Biden Was Not "Progressive" In Year 1

A comprehensive list of everything that Joe Biden and his administration have done that was against a “progressive” agenda throughout his first year.

President Biden did not run as a progressive, but he has struggled to complete even semi progressive campaign promises.

For a more updated list, see here

Send this to anyone interested in Biden’s first year. Everything on this list has a source.

This is divided into the following categories: Foreign Policy, Immigration, COVID, Domestic Policy, and Other.

Foreign Policy

-Air Strikes in Syria

-Because of crippling US sanctions: 23 million of 39 million Afghans not having enough food to eat

-Killing 10 people in a drone strike in Afghanistan

-Approving a $650 million potential air-to-air missile deal for Saudi Arabia

-Biden signing a $768,000,000,000 defense budget, $37,000,000,000 more than last years budget.

-Choosing Rahm Emanuel as the US ambassador to Japan.

-Not sanctioning MBS

-Approving the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel

-Reaffirming the United States’s opposition to an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into possible war crimes in the Palestinian Territories.

-The Biden administration opposing the resolution blocking weapons sale to Saudi Arabia.

-Spending more on Israel than climate change.

-Continuing to support the Saudi Blockade in Yemen

-Continuing the Trump Pentagon’s policy of embracing landmines.

-Continuing a Trump policy that boosted armed drone exports

-Continuing to support a coup in Venezuela

-Conditions in Guantanamo Bay being worse now than they were under Trump.

Immigration

-Mass deportations of Haitians

-Using Title 42 to expel 690,000+ people

-Holding over 22,000 people in jails run by ICE. 7,000 more than what the Trump administration held when they left office.

-US deportations of children increasing by 30% in the first year of the Biden administration (Source in Spanish)

-Reopening previously closed “facilities” at the southern border

-Extending the Trump-era Title 42 program that expels people seeking asylum without due process.

-Continuing the Trump era "Remain in Mexico" policy and expanding it past the constraints of a court order.

-The DOJ pulling out of negotiations to financially compensate families separated by Trump admin.

-Arguing in federal court that migrant families separated at the border under the Trump administration don't deserve compensation.

-The Border Patrol horse unit

-Continuing to detain immigrants at a prison in Louisiana that’s been described by government investigators as having “a culture & conditions that can lead to abuse, mistreatment, & discrimination.”

-Considering "filling gaps" in the US-Mexico border wall.

-Kamala Harris to migrants: "Do not come. Do not come. We will enforce our laws and secure our border.”

-The number of undocumented immigrants in detention centers increasing by more than 50% since Biden took office

-Filling immigration courts with Trump hires

-The Biden administration and ICE still having no clear plan to provide vaccine access to the more than 22,100 detained people in ICE custody.

-Continuing to seize land for the border wall

-Joe Biden’s new budget boosting ICE funding by $18 million.

-Blocking media access to their border operations.

-Continuing to house immigrant children in inhumane conditions.

-Backing an effort to overturn a California law banning for-profit immigration detention centers,

Domestic Policy

-Cutting federal unemployment benefits to make unemployment numbers look better.

-The Biden administration approving 3,091 new drilling permits on public lands. He’s approving these permits at a higher rate (332 per month) than President Trump (300 per month).

-The Biden Administration asking the Supreme Court to rule that federal agents cannot be held accountable for retaliating against protected speech

-Naming Neera Tanden the White House staff secretary

-"Vigorously" defending an exemption to anti-LGBT discrimination laws for religious schools.

-Sending more military equipment to American neighborhoods than Trump did.

-Supporting a Supreme Court decision that blocked immigrants in the U.S. on humanitarian grounds from getting permanent residency if they entered illegally

-Continuing the Trump era practice of labeling Black Lives Matter protesters as terrorists.

-Lying about a court decision, that despite initial claims, did not force the Biden admin to hold the largest-ever auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico’s history.

-Fully supporting states that cut supplemental UI benefits

-The DOJ urging SCOTUS to reinstate the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, despite President Joe Biden’s stated opposition to capital punishment per Reuters

-Allowing oil to continue to flow through the Dakota Access Pipeline

-Not ordering the Pentagon to recall the billions in military gear it loaned to police.

-Offering to keep 2017 Trump tax cuts intact in infrastructure counteroffer to the GOP

-Defending a huge Trump-era oil and gas project in the North Slope of Alaska despite President Biden’s pledge

-Defending excluding Puerto Ricans from disability payments

-Settling on a 25% corporate tax rate

-Auctioning off more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling companies

-Issuing 31 new drilling permits on federal land

-Their "National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism"

-Giving in to Republicans demands on broadband infrastructure spending by reducing broadband spending by $35 billion.

-Canceling less than 1 percent of U.S. student debt.

-Nominating a lawyer who represented Exxon in a suit against the treasury department for a major treasury department role.

-Looking to extend a Trump era policy that bolsters mandatory minimum drug sentences.

-A federal program that allows teens, 18 to 20, drive big rigs in a test program designed to ease driver shortages.

-Continuing to fill top Pentagon positions with defense contractors

-Biden choosing not to take sides in the debate over whether Congress should prohibit members and their families from trading individual stocks while in office.

-Keeping Trump hires in the Department of Justice

-Urging the Supreme Court to let cops enter homes and seize guns without a warrant

-Not passing a promised $15 minimum wage

-Not passing a promised $2,000 stimulus to all individuals

-Not officially banning the death penalty

-Not legalizing marijuana

COVID

-CDC guidance shortening the quarantine time during positive COVID tests.

-The Biden administration rejecting the 10 page "Testing Surge to Prevent Holiday COVID Surge" plan.

-Banning travel to several South African countries for a month due to the Omicron COVID variant.

-Free COVID tests taking 7-12 days to ship.

-Only Americans who are privately insured being able to seek reimbursement for over-the-counter COVID tests they purchase.

-The Biden administration claiming they support a COVID vaccine patent waiver, but failing to take meaningful action to pass such a waiver.

Other

-Biden's DOJ continuing to defend Trump in the defamation case that accuses him of raping journalist E. Jean Carroll

-Building a second courtroom for war crimes trials at Guantánamo Bay that excludes the public from the chamber.

-Granting Navient a two-year, $391M extension on its contract to collect federal student loans.

-Backing away from a promise of free college/university tuition for students from families making less than $125,000

-Using a helicopter rotor wash to try to clear out activists out from an occupied Line 3 pump station north of Park Rapids.

-Dozens of young Biden White House staffers have been suspended, asked to resign or placed in a remote work program due to past marijuana use