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TC ROYALTY PUBLISHING COMPANY SUNDAY JANUARY 24, 2021 VOL. 45 NEWSPAPER th The 59 . Inauguration Will Go Down in History Biden signs executive orders on stimulus checks, food stamps and minimum wage __________________________________ U.S. President Joe Biden fist bumps newly sworn-in Vice President Kamala President Biden signed two executive orders on Friday, one of which would increase federal food By: TERRY HUGHEY assistance and streamline the delivery of stimulus checks, as the president attempts to stabilize the economy without congressional assistance amid The 59th inauguration of a United States Purdue University Fort Wayne Assistant History the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. president will go down in the history books. Professor Jeff Malanson said it’s sometimes hard Many traditions aren’t happening, and to decipher if we’re actually seeing a historical "We have to act now," Mr. Biden said in remarks possibly a new tradition will be started. moment, because we’re living it. before he signed the orders. "We cannot, will not, let people go hungry." There was no giant parade, inaugural balls However, Malanson believes a series of events led are being held virtually, and many locations to this inauguration to be historic. He said the Mr. Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion relief plan around the Capitol are closed to the public. pandemic, the actual election itself, and the riots at to Congress, but it is unclear whether it will Guests were socially distanced, as the the Capitol all culminated into making it a historic garner enough Republican support to pass on a inauguration happened during the middle of day. bipartisan basis. Until Congress is able to pass a pandemic. another relief bill, Mr. Biden's actions are But how will it be remembered in years to come? intended as stopgap measures to stabilize the Another notable difference is President economy. Donald Trump was not in attendance. “We don’t yet know how all of this is going to President Trump left the White House resolve itself. That’s the other big thing that we all Some Republicans have questioned whether there Wednesday morning before any of the events kind of struggle with is we think of the current is still a need for a second, larger relief bill after started. moment as being historically significant, but we Congress passed a $900 billion bill in December. don’t necessarily know what that significance is But in his remarks on Friday, Mr. Biden said that The Associated Press does report the going to be… every textbook is going to talk about the most recent relief bill was just a "down president left a note for President-elect Joe COVID-19 and the election of 2020, and the payment." Biden. That will be a tradition that still insurrection on January 6th. And you know, stands. Trump is the only president to be impeached twice. "We need more action, and we need to move fast," Mr. Biden said. "We're in a national With President Trump’s departure, it will be We know that these will be historically significant emergency. We need to act like we're in a national the first time since 1869 we will not see an moments, but the kind of story that’s told about emergency. So we've got to move with everything image of an outgoing and incoming president them, I think is yet to be kind of concluded,” said at the same time. Malanson. we've got." The country saw another first when Kamala Despite all of this being historical, Malanson said In the first order, Mr. Biden asks the U.S. Harris was sworn-in as vice president. She is the biggest takeaway is what’s to come. I think it’s Department of Agriculture to allow states to the first female and woman of color to hold going to be change. I think the Biden increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance the office. Administration has really gone out of its way to Program (SNAP) benefits — commonly known as emphasize change from the last four years. food stamps — by 15%. Congress recently passed Another tradition that still happened is a $1 trillion relief bill that boosted the maximum former presidents attended. Former And even to emphasize some points of change from SNAP benefit by 15%, but that did not help the presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush the prior Obama Administration. So I think really 40% of SNAP recipients who were already at the and Bill Clinton witnessed President Biden in the current moment, the big thing is going to be maximum benefit. Mr. Biden's order tells the take the oath of office. Vice President Mike change. I think the other big call that we’re going to USDA to "consider issuing new guidance that Pence also attended. see from President Biden is a call for unity. He’s been making that pitch for a long time now. would allow states to increase SNAP emergency A new tradition that will possibly start is allotments for those who need it most," according newly inaugurated President Joe Biden and I think he mentions it in his inaugural address. to a fact sheet provided by the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to And I think he’s going to try and make the good which would mean that an additional 12 million Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath faith effort to see that move forward. As a society people get enhanced benefits. at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. we’ve become way too fractured.” (Continued on Pg. 4) PAGE 1 SUNDAY JANUARY 24, 2021 NEWSPAPER Covid-19: U.S. Virus Cases Fall as Variants Spread By: TERRY HUGHEY In recent days, coronavirus cases have been dropping steadily across the United States, with hospitalizations falling in concert. But health officials are growing increasingly concerned that quickly circulating variants of the virus could cause new surges of cases faster than the country is managing to distribute COVID-19 vaccines. Public health experts likened the situation to a race between vaccination and the virus’s new variants — and the winner will determine whether the United States is approaching a turning point in its battle against the coronavirus, now entering a second year. “We’re definitely on a downward slope, but I’m worried that the new variants will throw us a curveball in late February or March,” said Caitlin M. Rivers, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Nationwide, new coronavirus cases have fallen 21% in the last two weeks, according to a New York Times database, and some experts have suggested this could mark the start of a shifting course after nearly four months of ever-worsening case totals. This week, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which puts out a predictive model that is widely used for planning, including by some government agencies, released a projection saying new cases in the United States would decline steadily from now on. “We’ve been saying since summer that we thought we’d see a peak in January, and I think that, at the national level, we’re around the peak,” said Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the institute. Still, Murray cautioned that variants of the virus could “totally change the story.” Health officials warned that they have little foresight into what the rest of the winter and spring will bring. President Joe Biden’s new administration has vowed to impose speed and order to what has been a slow, bumpy rollout of vaccinations, in which some 15 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. But it is not clear how many vaccines will be available in cities across the country in the coming weeks. The public should still wear masks, officials say, avoid large gatherings and sign up to be vaccinated as soon as they are eligible. Some experts, looking abroad at how new viral variants sent cases surging in Britain, Ireland, South Africa and northern Brazil, said the United States could merely be in a lull before a new spike begins. Even after an epidemic’s peak, it remains dangerous: Sometimes just as many people are infected after the peak as were before. “I think the next three months could be the worst part of the pandemic,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “I hope I’m dead wrong.” Nicolas A. Menzies, one of several scientists running the Prevention Policy Modeling Lab at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which tracks levels of herd immunity, said he felt it was “more probable than not” that infections would climb again. It is important to spot regions where variant strains are turning up, he said, since they would be the most likely to have early surges. Thus far, the variant that has been prevalent in Britain and a new variant have been found most often in Southern California and Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases are slowly declining in both regions. But it’s “still too early to tell,” he said. As the Biden administration Thursday announced a “full-scale wartime effort” to combat the virus, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said the nation’s outbreak “looks like it might actually be plateauing in the sense of turning around,” but he cautioned that the country remained in a dire situation. Thirty-seven states are seeing sustained reductions in cases, with only one reporting significant increases.

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