President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. today announced the designation of a Presidential Delegation to attend the Inauguration of His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu on May 29, 2023, in Abuja, Nigeria.
The Honorable Marcia L. Fudge, Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, will lead the delegation.
Members of the Presidential Delegation:
Mr. David Greene, Chargé d’Affaires, a.i., U.S. Embassy Abuja
The Honorable Sydney Kamlager-Dove, United States Representative (D), California
The Honorable Marisa Lago, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, U.S. Department of Commerce
General Michael E. Langley, Commander of U.S. Africa Command
The Honorable Enoh T. Ebong, Director, U.S. Trade and Development Agency
The Honorable Mary Catherine Phee, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State
The Honorable Judd Devermont, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council
The Honorable Monde Muyangwa, Assistant Administrator for the Bureau for Africa, U.S. Agency for International Development
The US government will scrap vaccine mandates for federal employees and international travellers next week.
The Biden Administration announced Monday night that these mandates will go by the wayside starting May 11, when the Covid-related public health emergency ends.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also announced that the requirements will be scrapped for remaining educators and federally funded health systems still subject to conditions.
‘We are in a different phase of our response to Covid-19 than we were when many of these requirements were put into place,’ the Biden admin said in a statement.
‘These measures are no longer necessary,’ it continued.
The measures finally align the US with the rest of the world. Very few countries, such as Angola and Indonesia still require visitors to have received a Covid vaccine to gain entry.
The White House cited the statistics showing that since January 2021, Covid deaths have dropped by 95 percent, and hospitalizations are down nearly 91 percent.
Recent studies have shown the vaccines, while able to prevent hospitalization and death, are not as effective against transmission of the virus.
A 2022 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that after 25 weeks, the protection the Pfizer vaccine gave to recipients against Omicron infection fell to just nine percent.
A booster shot initially raised this protection to 67 percent before dropping to 45 percent after two weeks.
Experts have previously slammed decisions to keep Covid-era policies in place as ‘out of step’ with the rest of the world.
American president, Joe Biden, has announced that he planned to visit sub-Saharan Africa, in what will be the first trip by a US president since 2015.
“We’re all going to be seeing you and you’re going to see a lot of us,”
Biden told a summit of African leaders.Also, he called for African Union permanent seat in G20 and announced $2.5 billion in food assistance to Africa.
President Buhari on Wednesday, December 14, met with United States President Joe Biden in Washington DC.
Photos shared by the Presidency show the President in a meeting with Biden and the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the White House on the sidelines of the US-Africa Leader’s Summit.
The US-Africa summit, which began in 2014, is the biggest international gathering in Washington since the COVID-19 pandemic and the most substantial commitment by a US administration to boosting its influence in Africa for almost a decade.
The summit, according to the US government, “will demonstrate the US enduring commitment to Africa and will underscore the importance of US-Africa relations and increased cooperation on shared priorities.”
Former US President Donald Trump has slammed Joe Biden for swapping US women’s NBA star Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia.
Brittney was freed on Thursday, Dec. 8, after spending nearly a year in Russian captivity as part of a prisoner swap deal with the Biden administration.
Reacting, Trump wrote in a post on his social media website Truth Social:
“What kind of a deal is it to swap Brittney Griner, a basketball player who openly hates our country for the man known as ‘The Merchant of Death’.”
The former president suggested Paul Whelan should have been freed instead of Griner.
Whelan is a former Marine with citizenship in four nations, including the U.S., who was arrested in Russia in 2018 on espionage charges and convicted in 2020, receiving a 16-year prison sentence.
Griner, who was arrested in February for bringing vape cartridges with hashish oil into the country, was released in exchange for Viktor Bout, an infamous Russian arms dealer serving a 25-year sentence for conspiring to kill Americans, leading many critics of president Biden’s administration to say Russia got the better end of the trade.
Donald Trump has mocked Joe Biden for being given a seat on the 14th row at the Queen’s funeral and said if he were the president he would have been moved closer to the front of the audience.
The former President said on his social media platform – Truth Social – that it showed there is “no respect” for the United States anymore. He also insisted it was a good time for Biden to get to know “leaders of certain Third World Countries”.
In his first reaction to the funeral, Trump noted Biden’s position in Westminster Abbey behind the Polish president.
He wrote: “This is what’s happened to America in just two short years. No respect! However, a good time for our President to get to know the leaders of certain Third World countries.”
He added: “If I were president, they wouldn’t have sat me back there—and our Country would be much different than it is right now!”
He then quoted his own tweet and added: “In real estate, like in politics and life, location is everything.”
