficacy and real-world effectiveness of existing vaccines and treatments as new variants emerge, health care professionals will be forced to make insufficiently informed treatment decisions. The Administration will need to wind down some COVID surveillance investments, leaving us less able to detect the next variant.
- Damage to Global Vaccination and COVID-19 Treatment Efforts: Without additional funding to support getting shots into arms, USAID and interagency partners will have to cut short efforts to turn vaccines into vaccinations across the globe. Leaving large unvaccinated populations worldwide will increase the risk of new deadly variants emerging that could evade our current vaccines and treatments. Without additional funds, the Administration would be unable to extend Global VAX surge support to 20+ additional under-vaccinated countries that will need intensive support this year to get shots in arms. This will devastate our ability to ensure those countries can effectively deploy safe and effective vaccines. USAID will also be unable to provide life-saving supplies, tests, therapeutics, oxygen, and humanitarian aid to countries still struggling to manage a continuing COVID disease burden.
In addition to the immediate need for funding, in order to facilitate a smooth transition to insurance coverage of life-savings COVID treatments the Administration is requesting that Congress provides authority to ensure seamless access to Medicare and insurance coverage for treatments under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
White House.gov. 03/15/2022.
The YouTube 12 minutes 45 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden: You know, in a moment, I’m going to sign this bipartisan government funding bill. But with this bill, we’re going to send a message to the American people — a strong message — that Democrats and Republicans can actually come together and get something done — right, Nance? — and to fulfill our most basic responsibilities: to keep the government open and running for the American people, serving the American people, investing in your communities and investing in the American people, and doing it in a fiscally responsible way. This bill also includes historic funding — $13.6 billion — to address Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the impact on surrounding countries. (Applause.)
President Biden: Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has united people all across America, united our two parties in Congress, and united freedom-loving world. And this — and it’s an act with urgency and resolve that we’re doing right now that you’ve provided me the ability to — to do. I want to thank the congressional leadership for working so quickly to — to make sure we have the resources we need — economic, humanitarian, and security — to continue our forceful response to this crisis.
President Biden: This war has turned nearly 3 million Ukrainians into refugees, with numbers growing every single day. And that’s on top of the 12 million people who require humanitarian assistance inside of Ukraine. The United States is helping to lead the global humanitarian response with our partners in Europe and well beyond Europe.
President Biden: The answer is not to abandon our streets or to choose between safety and equal justice. It’s in funding — it’s in this funding bill, which we make sure we do both. This budget invests in funding for agencies like the FBI and U.S. Marshals and the Drug Enforcement Agency, but it also includes funding for COPS programs to increase community policing and the ability of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms tackle — to tackle gun crime. And it funds entirely new community violence intervention programs just at the Department of Justice.
President Biden: Part of the safety is the ability to feel safe in gender-based — from gender-based violence. I wrote a Violence Against Women Act with many in this room years ago — 28 years ago — to provide protection against domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, and to support survivors and help them find a way out of those abusive situations they were locked into because they had no means to leave, with support for race cri- — rape crip- — crisis centers, as well as housing and legal assistance. The law has saved lives, and that’s helped women rebuild their lives and make children a heck of a lot safer. Today, with this bill, we reauthorize and strengthen the Violence Against Women Act. For example — (applause).
President Biden: Two elements of that agenda are, one, beat the opioid epidemic and, two, take on the challenges of mental health, which have been exacerbated because of the COVID problem. This bill supports opioid response grants that are funding that we provide to states to support opioid prevent — opioid prevention, treatment, and recovery services.
President Biden: Now, I would like to add a word about another investment this bill makes, one that I expect will pay dividends for hope, healing, and for our economy for generations to come. And it’s called ARPA-H — Advanced Research Project Agencies of Health. This will be a new kind of entity, an engine for innovation, a place where we’ll do high-risk, high-reward research that can drive unprecedented progress in biomedicine.
President Biden: ARPA-H will have a singular purpose: to drive breakthroughs to prevent, detect, and treat diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes, and other diseases.
President Biden: Last year, the deficit dropped for the first time since 2015. It fell by $360 billion last year. And this year, it’s on track to drop by more than $1 trillion. After four years in a row of increasing deficits before I took office, we’re now on a track to see the largest-ever decline in the deficit in American history. (Applause.)
President Biden: So let me close with this: Today, we’re again showing the American people that, as a country, we can come together as Democrats, Republicans, and independents and do big things; that our democracy can deliver — can deliver — and outperform autocracies; and that there’s nothing we can’t do when we do it together as the United States of America.
The video clip is 1 minute and 14 seconds long.
