It’s not 100 days yet, and the administration of US President Joe Biden has already passed the most ambitious legislation in more than a decade. The huge spending package that has now passed both houses of Congress is much more than a Covid-19 relief package. It’s a major healthcare bill, a childcare bill and a state-government financial stabilisation bill. Almost all families with children will receive thousands of dollars in federal assistance, even if neither parent lost a job in the pandemic. If Mr Biden retired right now, he would already have met a full term’s worth of Democratic Party priorities.
But, of course, Mr Biden is not retiring now. He is turning to his next priorities – and those are likely to be more contentious, not only for the opposition Republican Party, but also within his own coalition of Democrats.
The exact order of what comes next will depend on Democratic leadership in the two legislative houses – the House of Representatives and the Senate. They are looking at several issues, and all of them matter not only for the US, but also the global economy.
Mr Biden has already announced principles for a big immigration bill. He wants to offer some kind of legal status in the US to people who entered the country illegally, and to make it easier and faster to gain asylum.
Mr Biden also wants to enact a big infrastructure programme: not only the traditional roads, bridges and airports spending, but also the acceleration of the drive to a post-petroleum economy. In a video interview on March 9, White House chief of staff Ron Klain pledged that an infrastructure bill would fund hundreds of thousands of new charging stations for electric vehicles.
Biden has already passed the most ambitious legislation in more than a decade
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are itching to challenge China on trade and manufacturing. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, wants the party’s very next priority to be a bill that would support US supply chains and assert US control over global 5G mobile networks.
Looming behind all of these proposed legislative items is the existential challenge of climate change. Mr Biden rejoined the Paris climate accords at the very beginning of his administration. Now he has to devise ways to honour his commitments.
Those big four commitments – immigration, infrastructure, competing with China and tackling climate change – all come attended by risks and costs. Mr Biden’s early signals on immigration have already summoned a huge flow of unauthorised migration to the US: 100,000 people crossed the border with Mexico illegally in February, followed by almost 5,000 a day thus far in the month of March.
While liberal voters in pro-Democrat states generally welcome more immigration, and are unfazed even by unauthorised immigration, the prospect of a huge, unauthorised flow is very upsetting to swing voters along the border – very much including Hispanic voters. The Rio Grande Valley along the border with Mexico is majority Hispanic. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the valley in the 2016 election by massive, double-digit margins. But in 2020, Donald Trump’s tough-on-illegal-immigration policies cut the Democratic margin in the area dramatically. Zapata County, just south of the Texan city of Laredo, is 85 per cent Hispanic, and Trump won it outright – the first Republican to win the county since the aftermath of the 19th-century Civil War. In the state of Arizona, which is split between Democrat and Republican supporters, the newly elected Democrat senator Mark Kelly faces his first re-election campaign in 2022. Uncontrolled unauthorised migration into the state could cost his party that seat – and with it, control of the Senate.
Mr Biden’s infrastructure programme is already behind schedule. It was originally supposed to be second in line after Covid-19 relief. But the Covid-19 bill has been signed into law now – and there is no infrastructure bill in sight. Cost issues are a worry, but an even bigger problem is the argument over who gets what, and how much. An infrastructure bill is also more vulnerable to Republican obstruction in Congress – unless Mr Biden can find ways to rent the votes of 10 Republican senators. Despite four years of promising, his predecessor Mr Trump never managed even to write an infrastructure bill, never mind bring one to a vote. Can Mr Biden do better? The clock is ticking.
If not, the anti-China bill could displace the infrastructure bill. Mr Trump started trade wars against half the world. Mr Biden has suspended the Trump administration’s punitive tariffs upon the UK, but many Democrats are in no hurry to end Mr Trump’s trade quarrels with China. During the 2020 campaign, Mr Biden repeatedly vowed to insert “Buy American” provisions into all government procurement – upsetting not only close trading partners like Canada and Mexico, but raising shadows over all world trade. Since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, global trade has grown more slowly than world economic output. Economists have called the 2010s the era of “slowbalisation”. Mr Biden seems in no hurry to change this, to the cost of the whole planet.
Even costlier to the planet is inaction on climate change. Over the past decade, the US has moved sharply away from burning coal. By 2022, the US will burn half as much coal as in the peak year, 2007. There are early indicators that 2018 will prove to have been the peak year for US consumption of crude oil. Mr Biden wants to hurry that transition along. But how? A cap-and-trade scheme collapsed in the Democratic-controlled Congress the last time a Democrat, Barack Obama, was in the White House. Carbon taxes are obvious targets for Republican attack. Encouraging and subsidising new green technology does not get the job done anything like fast enough. Yet if Mr Biden does nothing, he’ll rip apart a Democratic party in which the base increasingly sees the environment as the important issue once Covid-19 is overcome.