After nearly four decades, Dr. Anthony Fauci says he’ll be departing his roles as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as chief medical officer to US President Joe Biden at the end of this year.
Fauci known as the US’ top infectious disease expert has served at NIAID for 38 years starting in former President Ronald Reagan’s administration, a role in which he helped lead the US response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as well as West Nile virus, the anthrax attacks, pandemic influenza, various bird influenza threats, Ebola and Zika. He became a public figure during the United States’ response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden.
I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci, 81 said on Monday, August 22.
Fauci said in his statement that he is “not retiring” and will “continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats.”
President Biden praised Fauci’s work in a statement.
“Because of Dr. Fauci’s many contributions to public health, lives here in the United States and around the world have been saved.
As he leaves his position in the U.S. Government, I know the American people and the entire world will continue to benefit from Dr. Fauci’s expertise in whatever he does next,” Biden said.
“Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work.
I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him.”
Donald Trump has dropped a major hint about a potential 2024 presidential bid while blasting President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The former president told fellow Republicans ‘the time is coming’ for him to make a formal announcement about his next bid for the White House.
Trump said he believes ‘people are going to be very happy’ with his decision while noting that America has ‘lost everything’ under Biden’s leadership
The Republican also confirmed during his address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas last week, that he will be making his plans to run for office public in the near future. ‘It’s certainly not a very long period, the time is coming,’ Trump said Saturday when Fox News asked when Republicans could expect a formal announcement. ‘I think people are going to be very happy, our country has never been in a position like this, we’ve lost everything.’
He argued the nation was facing both domestic and foreign policy crises, stating America lost its ‘prestige’ when Biden withdrew US troops from Afghanistan last year.
He also claimed the US is a ‘nation that allowed Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and it will only get worse.
Trump complained that Biden turned ‘the safest border in US history by far’ into ‘the worst border ever in history.’ ‘Just last month, an illegal alien here in Texas was indicted for the cold blooded murders of four elderly women throughout the state.
And he’s been linked to the deaths of at least 24 people,’ he said. ‘What we do in the next few months and the next few years will determine whether American civilization will collapse and fail or whether it will thrive, frankly like never before.’
Trump also commented on the 2020 election, which he continues to maintain was ‘rigged and stolen.’ ‘The election was rigged and stolen, and now our country is being systematically destroyed.
And everybody knows it. I ran twice and won twice,’ he declared. ‘America is on the edge of an abyss. And our movement is the only force on Earth that can save it.
We have to seize this opportunity to deal with the radical left socialists and fascists.’ His remarks came shortly after the CPAC unveiled a poll showing the former president as an ‘overwhelming favorite’ for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Trump captured nearly 70 percent of the ballots cast at the conference. DeSantis was a distant second at 23.7 percent.
Brittney Griner is expected to be swapped by America for the ‘Merchant of Death’ arms dealer within weeks as President Joe Biden scrambles to get her back to US soil to undo her nine-year prison sentence for smuggling cannabis into the country Russia.Griner was on Thursday, August 4, sentenced to nine years in prison for smuggling a weed pen into Moscow in February.
The 31-year-old WNBA star claimed in court it was an ‘honest mistake’ and that she didn’t mean to bring the drugs in.It has been reported that the White House plans to negotiate a swap of Griner and Paul Whelan, another US citizen being held in Russian prison, in exchange for Viktor Bout, an arms dealer who was arrested in 2008 in Thailand at the request of the US authorities.
The Russians refused to agree on a deal before Griner’s sentence, citing the need for judicial process.Due to public pressure from Griner’s fans and several Hollywood stars, President Biden is rushing to have her released.
A source close to the ongoing negotiations told DailyMail.com that a deal to swap Griner with Bout is now more likely than ever, and could be completed within a month if there are no delays to the process.
‘The US positioned has weakened now. They showed their hand and now their bargaining position has weakened,’ the source said.
Griner’s attorneys have ten days to file an appeal. After that, the matter would only take a few more weeks, they said. It is now uncertain that the deal would include Paul Whelan, an American who has been locked up on espionage charges since 2018.
The US had been pushing for a deal that would include both Griner and Whelan. Now that she has been sentenced in the Russian court of law, their leverage is weaker.’The Russians might think Whelan is too much now… after today, his place in the deal is not so certain,’ the source said.
Bout now has less time on his sentence now than Griner does.Bout was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 for using multiple air transport companies to smuggle weapons out of eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East.
He had already served four years and has since completed another ten. Bout technically has 11 years left on his sentence, and must serve only 85 percent of the total term under federal prison guidelines which makes him eligible for release in around five or six.