President Biden: You know, in a moment, I’m going to sign this bipartisan government funding bill. But with this bill, we’re going to send a message to the American people — a strong message — that Democrats and Republicans can actually come together and get something done — right, Nance? — and to fulfill our most basic responsibilities: to keep the government open and running for the American people, serving the American people, investing in your communities and investing in the American people, and doing it in a fiscally responsible way. This bill also includes historic funding — $13.6 billion — to address Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the impact on surrounding countries. (Applause.) Thank you. Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has united people all across America, united our two parties in Congress, and united freedom-loving world. And this — and it’s an act with urgency and resolve that we’re doing right now that you’ve provided me the ability to — to do. I want to thank the congressional leadership for working so quickly to — to make sure we have the resources we need — economic, humanitarian, and security — to continue our forceful response to this crisis. We’ve already committed more than 1 billion 200 million dollars in security assistance to the people of Ukraine just over the past year. And I — I know all of you know that; it’s preaching to the choir here.
President Biden: With this — with this new security funding and the drawdown authorities in this bill, we’re remo- — we’re moving urgently to further augment the support to the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their country.
The YouTube is 19 minutes and 40 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden: Today is Equal Pay Day. (Applause.) And they just came from an event that discussed our administration’s effort to close the pay gap. So, thank you so much. (Applause.) And, by the way, you’re not only helping yourself, you’re helping us get it done for other women.
President Biden: And earlier today, I signed an executive order to promote efforts to achieve pay equality and pay equity for employees of federal contractors. And it’s my hope that this sets an example for all private companies to follow as well. That’s the purpose of what I did. (Applause.)
The Executive Order on: Advancing Economy, Efficiency, and Effectiveness in Federal Contracting by Promoting Pay Equity and Transparency
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of my Administration to eliminate discriminatory pay practices that inhibit the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of the Federal workforce and the procurement of property and services by the Federal Government. The Office of Personnel Management anticipates issuing a proposed rule that will address the use of salary history in the hiring and pay-setting processes for Federal employees, consistent with Executive Order 14035 of June 25, 2021 (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce). The purpose of this order is to direct the consideration of parallel efforts with respect to Federal procurement.
Sec. 2. Economy, Efficiency, and Effectiveness in Federal Procurement. Consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations, the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, in consultation with the Secretary of Labor and the heads of other executive departments and agencies as appropriate, shall consider issuing proposed rules to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in Federal procurement by enhancing pay equity and transparency for job applicants and employees of Federal contractors and subcontractors. In doing so, the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council shall specifically consider whether any such rules should limit or prohibit Federal contractors and subcontractors from seeking and considering information about job applicants’ and employees’ existing or past compensation when making employment decisions. The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council shall also consider the inclusion of appropriate accountability measures in any such rules.
Sec. 3. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
White House.gov. 03/15/2022.
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
The White House posted the following fact-sheet; Biden Harris Administration Announces Commitments to Advance Pay Equity and Support Women’s Economic Security
This Equal Pay Day, the White House is announcing critical steps that the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to advance pay equity and promote women’s economic security.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have long championed equal pay as a cornerstone of their commitment to ensuring all people have a fair and equal opportunity to get ahead. Closing gender and racial wage gaps is essential to building an equitable economy and addressing the barriers that have long hampered women from fully participating in the labor force. There is growing recognition that reliance on past salary and a lack of pay transparency can contribute to arbitrary and potentially discriminatory pay that then follows women and workers of color from job to job, entrenching gender and racial pay gaps over time. But we still have work to do. In 2020, the average woman working full-time, year-round earned 83 cents for every dollar paid to their average male counterpart. Compared with the average man working full-time, year-round, disparities are even greater for Black women, Native American women, and Latinas, as well as certain subpopulations of Asian women.
This Equal Pay Day, the Vice President is hosting a virtual summit, bringing together partners across the country who are taking critical steps to tackle pay discrimination, create good-paying jobs, and support families’ access to care.
Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing new actions to promote women’s employment and support working families across the country. These actions will:Advance pay equity for the Federal workforce. The Office of Personnel Management announced that they anticipate issuing a proposed regulation that will address the use of prior salary history in the hiring and pay-setting process for Federal employees, consistent with the President’s Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce.
White House.gov. 03/15/2022.
• Advance pay equity for the Federal workforce. The Office of Personnel Management announced that they anticipate issuing a proposed regulation that will address the use of prior salary history in the hiring and pay-setting process for Federal employees, consistent with the President’s Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce.
