President Joe Biden continues his streak of taking aggressive action through executive power. On his third day in office he signed an executive order to, “provide equitable emergency economic relief to working families, communities, and small businesses across the nation.” The action includes extending food stamp programs and speeding up the delivery of stimulus checks. He also signed an order requiring face coverings to be worn during travel on planes, buses, trains and in airports as part of his pandemic mitigation plan. Meanwhile conservatives are pushing back against an order that Biden signed on his first day in office restoring protections for LGBTQ Americans in schools, workplaces and healthcare centers. Rightwing groups bizarrely claimed that such an order would “erase women.” 

Meanwhile, as Democrats ready themselves for an ambitious legislative agenda in the Senate after four long years of Mitch McConnell blocking hundreds of bills, the former Majority Leader seems intent on stymying them. He has been blocking a Democratic resolution on Senate rules demanding that the majority party leave a 60-vote requirement in place to filibuster. Such a move would essentially give Republicans veto power over most bills. Democrats say they plan to reject the move. At stake is the “aggressive” plan that the new Senate Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders has for progressive economic legislation. Senator Sanders has vowed to use the procedural power of “budget reconciliation” to move bills forward with a simple majority. 

Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would send the House-passed Article of Impeachment against the previous President to the U.S. Senate on Monday. Schumer rejected an attempt by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to try to delay an impeachment trial until January 29th. Republicans Senators are claiming there is not enough support in their party to vote to convict Donald Trump over his incitement of insurrection in a violent mob attack on January 6th. There is also a question of if Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would indeed preside over the trial. Meanwhile the Senate Ethics committee has filed complaints against Republicans Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley for leading an attempt to overthrow democracy as represented by the 2020 election. Leader Chuck Schumer is being urged to deny the two men committee seats as well. 

In the House,

FEATURING NAYNA GUPTA – On day one of his presidency Joe Biden signed a flurry of executive actions to undo his predecessor’s “deeply inhumane” anti-immigrant policies. These included reversing the “Muslim ban,” ensuring non-citizens are counted in the Census, pulling back on the harsh deportation priorities of the past four years, and cutting off funds to Donald Trump’s most vaunted border wall with Mexico.

But President Biden has not restricted himself to executive actions on immigration. He has sent an outline of a comprehensive immigration bill to lawmakers for consideration that has as its centerpiece a pathway to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented residents of the nation.

Nayna Gupta, Associate Director of Policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center. 

FEATURING DR. BANDY LEE – On Inauguration Day 2021, while millions of Americans were crying in relief and celebrating the end of the worst Presidency in history, some Americans were confounded and felt deeply betrayed. The pro-Trump hate group, Proud Boys, rejected Trump as a “total failure,” while others, especially believers in the far-fetched conspiracist QAnon movement became seriously confused because they truly believed that on Inauguration Day, their leader would take steps to arrest Democrats and other perceived enemies and remain President. When that did not happen, they did not know what to do. 

At the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency many rightly questioned his mental fitness for office. Now, after its end, a mass psychosis that appears to have gripped large swaths of the population may be the biggest current threat to the nation and to democracy.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee, Forensic psychiatrist, violence expert, president of the World Mental Health Coalition. She was a faculty member of the Law and Psychiatry Division at Yale School of Medicine for 17 years and served as Director of Research for the Center for the Study of Violence (Harvard, U. Penn., N.Y.U., and Yale), and co-founded Yale’s Violence and Health Study Group at the MacMillan Center for International Studies. She is the editor of the New York Times bestselling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. 

President Joe Biden spent his first day in office signing a flurry of executive orders in a first step toward undoing the disastrous legacy of his predecessor. Issuing a total of 17 orders, proclamations and memoranda, Biden took on the big issues of the pandemic, the nation’s immigration crisis, and attacks on the environment. As part of his pandemic response Biden has issued a 100-day “mask challenge,” and on Thursday released a federal government blueprint called the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. The plan includes invoking the Defense Production Act to marshal industries to generate supplies, expand vaccine supplies and strengthen distribution. The new administration was reportedly aghast upon finding that the plan to distribute vaccines nationwide was nonexistent, with one person telling CNN, “There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch.” Biden also rejoined the World Health Organization, prompting the government’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci to give a speech praising the resumption of global cooperation to end the pandemic. The pandemic continues to rage in the U.S. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have now projected there may be 100,000 additional deaths from the virus in the next few months. 

