‘I say enough’, Biden announces ‘use it or lose it’ policy for oil leases on federal land
President Joe Biden will deliver remarks this morning hailing another successful jobs reports that sees employment return to pre-pandemic levels and unemployment to drop to a level not seen since 1969.
While inflation remains a huge concern to Americans, Mr Biden has also ordered the release of up 1 million barrels of oil per day from the strategic petroleum reserve for the next six months in a bid to control prices that have spiked since the US and its allies imposed strict sanctions on Russia after it began its war on Ukraine.
Answering questions from reporters on Thursday, Mr Biden said Russian president Vladimir Putin “seems to be self-isolated and there’s some indication that he has fired or put under house arrest some of his advisers”.
Mr Biden also said that he was sceptical about Moscow’s claim that it has scaled back its onslaught in parts of Ukraine. However, the president added that “there’s a lot of speculation” and that he did not want to “put too much stock in that”.
Labour stats approach pre-pandemic levels as unemployment falls again
The US unemployment rate dropped two tenths of a percentage point over the last month to 3.6 percent, the lowest since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, “total non-farm payroll” rose by 431,000 from 1 March to 31 March, with “notable” gains across “leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, retail trade, and manufacturing”.
Andrew Feinberg has the latest from Washington, DC, ahead of President Biden’s remarks this morning highlighting the encouraging economic news.
Oliver O’Connell1 April 2022 15:08
What the jobs numbers mean
Political analyst Junita Tolliver has pulled out a stark line from the superficially encouraging new jobs report: while the overall pace of hiring remains healthy, there are still major gaps between the employment rates for different racial groups.
Meanwhile, others have plotted where the recent run of numbers puts the US as it plots a path back to a pre-pandemic level of economic health.
Andrew Naughtie1 April 2022 14:50
ICYMI: Biden announces gender-neutral changes to travel bureaucracy
The Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBT+ lobbying group, has praised the Biden administration for new measures including a new gender X marker on applications for US passports on Thursday, as well as gender-neutral airport scanners, in addition to other measures aimed at making the federal government more inclusive for transgender people.
Declaring that the people they campaign for have “an ally in the White House”, HRC interim president Joni Madison said that “News of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to policy reforms that will improve the lives of transgender and non-binary people in this country is a wonderful way to kick off this year’s International Transgender Day of Visibility.”
Andrew Naughtie1 April 2022 14:20
New jobs numbers show recovery still continuing
The latest jobs numbers show that the US economy has added well over 400,000 jobs in the last month – another blow to any claims that Joe Biden is overseeing some kind of economic disaster.
Read more from the Associated Press here.
Andrew Naughtie1 April 2022 13:52
Why can’t the US just legalise marijuana?
The House of Representatives is today expected to pass a bill that would finally legalise marijuana for personal use at the federal level, a move that would catch the government up with numerous states that have already done the same after a decades-long “war on drugs”. However, the chances of the bill making it through the US Senate are much more slim.
Here, John Bowden looks at the reasons behind the federal government’s reluctance to end the criminalisation of a drug smoked by millions of Americans every day:
Biden speech today: President’s speech to hail jobs report success as unemployment rate drops again