• Promote efforts to achieve pay equity for job applicants and employees of Federal contractors. President Biden signed an Executive Order directing the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to consider enhancing pay equity and transparency, including by limiting or prohibiting federal contractors from seeking and considering information about job applicants’ and employees’ existing or past compensation when making employment decisions, and appropriate accountability measures. The Department of Labor will consult with the FAR Council on the efficiency, economy, and effectiveness in Federal contracting that would be promoted by potential regulatory changes, and the most effective implementation strategy for any subsequent rulemaking.
• Strengthen pay equity audits by Federal contractors. The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs issued a new directive clarifying federal contractors’ annual obligation to analyze their compensation practices. Conducting these pay equity audits helps address and prevent pay disparities based on gender, race, or ethnicity.
• Ensure equitable access to good-paying jobs. The Department of Labor issued a report analyzing the impact that women’s concentration in low-wage sectors – and their relative underrepresentation in many good-paying occupations – has on their overall economic security and gender and racial wage gaps. The report finds that, in 2019, Black women lost $39.3 billion and Hispanic women lost $46.7 billion in wages compared to white men due to differences in industry and occupation. This segregation intensified the COVID-19 pandemic’s disproportionate impact on women, in part due to the overrepresentation of women in hard-hit industries such as hospitality.
• Address discrimination against caregivers. Yesterday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published technical assistance on caregiver discrimination, addressing the circumstances under which discrimination against applicants and employees based on pandemic-related caregiving responsibilities may violate federal employment discrimination laws.
The actions announced today build on steps the Administration has taken to advance pay equity, including:
White House.gov. 03/15/2022.
• Provided immediate relief through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) to millions of women who have borne the brunt of the pandemic. This work includes: standing up a historic vaccination program that has fully vaccinated more than 215 million Americans; reopening schools; providing direct payments to individuals; expanding nutrition programs for families; providing paid leave tax credits for small and midsize employers; distributing the majority of emergency rental assistance to female-headed households; and expanding the Child Tax Credit, which last year helped reduce child poverty to its estimated lowest level in recorded American history.
• Helped keep child care providers open and boosted pay for child care workers. States have already delivered American Rescue Plan stabilization grants to more than 150,000 child care providers serving more than 5 million children and their families. One survey finds that 92% of providers receiving funds relied on them to help stay open and nearly half used them to repay debt incurred during the pandemic. Many states also used funds to help boost compensation of the child care workforce. For example, Minnesota is requiring providers to increase compensation, while North Carolina and Connecticut offered bonus payments to providers who increased compensation of the workforce. Increasing compensation for child care workershelps narrow gender and racial pay gaps, as more than nine in ten are women and more than four in ten are women of color. While ARP funds allowed child care programs to provide temporary bonuses, they need long-term funding asthe President has proposed to sustainably increase wages.
• Provided tax relief to help families with child care costs during the pandemic by delivering a historic increase in the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) to support millions of working families this tax season. The ARP increased the maximum CDCTC for a median income family with two children under age 13 by more than sixtimes—providing up to $8,000 towards child care expenses in 2021. It will reimburse most families for up to half of their child care expenses. And the ARP CDCTC is fully-refundable, helping lower-income parents fully benefit regardless of their tax liability. Even before the pandemic, families struggled to afford child care, forcing parents and especially mothers to forego higher paying jobs, work fewer hours, or take time out of the workforce, leading to lower pay over their career. The President has urged Congress to pass his plan for child care, which could lower child care costs for nine in ten families with young children.
• Increased the minimum wage to $15 per hour for Federal workers and contractors, benefiting manywomen and people of color. The President issued Executive Orders directing the Administration to work toward ensuring that employees working on federal contracts and federal employees earned a $15 per hour minimum wage. Those directives went into effect in January, raising the wages of about 370,000 federal employees and employees of federal contractors. In addition to helping the government do its work more efficiently, these directives take a step towards narrowing racial and gender disparities in income, as many low-wage workers are women and people of color. The order also eliminates the subminimum wage for workers with disabilities. The President has called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, so that American workers can have a job that delivers dignity, and to make greater strides towards pay equity.
• Signed into law the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Administration investments through this law will increase access to good-paying jobs, including for women, people of color, and members of other communities who are currently underrepresented in the sectors where these jobs will be created, such as transportation, clean energy, and broadband.The Department of Transportation and the Department of Labor signed a memorandum of understanding to promote the creation of good infrastructure and transportation jobs with a focus on equitable workforce development using funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
• Issued an Executive Order to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility across the federal government – the nation’s largest employer – including by prioritizing efforts to close gender and racial wage gaps, address workplace safety and harassment, including in our national security workforce, and advance equity for LGBTQI+ public servants.