President Biden on Friday is set to take steps to lay the groundwork to increase the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors to $15 per hour.
The order directs the various agencies to review what workers earn less than $15 per hour, and prepare rules for contractors to ensure their workers are not paid less.
Under the order, contractors would also have to provide emergency paid leave to their employees.
Biden hopes to finalize the actions within his first 100 days in office.
In 2014, then-President Obama signed an order raising the minimum wage for federal workers from $7.25 to $10.10, hoping to pressure Congress to increase the federal minimum wage for the first time since 2009.
President Biden.
The minimum wage of $7.25 has remained unchanged for those not employed by the federal government or subject to higher state and local ordinances. Biden’s COVID-19 relief plan includes a plan to gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15, but the plan faces Republican opposition and cannot be passed through budget reconciliation, a process that would allow Democrats to sidestep a GOP filibuster.
Biden’s executive action will also restore certain collective bargaining provisions to federal workers and eliminate Schedule F, an employment classification former President Trump created in October that would strip most civil service protections and make it easier to fire them without cause.
Trump was often frustrated about the civil service and his inability to summarily dismiss career civil servants.
United States President Joe Biden has signed a string of executive orders, memorandums and directives that will reverse some of his predecessor Donald Trump’s most divisive policies, including rescinding the so-called “Muslim ban”, rejoining the Paris climate accord, and ending the process to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Just hours after his inauguration at the US Capitol on Wednesday, Biden signed 15 executive actions that his team earlier said aimed to “reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration”.
Biden told reporters in the Oval Office that there was “no time to waste”.
“Some of the executive actions I’m going to be signing today are going to help change the course of the Covid crisis, we’re going to combat climate change in a way that we haven’t done so far and advance racial equity and support other underserved communities,” he said, as reported by the Reuters news agency.
President Joe Biden.
Biden’s first big challenge as he enters the White House will be tackling the surging Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 people across the country to date.
To that effect, Biden signed an order on Wednesday afternoon to institute a 100-day mask mandate across the US and appoint a Covid-19 coordinator to manage a national response to the pandemic.
He has also announced that the US would remain a member of the WHO, and that Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would attend the ongoing WHO Executive Board meeting at the head of the US delegation.
Here is a look at some of Biden’s first executive actions as president:
Rescinding the ‘Muslim ban’
Biden rescinded the so-called “Muslim ban”, an executive order Trump signed in 2017 that banned travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the US.
The ban was changed several times amid legal challenges and ultimately upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2018.
“The president put an end to the Muslim ban – a policy rooted in religious animus and xenophobia,” Biden’s White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a Wednesday evening briefing.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomed the decision as “an important first step toward undoing the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies of the previous administration”.
“It is an important fulfilment of a campaign pledge to the Muslim community and its allies,” the group’s executive director, Nihad Awad, said in a statement.
Rejoining Paris agreement
The US will once again become a party to the Paris Agreement, Biden also announced.
The move to rejoin the international treaty on climate change is expected to take effect 30 days after it is deposited with the UN, Biden’s team said earlier on Wednesday.
In November, the US became the first country in the world to withdraw from the treaty – a move that fuelled tensions between Washington and its allies in Europe and drew a widespread rebuke from environmental and human rights groups.
Biden launched his “100 Days Masking Challenge”, ordering a mandatory mask mandate in all US federal buildings for the first 100 days of his administration to try and curb the spread of Covid-19.
The order asks Americans to do their “patriotic duty and mask up for 100 days” and also creates the position of Covid-19 response coordinator, who will report directly to the president and help coordinate a unified national response to the surging pandemic.
“This will strengthen our own efforts to get the pandemic under control by improving global health,” Psaki said during the briefing, adding that Dr Fauci, one of the top US infectious disease experts, would participate in a WHO meeting this week “as the US head of delegation”.
The Infectious Disease Society of America immediately welcomed the mandatory mask order.
“The president’s order comes at a critical point, when vaccines, as well as a plan to accelerate their roll out, offer new hope, but also when more easily transmitted variants of the virus present new challenges,” the group said.
Re-engaging with WHO
Biden is halting Trump’s planned withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Trump administration in July of last year notified Congress and the United Nations that the US was formally withdrawing from the WHO. The decision would have gone into effect in July.
Trump justified the decision by saying the WHO “failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms” and accusing the group of helping China cover up the origins of the novel coronavirus.
The Biden-Harris administration is expected to participate in a WHO executive board meeting that is continuing this week, Biden’s team said earlier on Wednesday.
