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Seeking Independence From COVID After acknowledging that it came up short on the goal, the White House shifted its focus to a milestone that it has met: 300 million shots were administered during the first 150 days of the administration. According to Jeffrey D. Zients, the administration’s pandemic response coordinator, the amount by which the vaccination rate will fall short is not significant. Speaking at a White House briefing, Zients said, “We have built an unparalleled, first-of-its-kind, nationwide vaccination program....

“We’ve been hard at work identifying problems and solutions to those problems to accelerate the movement of goods,” a senior administration official told reporters in a preview ahead of Biden’s remarks on Wednesday. “Today’s commitments are a big deal and will go a long way in addressing short-term challenges.” American consumers have increasingly faced product shortages, particularly for items ordered online, and rapidly escalating prices. The supply chain disruptions, which the administration has attributed largely to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, have also hit the ground freight industry....

The data, which was released by the Brown University School of Public Health, shows that approximately 49,555,542 COVID-19 vaccinations have been administered, which equates to 49.6 percent of Biden’s goal, as he has spent slightly over a month in office. The tracker also shows that there were also roughly 16,525,257 vaccine doses administered prior to January 21, indicating a total number of 66,080,799 doses administered since states began inoculating individuals....

The expected order will pertain to the way migrant children are treated and may signal a key change in the last major asylum restriction enacted during the Trump administration, the Associated Press reported. Stoltz spoke about the order during a court hearing in Fort Worth, Texas. He said the CDC will issue “a new order on the subject of the children,” modifying a policy from the Biden administration that allows children who cross the border alone to seek asylum, an exception to the current ban....

The Education Department announced the move and out of the many borrowers, around 43 percent are in default on their loans, the department said. The loans will be cleared for borrowers who left ITT Tech colleges during an eight-year period before it closed in 2016. In June, the administration cleared more than $500 million in student loan debt for 18,000 borrowers and former students of ITT Tech that were defrauded....

While delivering a speech about climate change in Somerset, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Biden said that environmental pollution during his childhood was so rampant that people needed to wipe oil off of car windshields to be able to drive. The president suggested that the pollution was to blame for the skin cancer that he would later experience, saying that Delaware used to have the “highest cancer rate in the nation.”...

As Alaska’s first governor with roots in the Arctic, and the tribal president of the only community within ANWR, the two of us have personally witnessed the tragedy that results when rural Americans are denied economic opportunity. The state of Alaska possesses more resource wealth than nearly any other place on the planet, yet in hundreds of roadless communities, jobs and opportunities remain scarce to nonexistent. Rural and Native Alaskans shouldn’t be forced to abandon their traditional lands in search of a better life, yet that’s exactly what occurs when outsiders deny Alaskans access to our own resources....

In a message from the White House on Saturday, Biden mourned those who have lost their lives in both the U.S. and around the world. “This year, at least 46 transgender individuals in this country—and hundreds more around the world—were killed in horrifying acts of violence. Each of these lives was precious. Each of them deserved freedom, justice, and joy,” he said. “We mourn those we lost in the deadliest year on record for transgender Americans, as well as the countless other transgender people — disproportionately Black and brown transgender women and girls — who face brutal violence, discrimination, and harassment....

Following Ginsburg’s death, Trump has outlined his desire to move swiftly to replace her despite there being just weeks until the election. Biden previously said the vote should be held before a candidate is put forward, with the victor deciding who goes forward to fill the vacant seat. With Democratic lawmakers pushing against Trump’s desire, and the Senate GOP’s willingness to facilitate it, the prospect of packing the court in future has been discussed....

The poll, which was conducted by CNBC/Change Research, surveyed 2,408 likely voters across these six states from June 12 to June 14. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Biden holds the largest lead over Trump in Florida, with a 50 percent to 43 percent advantage. Biden’s next largest lead is in Pennsylvania with 49 percent supporting the former vice president and 46 percent favoring Trump....

The poll, which was conducted by Chegg/College Pulse election tracking, found that 68 percent of college students said they would vote for Biden if the election was held today, while 19 percent chose Trump. Among the remaining percentages, 6 percent said they would not vote, and 7 percent said other or a third-party candidate. Chegg/College Pulse’s student election tracker has been surveying 1,500 full-time and part-time college students on a weekly basis, which began on April 14....

“The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19,” Biden said in a statement. Biden said he received an initial analysis earlier this month but is directing the intelligence community to dive deeper and report back to him in 90 days. “As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden said....

The group shared its new ad and a polling memo with Newsweek to underscore its argument that the time is now for legalizing young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. The memo says that despite efforts to cancel DACA and target Dreamers during the Trump administration, polling has been consistently strong over the past four years in favor of Dreamers. It also cites March polling from well-respected Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who led polling for Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain, which reported that over 75% of voters nationwide support a path to citizenship for Dreamers, including a majority of Republican voters....

Hours before Biden’s interview with CBS, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic will only scale back its illicit nuclear activities after Biden abrogates U.S. economic sanctions against the regime. O’Donnell asked Biden if he would comply with Khamenei’s condition. Biden responded with a curt “no,” and then nodded after O’Donnell followed up by asking if “they have to end uranium enrichment first?” Back in the studio, CBS’s Margret Brennan concluded, “It appears there is a standoff....

The CDC says it plans to end all sweeping asylum limits at the U.S. border, which were originally created at the beginning of the pandemic in order to curb cases of COVID-19 allegedly being brought over by migrants. The repealed order was Title 42, the controversial border policy enacted during the administration of former President Donald Trump. Around 200,000 migrants are estimated to have been turned away from seeking asylum in the U....

Biden’s American Jobs Plan includes a much-needed expansion of access to home and community-based services though Medicaid, currently riddled by long wait lists. But perhaps most importantly, the plan would support well-paying caregiving jobs that include benefits and the ability to unionize. This would be long-overdue and welcome support for a critical part of the long-term care market, which has been largely ignored since budgetary concerns thwarted the implementation of the CLASS Act in 2011....

While polling shows the majority of Americans don’t support such measures, Biden is pushing for taxpayers to fund the abortion industry overseas and pay for domestic abortions on demand. He has also proposed loosening restrictions on abortion by codifying Roe v. Wade. With abortion-supporting majorities in both the House and the Senate, a vice president who prosecuted pro-life journalists as California’s attorney general and a prospective secretary of Health and Human Services who was rebuked by the Supreme Court for trying to force pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortions, the president may just get what he’s proposing....

“If John Bolton’s accounts are true,” Biden wrote in his tweet, “it’s not only morally repugnant, it’s a violation of Donald Trump’s sacred duty to the American people to protect America’s interests and defend our values.” In a longer statement obtained by Newsweek, Biden wrote that Trump “sold out the American people to protect his political future.” “Trump was willing to trade away our most cherished democratic values for the empty promise of a flimsy trade deal that bailed him out of his disastrous tariff war that did so much damage to our farmers, manufacturers, and consumers,” he continued....

Russian troops have been gathering near the country’s shared borders with neighboring Ukraine, sparking fears in the former Soviet Union member and the West that Moscow is planning an invasion. “What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do,” Biden told reporters on Friday....

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Friday said that renegotiation of the Iran Nuclear Deal could occur before Raisi takes power, offering some White House officials hope that President Joe Biden may be able to restart the talks which began under former President Barack Obama in 2015. But Israel’s Bennett cautioned the U.S. against trying to work with any Tehran officials, particularly the incoming Raisi regime of the Islamic Republic government....