President Biden halts Keystone XL Pipeline and Border Wall Construction

Whew! Big plus for environment – Canada will need help with re-think.

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Photo by Laiken JordahlBreaking NewsPresident Biden signed executive orders late today halting both the Keystone XL Pipeline and funding for border wall construction.Check back for article. 

The White House website reinstates Spanish version that Trump removed

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Following President Joe Biden‘s inauguration, the White House‘s  official website has promptly re-instated a Spanish version of its website. ¡Por fin! For those wondering, @WhiteHouse already has a Spanish-language page up.https://t.co/veEo5k443Y pic.twitter.com/nbjx4PqJsl — Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) January 20, 2021 As noted by Julio Ricardo Varela of Latino Rebels the Spanish page is directly accessible from the White House website’s main menu, or at whitehouse.gov/es. There are new La Casa Blanca Twitter and Facebook accounts too. You might recall that upon the Trump administration taking over the website, the Spanish version was promptly removed. At the time, then Press Secretary Sean…

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H.R. 348: To require face masks in Federal facilities to prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and for other purposes.

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Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Sylvia Garcia [D-TX29]

This bill was referred to the House Committee on House Administration and House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure which will consider it before sending it to the House floor for consideration.

H.R. 351: To amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to exclude from income, for the purpose of determining eligibility and benefits, income received from cost of living adjustments made under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act and from supple

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Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Gwen Moore [D-WI4]

This bill was referred to the House Committee on Agriculture which will consider it before sending it to the House floor for consideration.

H.R. 349: To direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements to expand and enhance capacity for manufacturing covered products to prevent and control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

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Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Ann Kuster [D-NH2]

This bill was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce which will consider it before sending it to the House floor for consideration.

UK reports 1,820 more Covid deaths, the most recorded in one day

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Britain records biggest ever daily increase for second day in a row, as new cases rise sharply

The daily number of coronavirus deaths has reached 1,820, the highest since the pandemic began.

The number of new cases rose sharply to 38,905, after a fall earlier in the week which inspired optimism that lockdown restrictions were working.

Continue reading…

Joe Biden ousts the man who tried to reshape US global media

Joe Biden in front of microphones during his inaugural address.
President Joe Biden as he delivers his inaugural address on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

In his first foreign policy move, Biden fired Michael Pack, the head of the US Agency for Global Media.

In his first foreign policy act, President Joe Biden followed through on his promise to fire the head of the US Agency for Global Media, who abused his eight months in power trying to turn the US government-funded international media agency into a pro-Trump propaganda machine.

Michael Pack, an ally of former President Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, resigned on Wednesday soon after Biden finished his inaugural address. In a letter, Pack said Biden’s team asked him to step down from his post as the head of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), a government department that oversees media organizations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — and is collectively one of the largest media networks in the world.

“I serve at the pleasure of not one particular president, but the office of the president itself,” Pack wrote. “Your administration has requested my resignation, and that is why I am tendering it.”

Pack was slated to serve a three-year term after his Senate confirmation to the job last summer. But Biden was clearly displeased with how Pack ran the organization, which is responsible for broadcasting unbiased news to nations that struggle to get unfiltered information — which explains why Biden prioritized Pack’s ouster.

What Pack did to earn Biden’s distrust

Pack made clear from the get-go that he would run the media agency by whim, not law.

In his first hours at the helm last June, Pack fired the heads of USAGM’s outlets because they were too soft on China and didn’t defend American values — as Trump would describe them — enough to the rest of the world.

For many people, especially the agency’s employees, that move violated USAGM’s “firewall,” enshrined in US law, that “prohibits interference by any US government official in the objective, independent reporting of news, thereby safeguarding the ability of our journalists to develop content that reflects the highest professional standards of journalism, free of political interference.”

Even though the government funds the news agencies, they still run independently when it comes to editorial decision-making. Pack, then, could ensure the day-to-day operations of USAGM operations went smoothly, but he couldn’t force himself into the editorial processes of the organization. But by firing the agency staffers without apparent cause, Pack inserted himself into the way the outlets did the news.

In case anyone thought Pack may have just had some growing pains and made mistakes, he was open about his designs on the agency.

“My job really is to drain the swamp, to root out corruption, and to deal with these issues of bias,” he said on The Federalist Radio Hour podcast last August, joking with the host that he’d “look into” doing so by turning off the air conditioning or banning masks. However, he did say it was not his goal “to tell journalists what to report” and that he was not purging employees.

But that last part just wasn’t true. Among other things, Pack fired senior officials for telling him that his actions violated “firewall” laws and did nothing as top Voice of America staff reassigned the outlet’s White House reporter for asking tough questions of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The situation got so bad that 11 whistleblowers in 2020 sent complaints to the federal watchdog US Office of Special Counsel. After months of review, the agency found in December that USAGM leadership — and mainly Pack — “repeatedly violated the Voice of America firewall” and “engaged in gross mismanagement and abuse of authority.”

One VOA journalist I spoke to who worked under Pack these last eight months couldn’t have been happier with the news of his ouster. “There are a lot of people celebrating and breathing sighs of relief,” the person told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution, citing the fact that Pack-allied staffers remain in leadership roles. The journalist hoped Biden and his team would oust those staffers soon, too.

Whether they will or not is still an open question. That means that USAGM may have lost its leader, but the agency could continue to face more problems, even with Biden at the helm.

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