Biden's economic plan bets on blue collars, from infrastructure to child care
CNN
The bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signed into law Monday marks a milestone in his effort to reorient Democratic economic policy away from the strategy of his party's past two presidents.
The sweeping infrastructure plan -- which funds some $550 billion in new spending on roads, bridges, ports, water systems, mass transit and electric vehicle charging stations -- encapsulates Biden's focus on creating and enhancing jobs that do not require a college education. That same emphasis is evident in the broader Build Back Better plan still awaiting congressional approval, which would channel huge sums into the "caregiving economy" of child care, early childhood education and elder care, which are now predominantly low-wage industries staffed heavily by women of color.
Economists have estimated that at least four-fifths of the jobs created by the infrastructure bill and the broader economic plan would not require college degrees, a dynamic that Biden unfailingly highlights when he discusses them.
The US began pulling military equipment and additional personnel out of Niger on Friday after waiting months for the ruling military junta to approve US military flights into the country, two sources familiar with the matter said Saturday, ahead of a September 15 withdrawal deadline agreed to by the two countries.
The judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York on Friday informed the former president’s defense team and prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office that a comment was posted on the New York State Unified Court Systems’ public Facebook page last week by a poster who claimed to be a cousin of a juror, saying that Trump would be convicted.