Bob Goodfellow, the interim executive director of Amnesty International USA, welcomed Biden’s WHO decision as “a much-needed first step” in restoring Washington’s cooperation with the international community.
He also urged Biden to support the WHO’s COVAX programme, which aims to ensure Covid-19 vaccines are evenly distributed between countries.
“It is of the utmost importance that the Biden administration lead multilateral efforts to fight the pandemic and to support and fund global vaccine efforts,” Goodfellow said.
Halting border wall construction
Biden also rescinded the national emergency declaration that was used to justify some of Trump’s funding diversions to build the wall on the US-Mexico border.
The order, Biden’s team said earlier on Wednesday, will direct “an immediate pause” in construction to allow for a review of the funding and contracting methods used.
Building a “big” and “beautiful” wall between the US and Mexico to block undocumented immigrants from entering the country was one of Trump’s key 2016 election campaign promises.
Revoking Keystone pipeline approval
Biden also revoked the presidential permit granted to the multibillion-dollar Keystone XL pipeline, a contentious energy project that was slated to ship 830,000 barrels of oil per day between the Canadian province of Alberta and the US state of Nebraska.
Canada, which this week said it remained committed to the project, expressed its “disappointment” at the decision on Wednesday.
But Matthew Campbell,a staff lawyer at the Native American Rights Fund, which has represented Indigenous nations in legal challenges against Keystone XL, told Al Jazeera Biden’s decision is “vindication” for Native communities opposed to the pipeline.
Fortifying DACA
In 2012, while serving as vice president to President Barack Obama, the US adopted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to provide temporary relief from deportation to “Dreamers”, young people who were brought to the US as children.
The Trump administration has tried to terminate the programme, through which 700,000 young people have applied for relief.
In a presidential memorandum signed on Wednesday, Biden directed the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the US attorney general, to make sure that DACA is preserved and fortified.
The memorandum also calls on Congress to enact legislation that would provide “permanent status and a pathway to citizenship” to the Dreamers.
World leaders congratulated President Biden shortly after his inauguration on Wednesday, with allied nations and bodies expressing hope for continued cooperation with the new administration.
“Congratulations President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on your historic inauguration,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who enjoyed a close relationship with former President Trump.
“President Biden, you and I have had a warm personal friendship going back many decades,” he added. “I look forward to working with you to strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance, to continue expanding peace between Israel and the Arab world and to confront common challenges, chief among them, the threat posed by Iran.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who also found an ally in Trump, tweeted that “America’s leadership is vital on the issues that matter to us all, from climate change to COVID, and I look forward to working with President Biden.”
“The India-US partnership is based on shared values. We have a substantial and multifaceted bilateral agenda, growing economic engagement and vibrant people to people linkages. Committed to working with President @JoeBiden to take the India-US partnership to even greater heights,” said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, another Trump ally.
The laudatory messages come after the Trump administration strengthened some of America’s closest international relationships and roiled others.
Other world leaders who saw their relationship with the U.S. falter during the Trump administration said they look forward to working with the Biden White House on an array of issues.
“Canada and the United States enjoy one of the most unique relationships in the world, built on a shared commitment to democratic values, common interests, and strong economic and security ties. Our two countries are more than neighbours – we are close friends, partners, and allies,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who faced a wave of tariffs from the Trump administration.
“We will continue this partnership as we fight the global COVID-19 pandemic and support a sustainable economic recovery that will build back better for everyone. We will also work together to advance climate action and clean economic growth, promote inclusion and diversity, and create good middle class jobs and opportunities for our people while contributing to democracy, peace, and security at home and around the world,” Trudeau added.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, meanwhile, said that the “bond between North America and Europe is the bedrock of our security, and a strong NATO is good for both North America and Europe.”
“For more than seventy years, our transatlantic Alliance has guaranteed freedom, peace, and security for our people. U.S. leadership remains essential as we work together to protect our democracies, our values and the rules-based international order,” Stoltenberg said.
Trump made no secret of his antagonism toward the alliance. The former president also repeatedly chastised members for not paying more for the alliance’s defense, threatening to pull out of NATO should countries not increase their spending.
Biden during his inauguration speech echoed promises he made on the campaign trail of bolstering the U.S.’s international alliances. On his first day in office, the new president is expected to sign a wave of executive orders, including ending Trump’s controversial travel ban and reentering the U.S. in the Paris climate accords.
“America has been tested. And we’ve come out stronger for it,” Biden said Wednesday. “We will repair our alliances and engagement with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s challenges, not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example, strong and trusted partner for peace progress and security.”
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