William Ewart Gladstone, who dominated 19th-century British politics into his 80s, was once mocked by a political opponent as “an old man in a hurry”. That opponent was onto something. The older Gladstone got, the faster he moved. Something similar seems to be happening with President Joe Biden, another old man in a hurry. He can count on control of Congress for only two years. He’s already crammed through a lot. More, more, more seems on the way.
David Frum is a writer at the Atlantic who was speechwriter and special assistant to former US president George W Bush
MO
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The squad traveling to Brazil:
Faisal Al Ketbi, Ibrahim Al Hosani, Khalfan Humaid Balhol, Khalifa Saeed Al Suwaidi, Mubarak Basharhil, Obaid Salem Al Nuaimi, Saeed Juma Al Mazrouei, Saoud Abdulla Al Hammadi, Taleb Al Kirbi, Yahia Mansour Al Hammadi, Zayed Al Kaabi, Zayed Saif Al Mansoori, Saaid Haj Hamdou, Hamad Saeed Al Nuaimi. Coaches Roberto Lima and Alex Paz.
SPECS
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
List of alleged parties
May 15 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'work meeting' with at
least 17 staff members
May 20 2020: PM and Carrie attend 'bring your own booze'
party
Nov 27 2020: PM gives speech at leaving do for his staff
Dec 10 2020: Staff party held by then-education secretary
Gavin Williamson
Dec 13 2020: PM and Carrie throw a flat party
Dec 14 2020: London mayor candidate Shaun Bailey holds staff party at Conservative
Party headquarters
Dec 15 2020: PM takes part in a staff quiz
Dec 18 2020: Downing Street Christmas party
Brief scores:
QPR 0
Watford 1
Capoue 45' 1
The Beach Bum
Director: Harmony Korine
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Isla Fisher, Snoop Dogg
Two stars
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cylturbo
Transmission: seven-speed DSG automatic
Power: 242bhp
Torque: 370Nm
Price: Dh136,814
What is Diwali?
The Hindu festival is at once a celebration of the autumn harvest and the triumph of good over evil, as outlined in the Ramayana.
According to the Sanskrit epic, penned by the sage Valmiki, Diwali marks the time that the exiled king Rama – a mortal with superhuman powers – returned home to the city of Ayodhya with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman, after vanquishing the 10-headed demon Ravana and conquering his kingdom of Lanka. The people of Ayodhya are believed to have lit thousands of earthen lamps to illuminate the city and to guide the royal family home.
In its current iteration, Diwali is celebrated with a puja to welcome the goodness of prosperity Lakshmi (an incarnation of Sita) into the home, which is decorated with diyas (oil lamps) or fairy lights and rangoli designs with coloured powder. Fireworks light up the sky in some parts of the word, and sweetmeats are made (or bought) by most households. It is customary to get new clothes stitched, and visit friends and family to exchange gifts and greetings.
Winners
Best Men's Player of the Year: Kylian Mbappe (PSG)
Maradona Award for Best Goal Scorer of the Year: Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)
TikTok Fans’ Player of the Year: Robert Lewandowski
Top Goal Scorer of All Time: Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United)
Best Women's Player of the Year: Alexia Putellas (Barcelona)
Best Men's Club of the Year: Chelsea
Best Women's Club of the Year: Barcelona
Best Defender of the Year: Leonardo Bonucci (Juventus/Italy)
Best Goalkeeper of the Year: Gianluigi Donnarumma (PSG/Italy)
Best Coach of the Year: Roberto Mancini (Italy)
Best National Team of the Year: Italy
Best Agent of the Year: Federico Pastorello
Best Sporting Director of the Year: Txiki Begiristain (Manchester City)
Player Career Award: Ronaldinho
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
Hili 2: Unesco World Heritage site
The site is part of the Hili archaeological park in Al Ain. Excavations there have proved the existence of the earliest known agricultural communities in modern-day UAE. Some date to the Bronze Age but Hili 2 is an Iron Age site. The Iron Age witnessed the development of the falaj, a network of channels that funnelled water from natural springs in the area. Wells allowed settlements to be established, but falaj meant they could grow and thrive. Unesco, the UN's cultural body, awarded Al Ain's sites - including Hili 2 - world heritage status in 2011. Now the most recent dig at the site has revealed even more about the skilled people that lived and worked there.
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Poacher
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