White House press briefings are a "snoozefest" these days, says BBC correspondent Jon Sopel, who likens the transition from the Trump to Biden administrations to "going from a daily crack pipe to a small bottle of low-alcohol beer once a week"—but the Biden presidency itself has been a lot more interesting than he or other members of the press corps expected. Sopel writes that he expected "Amtrak Joe" to be a "transitional" president who would "make the trains run on time a bit better, but not change all the rolling stock, let alone alter the gauge of the railway." Instead, he writes, Biden has been "transformational" during his first 100 days, though Democrats and Republicans clearly have different views on whether the transformation is a good thing.
Sopel looks at the ambitious measures Biden has introduced, including his infrastructure proposal and the COVID stimulus package, which goes far beyond the $1,400 checks to taxpayers with a child tax credit extension that "will lift literally millions of youngsters out of poverty." "It is a major piece of social policy," he writes. "It is big potatoes." Biden, he writes, has used his first 100 days to lay out a challenge to the dominant idea in US politics for 40 years—the "low-taxing, economy-deregulating, budget-balancing, competition-encouraging, union-limiting small government of Ronald Reagan"—and "unapologetically say to the American people 'yep, big government is back.'" Click for the full piece. (More President Biden stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
