President Joe Biden speaks on Covid-19 response in the State Dining Room of the White House on January 26, 2021.(Photo by Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
The national death toll from Covid-19 will reach half a million next month, and new strains of the virus are threatening. Joe Biden has called for what he calls “a full-scale wartime effort,” including $350 million in direct funding, and now he’s aiming for 150 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days. Gregg Gonsalves comments on what Biden and Congress need to do now.
Also: Faced by the pandemic and economic collapse, Biden knows he has to work harder and faster than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He doesn’t have a hundred days to launch his initiatives—he’s got to set the tone in ten. John Nichols comments on what Biden has accomplished in his first week—and what his next priorities ought to be. Also: the necessity of impeaching Trump for incitement of insurrection.
Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.
Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.