biden

During his recent visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, President Joe Biden announced changes to border enforcement and the asylum process — the legal process that allows people fleeing danger to seek safety in the U.S. One of the most concerning changes was an expansion of Title 42, a public health policy invoked by former President Donald Trump that weaponized the pandemic to turn away many Black and brown migrants looking for asylum.

President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on Tuesday at a jubilant celebration that featured singer Cyndi Lauper performing “True Colors” in front of thousands of supporters on the White House lawn.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) does not go nearly far enough to fight the root cause of climate change. These are the root causes of the global climate crisis that policy needs to address: The greenhouse gas pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels for energy and transportation, unsustainable agriculture, toxic waste, and climate-altering industrial practices. Biden must use his executive authority to address the shortcomings of the IRA and act swiftly and decisively to protect the Earth.

Earlier this month, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg made headlines by announcing that the recently-passed $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill will be used in part to address racial inequities in U.S. highway design. “If a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a Black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach … in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices,” he said.

A number of Americans were confused — how can concrete and paint be racist? But Buttigieg is correct: Highways and bridges are examples of structural racism literally built into the American cityscape. Reconstructing more equitable cities will require prophetic imagination and real, political solutions. They will vary from city to city. From suburb to suburb. So if you’re looking for a place to start, look in your own neighborhood.

President Joe Biden will meet with Pope Francis on Oct. 29 before attending a two-day summit of G-20 leaders in Rome where he hopes to reach agreement on a Global Minimum Tax of 15 percent, White House officials said on Thursday.

On the second foreign trip of his presidency, Biden will then attend the U.N. climate conference known as COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, from Nov. 1-2 and announce “key actions” on the conference's top themes, including goals for fighting climate change and forest and land use, one White House official told Reuters.

There’s more than one way to tell a story. As journalists, we know this well. As readers, you know this well. The news this week gave us ample opportunities to remember that stories can be told with different — sometimes even contradictory — purposes.

IN 2019, I met with leaders from the Nahla Valley in Iraqi Kurdistan whose eight villages are both Muslim and Christian. Entire villages had been forced to evacuate when they were caught in the crossfire between rocket attacks launched from Turkey against Kurdish militias in northern Iraq. Children and community members were traumatized.

This February, border communities in northern Iraq were attacked again, this time by militants using Iranian-supplied weapons. Several rockets exploded in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. One rocket hit the U.S.-led coalition military base, killing a civilian contractor from the Philippines and injuring at least six others. Many interpret the Irbil attack as a test of the Biden administration’s Iran policy, which seeks to revive the nuclear deal scrapped under the previous U.S. administration. President Joe Biden retaliated with airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed militias on the border in Syria—killing 22 people. The minority communities, including Christians, living in the Kurdish regions of neighboring Turkey, Syria, and Iraq continue to be caught in the middle as geopolitical conflicts escalate.

President Joe Biden’s inaugural address emphasized the need to foster unity in the U.S. The next day, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber III challenged the country to go a step further: to become what Isaiah 58:12 calls “repairers of the breach.”

“There are a lot more people who are poor, but living above the poverty line,” said Anne Price, president of the Insight Center, an economic justice advocacy group based in Oakland, Calif. “The measure that we use is so antiquated, not just in how it calculates a household budget and what's left out, but also because it doesn't reflect real, contemporary lived experience, different household types, or regional differences.”