Joe Biden unveiled an infrastructure package worth $2 trillion (£1.4 trillion) in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, with a set of plans that could see decades of under-investment in the country’s roads, railways and electricity supplies reversed — whilst beating the climate crisis and unemployment in the process.
The White House announced that Biden would hold his first full Cabinet meeting a day after the infrastructure unveiling as the president kicks off his post-Covid agenda.
It comes as the US president's pleas for states to stick with mask mandates to slow the spread of coronavirus are being largely ignored as several Republican governors said they would drop the requirement in their states despite rising cases nationally.
The governors of Wyoming and Arkansas rejected a call by the president to reimpose mask orders after Mr Biden and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a day earlier that now was not the time to relax safety measures, with the seven-day average of new Covid cases up 13 per cent.
Elsewhere, the president’s son, Hunter Biden, has used his new memoir to describe Donald Trump as “a vile man with a vile mission”, according to a copy of the soon-to-be-released book seen by The Guardian.
Two Capitol police officers, meanwhile, have sued Mr Trump for both the physical and emotional after-effects from January’s riot, which they accused him of inciting.
The former president is also facing pressure from prosecutors in New York who have subpoenaed the personal banking records for the Trump Organisation’s chief financial officer. Long-time company chief Allen Weisselberg has supervised the company finances for several years, and prosecutors are reportedly investigating whether the company inflated property values.
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