As part of his day-one initiatives Biden reversed via executive order several anti-immigrant policies that had been enacted over the past four years. These included reversing the so-called Muslim Ban, strengthening the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, ending the emergency border proclamation that was used to justify building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and ensuring undocumented immigrants are counted in the U.S. Census. On Wednesday the Biden administration also sent a fact sheet outlining a comprehensive immigration reform plan to lawmakers that would offer a path to legal residency and then citizenship to DACA registrants, TPS (Temporary Protected Status) holders, and farmworkers, while also allowing other undocumented immigrants a longer pa...

FEATURING NORMAN SOLOMON – On January 20, 2021, a majority of Americans heaved a sigh of relief watching Donald Trump leave Washington D.C. for his new Florida residence, and welcoming a new administration that promised truth, decorum, and decency. The all-star lineup of musicians sang tear-jerking syrupy anthems, and many among us cried with joy. And with good reason considering the nightmarish horror of the past four years. But my next guest issues a warning with a quote from I.F. Stone that, incoming presidents “make us the dupes of our hopes.”

Read Norman Solomon’s latest article “Don’t Let President Biden ‘Make Us the Dupes of Our Hopes,” HERE. 

Norman Solomon is co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” (2006) and “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State” (2007). His latest article is entitled “Don’t Let President Biden ‘Make Us the Dupes of Our Hopes.'”

FEATURING PROF. YANEER BAR-YAM – Last year when describing the worst-case scenarios of the coronavirus pandemic, government scientists warned we could see deaths numbering between 100,000 to 240,000. That range, predicted 10 months ago, was considered a “grim projection.” Now, more than 400,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus. On his first day in office, incoming President Joe Biden has pledged to take strong action on the pandemic that includes strict mask wearing, streamlining the availability and distribution of vaccines, and a much-needed federal leadership and coordination of the pandemic response. While this represents a stark departure from the past President, scientists say it is still not nearly enough. 

For more information visit www.Covidzero.us, www.covidactiongroup.net, and www.endcoronavirus.org. 

Prof. Yaneer Bar-Yam, founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, where he is an expert on pandemics and other complex systems. He works with the COVID Action Group. 

On a day marking the momentous end of the disastrous past four years and the beginning of what might be a new chapter for the United States, Joe Biden was inaugurated as President and Kamala Harris as Vice President. Making history as the first woman and the first woman of color to fill the role of Vice President, the former California Senator, daughter of two immigrants—a Black man and an Indian woman—took her oath of office led by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Following that Joe Biden, who has spent decades in office, was sworn in as President by Chief Justice John Roberts. Mr. Biden’s inaugural address offered a stark contrast from the images of “American carnage” that his predecessor kicked off his tenure with. Among other things he alluded to how dangerously close the 2020 election came to being overturned. Biden offered a calmer era of Presidential politics. He also hailed the start of the history-making tenure of Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden recalled how exactly two weeks ago to the day, Capitol Hill swarmed with loyal supporters of the 45th President who answered his call to invade the Senate and stop Biden’s win from being certified. 

Following President Biden’s inaugural address, a 22-year old Black woman named Amanda Gorman, who is the nation’s first “National Youth Poet Laureate,” and an activist from Los Angeles, read a powerful poem exactly two weeks after a riotous white supremacist armed mob overran the Capitol, and hours after their President flew a helicopter to his new residence in Florida.

