Brief #119—Immigration
By Kathryn Baron
Thus far, 2021 and the Biden Administration have seen a major increase in unaccompanied migrant children crossing the US Southern Border – more than tripled. In the first 3 months of 2021, 4,500 unaccompanied minors were held by CBP and over 9,000 by the Department of Health and Human Services. Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas refers to the phenomena as a challenge – as it is not a new phenomenon or crisis – but rather a pattern. During this fragile transition of power – particularly in the immigration sector – there are a few ways the Biden Administration can seek to strengthen the American immigration system, while dismantling the xenophobic Trump-era policies and still remain realistic in scope.
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Political Comments About Coronavirus Help Spark Rise in Asian-American Hate Crimes
Brief #10—Social Justice
By Erika Shannon
Over the course of the past year, there has been a rise in the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans. This is being credited to COVID-19 originating in Asia, along with the rhetoric of former president Donald Trump. Trump often referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” on Twitter, and continued to defend his use of the term at a later press conference. While he finally agreed to not use the term, it had already done damage; it sparked a Twitter movement of anti-Asian sentiment and gave some people the fuel they needed to take that hate off the web and into the real world. According to The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, anti-Asian hate crimes spiked from 49 crimes resulting in charges in 2019 to 122 crimes in 2020. The findings are particularly disturbing because overall hate crimes actually dropped by 7% in 2020 due to the ongoing pandemic and associated business and school closures. In 2021, the racism towards Asian Americans seems to unfortunately not be slowing down.
Fishing Boat Dispatch
Brief #3—Marine Environment
By Katherine Cart
Walk to Maine’s midcoast and look southwest. Unless you’ve gotten yourself in a spruce thicket, you will see Atlantic water filling the hole that is the Gulf of Maine. Likely, you will hear the sea, smell it, be standing in its sandy refuse. It will very possibly feel colder – or at least damper – here than a mile inland. Chilled oceanic air is sucked landwards, dumping sludgy precipitation, heaping fog, painting rime on roof, pine, window pane, dune hollow. A weathered-in gulf can be, to the casual observer, somewhat benign, rather like watching on a TV screen an avalanche shift some unpopulated mountain. Storms are spectacular to witness from the beaches, nasty to endure offshore. Inland Maine is a stronghold well protected from tidal degradation by granitic coastline, carved out over several millennia by the heaving of the Laurentide ice sheet over Appalachian stone. If you are standing at the coast and look down, between your feet you will see the long lateral scratches the Laurentide left, sloughing southwest into the sea. One cannot help but to think of fingernails, and a general determination to cling on.
The Impact of Biden’s American Rescue Plan on Education
Brief #57—Education
By Emily Carty
President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, signed into law on March 11, 2021, has a wide range of implications regarding the school system and, more generally, education and development of our youth population. Under the Act’s Title II (Committee on health, education, labor, and pensions), Subtitle A (Education Matters), Biden’s plan for our education system is laid out. Throughout the entirety of the act however, there are various sections that impact children or education, particularly notable is an increased child tax credit that will be extended to benefit lower-income families.
The Federal Deficit and Uncollected Taxes
Brief #112—Economics
By Rosalind Gottfried
Biden’s 1.9 trillion dollar American Rescue Plan is viewed as adding to the already ballooning federal deficit. Certainly the pandemic has added to that burden but the structural issues go much deeper than the necessary expenditures to address the desperate economic situation which befell many Americans. The deficit is expected to reach 35 trillion dollars by the end of the 2021 fiscal year; it stood at 28 trillion prior to the latest stimulus. In the first five months of the fiscal year the deficit was 68% greater than for the same time in the previous year.
The War On Government
U.S. Resist Blog
By Anand Giridharadas
Forty Januaries ago, Ronald Reagan, upon assuming the most powerful governmental office in the history of civilization, declared in his inaugural address that “in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” To show he meant it, Reagan soon proposed a budget that gutted social programs and cut taxes. The idea was that, down the road, it would be harder to restore such programs and still profess yourself dedicated to fiscal responsibility. Some years later, an incisive observer of American politics reflected on that pivotal moment in 1981: “The Reagan tax cuts have ended growth of the social agenda; it’s all come to a screeching halt.” The observer was a young senator named Joe Biden. He had voted for the Reagan budget. Now, like many of his Democratic colleagues, he would have to live in the political and moral — and narrative — universe it created.
The Five Things that Should Be On The Biden Tech Agenda
Brief #41—Technology
By Charles A. Rubin
As the Biden Administration fills out its policy teams, we at U.S. Resist News would like to suggest an urgent technology agenda for consideration. The geometric improvements in computer processor speeds and the dramatic breakthroughs in new technologies have made the need for leadership and open discussion imperative. We call on the Biden Administration to get out in front of these issues to make these technologies available to all Americans and ensure that these technologies work in the service of all Americans.
Biden and the American Relationship with Europe
Brief #104—Foreign Policy
By Will Solomon
The Biden campaign was extremely vocal about its intention to restore a “traditional” American role in foreign affairs, an essential component of this being a restitution of America’s typical postwar role with respect to its European allies. In theory, this would reverse Trump’s erratic position towards these traditionally central alliances, which involved the imposition of tariffs on European goods, mixed rhetoric on NATO (unusual for a postwar American president), and his rhetorical hostility to the European Union, among other phenomena.
Biden Administration Gives the Green Light to Unionization Efforts in Amazon Warehouses
Brief #40—Technology
By Scout Burchill
By the end of the month, history may well be made in Bessemer, Alabama as workers at an Amazon warehouse there are currently voting on whether or not to unionize. If successful, it will be the first Amazon warehouse in the United States to be represented by a union and will surely send shockwaves throughout the nation, encouraging other Amazon warehouses to stand firm against the company’s notorious union busting tactics and begin the fight for their own collective bargaining rights.
Biden Progressive Poverty Policies
Brief #111—Economic
By Rosalind Gottfried
President Biden’s 1.9 trillion dollar American Rescue Plan contains the most comprehensive anti-poverty program since President Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s. The program will reduce overall poverty by one third and child poverty by one half. Poverty is expected to be reduced to 8.7% for the year compared with 13.7% previously. The effect on Black and Hispanic families will be even greater bringing 38% of Black families and 43% of Hispanic families out of poverty while affecting more than one half of the children in these demographics. This wide ranging program attacks poverty from multiple sources though it contains one time payments and policies which will expire at the end of 2021; nothing in the program extends into 2022 at this time.










