
Biden's Covid relief bill is huge, ambitious and about to pass
CNN
President Joe Biden plans to use the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill expected to pass Congress on Wednesday as a platform for a generational transformation of the economy to benefit the least well-off Americans and alleviate poverty.
The passage of a bill of this scale and ambition two months into any new president's term would represent a power-affirming win. The political payoff for Biden of his first legacy achievement may be even greater. He had to navigate the measure through thin congressional majorities and a Democratic caucus riven by ideological divides -- and amid the worst domestic crisis since World War II. Biden ran for election pledging to send stimulus payments to millions of Americans and to secure money to fund the return of kids to school, while speeding up the pace of vaccinations. When he gives his first prime-time address to Americans on Thursday, he can make a case that he kept his word as he battles to end a pandemic that has killed more than 525,000 Americans.
Hundreds of Border Patrol officers are mobilizing to bolster the president’s crackdown on immigration in snowy Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday, as tensions between federal law enforcement and local counterparts flare after an ICE-involved shooting last week left a mother of three dead.

Nationwide outcry over the killing of a Minneapolis woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent spilled into the streets of cities across the US on Saturday, with protesters demanding the removal of federal immigration authorities from their communities and justice for the slain Renee Good.

Since early December the US Coast Guard and other military branches have boarded and taken control of five oil ships that had previously been sanctioned, all either accused of being in the process of transporting Venezuelan oil or on their way to take on oil that has been subject to US sanctions since President Donald Trump began a pressure campaign against the leadership of the country during his first term.