• Issued an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy. This established the Administration’s policy of addressing anticompetitive behavior in labor markets, which can fall heavily on women and workers of color. The Order includes specific initiatives to promote competition in labor markets, including encouraging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban or limit non-compete agreements, and encouraging the FTC and the Department of Justice to strengthen antitrust guidance to prevent employers from collaborating to suppress wages or reduce benefits by sharing wage and benefit information with one another.
President Biden: Let me just close with this: Gender equality is not a woman’s issue alone; it benefits everybody. And that’s a fact. It benefits everyone — our society, our economy, and our country.
For Wednesday, March 16th, 2022, President Biden has received his daily brief. This morning just before noon, President Biden is expected to give remarks on the assistance the U.S., is providing to Ukraine; the Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are also expected to attend. This afternoon President Biden will offer remarks to celebrate the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Tonight President Biden delivers remarks at; The Ireland Funds 30th National Gala.
President Biden has tweeted 2 times so far for Wednesday…
I found the company source written in the corner of the chart “Bloomberg, L.P., but I didn’t located the material used in the above chart.
We move on:
I looked up what determines gas prices one of my hits was Investopedia that says:
EIA.gov., explained like this:
I understand the frustration. But IMO–gas prices have never fallen dramatically with barrel costs; 2020 is odd, because what happened there was demand dropped dramatically which translated into quick falls around gas stations attempting to stay open during a pandemic that halted all travel.
Fuel costs are slowly ebbing, and it is slow, but demand is higher today than even last year; as folks start traveling for vacations again, like the Spring Breaks happening all across the country right now.
Consumers will start eventually curbing their gas use. Like my son for example:
I tend to do errands all in one day partly because I hate people, partly because the husband and I share one truck, and partly because of anxiety, I’d rather get it all one and done.
When planning my errands, I pick the furthest place to stop first and travel closer to home for the other things I have to do.
My son?
Left my house to get his haircut. Fine, that’s no biggie, but he had to work at 11 a.m. or noon at his second job. His second job is located near the place he gets his haircut.
What did he do?
Glad you asked; he left here at like 9:30 a.m. our time, was gone about 30 minutes-ish. Came back here having had to drive right past his work place to get his work things.
I think he was home that 2nd time a grand total of 20 minutes before he was back on the road heading right back to where he just was.
But just Monday, he was all pissed off cause it cost $60.00 to fill his truck up. Well, maybe you shouldn’t be taking unnecessary trips in said truck?
Take us for example, tomorrow we are heading to Disneyland; we’ve rented a car for said trip, versus taking the truck we own, because in the long run, it’s cheaper.
We are the consumer; we must consume wisely.
His full statement:
One year ago today, eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, were tragically killed by a gunman who attacked three Asian-run businesses. These horrific murders shook communities across America and underscored how far we have to go in this country to fight racism, misogyny, and all forms of hate—and the epidemic of gun violence that enables these extremists.
White House.gov. 03/16/2022.
In the aftermath of these senseless deaths, the Vice President and I traveled to Atlanta to meet with leaders of the Asian American community. We heard about the terror and anguish that too many Asian Americans have felt since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when anti-Asian xenophobia, harassment, and violence skyrocketed to alarming levels. Grandparents afraid to leave their homes. Small business owners targeted and gunned down. Families living in fear for their lives just walking down the street in America. It was a stark reminder that anti-Asian violence and discrimination have deep roots in our nation, with Asian American women experiencing the compounded harms of being targeted on account of their race as well as their gender.
Today, we honor the victims, their families, and the Atlanta community that has shown extraordinary resilience in the face of tragedy. While nothing we do can bring the victims back, their loss has compelled us to reckon with our nation’s long legacy of anti-Asian sentiment and gender-based violence, and recommit ourselves to delivering the full measure of justice, safety, and dignity the Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community and all communities deserve. I was proud to sign the bipartisan COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law last May, which dedicated new tools and resources across government and law enforcement to help prevent, track, and respond to acts of hate, along with new Department of Justice grants and other measures to enhance community engagement, empowerment, and education.
This tragedy is also yet another reminder of the gun violence epidemic. My Administration has taken more executive action to reduce gun violence than any other Administration it its first year. But there is more to do—and Congress must act.
On this somber anniversary, my Administration remains fully committed to advancing safety, inclusion, and belonging for all Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders—especially the women and girls who disproportionately bear the burdens of hate—and to reducing the gun violence that terrorizes our communities. Together, we must build a future where no one fears violence.
This morning Ukrainian President Zelenskyy addressed Congress. CNN has shared his full remarks as translated:
President Biden’s remarks on Ukraine are expected at 11:45 a.m. D.C., time.
President Biden’s remarks on the reauthorization of The Violence Against Women Act are scheduled for 1:45 p.m. D.C., time.
The daily press briefing is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. D.C., time.
This is an Open Thread.