Former President Donald Trump refused to attend Biden’s inauguration, becoming only one of a handful of single-term Presidents in U.S. history to showcase his soreness at losing reelection. He did leave a note for Mr. Biden as is the tradition, but the contents of it are so far under wraps. He left Washington D.C. on Wednesday after telling people to, “Have a good life,” as activists gathered on Black Lives Matter Plaza to celebrate his departure. His last day in office was marked by a late-night flurry of showering pardons and commutations to nearly 150 people including his former chief strategist Steve Bannon and former fundraiser Elliot Broidy. And one of his last acts in office was to quietly undo an anti-corruption measure he had hailed as “draining the swamp” – a rescinding of his own executive order to limit officials from turning into lobbyists or working for foreign governments after leaving their government positions. Trump also reportedly wants to form a new political party called the Patriot Party. 

On his first day in office President Biden plans to

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – It is hard to believe that four years of the Trump presidency are finally coming to an end. A collective trauma, exacerbated by a deadly pandemic and economic collapse, culminating in a violent invasion of the Capitol, has left Americans reeling. White supremacist violence is resurgent after Twitter waited too long to silence its chief proponent, Donald Trump. Four years ago, we spoke with our news correspondent Arun Gupta who had rightly predicted the ethos of ethnic cleansing that was at the heart of the Trump administration. 

Arun Gupta is an investigative journalist who has written for the Washington Post, The Nation, Raw Story, The Guardian, and Jacobin. He is also a regular news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. 

FEATURING SHALANDA BAKER – As the United States transitions to a new Presidency, attempting to put four years of Donald Trump behind us, Mr. Joe Biden’s flurry of initial actions includes rejoining the Paris Accords, and an end to the Keystone XL Pipeline project. But according to our next guest, climate action needs to be rooted in local actions and policy, and most importantly justice. 

Shalanda Baker, professor at the Northeastern School of Law.  Before joining Northeastern’s faculty, Professor Baker spent three years as an associate professor of law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai’i, where she was the founding director of the Energy Justice Program. In 2016, she won a Fulbright award and spent a year in Mexico exploring energy reform, climate change and indigenous rights. Her new book is called Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition.

A day before President elect Joe Biden takes office, there are a flurry of cabinet nominee confirmation hearings to rush through ensuring that critical positions are filled during the transition. There are five nominees being vetted by lawmakers: Lloyd J. Austin III as Defense secretary, Antony J. Blinken for State secretary, Janet Yellen to head the Treasury Department, Alejandro N. Mayorkas for homeland security secretary, and Avril D. Haines for the position of National Intelligence Director. Responding to questions about raising the federal minimum wage, Treasury Nominee Janet Yellen said this. Ms .Yellen pushed lawmakers to be aggressive about stimulating the failing U.S. economy during her hearing. National Intelligence nominee Avril Haines, during her opening remarks stressed the importance of keeping intelligence gathering and dissemination free of politics and also took an aggressive posture on China. The antiwar group Codepink has denounced Haines as a “torture-apologist & drone-lover.” 

Alejandro Mayorkas, as homeland security nominee also addressed lawmakers. As the son of Cuban immigrants, Mayorkas was Deputy Secretary of homeland security under President Obama and expressed his horror at the Capitol riot during his opening statement on Tuesday. Biden’s team announced an ambitious plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration system in a proposal that he plans to send to Congress on Wednesday, his very first day in office. The proposed bill includes border enforcement but also an expansion of the U.S.’s refugee programs that were heavily curtailed under the current administration. And, most importantly, it includes an 8-year path to citizenship for the nation’s roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants. 

Mr. Biden has also made history with his pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Rachel Levine, who is currently Pennsylvania’s Health Secretary, would be the nation’s first transgender person to lead HHS if she is confirmed. In a statement released Tuesday Mr. Biden said, “Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their ZIP code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond.” In another decision warmly welcomed by progressives, news broke that Biden was planning to end the Keystone XL pipeline project upon taking office as well. A Gallup poll published Tuesday found that nearly 70% of Americans approve of the way Mr. Biden is handling his transition to the Presidency—not as high as Barack Obama but higher than Donald Trump. 

As federal troops provide security for Wednesday’s inaug...