President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging executive order to extend existing federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ people exceeds the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2020 ruling on the issue in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, said the chairmen of five U.S. bishops’ committees. However, Biden’s order on “‘sex’ discrimination exceeds the court’s decision,” they said.
The leaders of two U.S. bishops’ committees applauded President Joe Biden’s executive order reversing a policy of the previous administration that excluded unauthorized immigrants from the census count.
In line with papal tradition, Pope Francis relayed well wishes and messages of hope and prayer to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. Biden is the second Catholic president, following John F. Kennedy, who was elected as the United States’s 35th president in Nov. 1960.
Among the many traditions surrounding a presidential inauguration, Catholics seem to have created one of their own, especially when it’s a Democrat: Mixed messages from the Vatican and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Two leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops applauded President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day executive action ordering the federal government to keep in place and strengthen the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star Army general, is President Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of defense. On Thursday, both houses of Congress voted to approve a waiver for him to be considered for confirmation since he has been retired for only four years, not the required seven. Now the Senate must vote on the actual confirmation.
Two New York Assembly members have already written to President Joe Biden, seeking his assistance to obtain data on nursing home deaths caused by COVID-19 in the state.
Bishops throughout the country welcomed the inauguration of Joe Biden as the nation’s 46th president, saying it was a celebration of democracy and liberty, while praying for unity and reconciliation in the face of deep political divides.
Just before noon Wednesday Joe Biden put his left hand on his family’s 19th century Bible and was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, and the first Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960.
n his inaugural address Jan. 20, President Joe Biden said he is committed with his “whole soul” to bring this country together.
