Very quickly a number of public issues pushed forward as America turned in new directions in the new Biden Era.

The horrible situation in Central America (the "Northern Triangle" of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in particular) where hurricanes, negative economic growth, local control by gangs and warlords, and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic has made life there close to unbearable.  Understandably, citizens of those countries are looking for escape from this situation.  America is of course the most attractive option.  Thus America has seen floods of immigrants heading to America.

This in turn has created a huge political debate in America itself as to exactly what America's responsibilities are with regards to this crisis.

The Democrats – reinforced by Biden's own statements in the presidential-campaign days of 2020 – went on record as wanting to open the borders rather extensively as a more humane policy.  Republicans have complained that to do so is to lose all control over what comes into the country (the bad guys as well as simply the desperate masses) … and a flood of such immigrants makes it impossible to keep track of these individuals once inside the country.  There are too many to hold hearings at the border on which of them actually qualifies for refugee status.  Asking them, once allowed in the country, to report to a court at some future date for a hearing on their status is ridiculous.  It's too easy just to disappear into the mainstream once inside the country.

To the Republicans, also the ease by which some states fail to require voter identification to ensure that all voters are indeed American citizens is very bothersome.  They realize that these immigrants as voters would be very strongly supportive of a political party that promised welfare (which immigrants are already getting in numerous ways once inside the country).  Thus Republicans complain that the "humanitarian" posture of the Democratic Party is merely a clever way of building their voting block.

The problem is not new … because the cause of the problem in Central America is not new.  Back in 2014, Obama had to deal with a huge problem when thousands of children and youth without accompanying parents flooded the border – because immigration restrictions have traditionally been much more lenient on unaccompanied minors … and Central American immigrants know this.

Then there were the massive caravans of immigrants headed for America back in 2019, which Trump responded to by taking a very tough stance to block this invasion of the country … which the Democrats claimed loudly was totally inhumane.

Now the flood was happening again … in part because of the many comments Biden had made about how Trump's tough borders stance was so unfair … and that he, Biden, was going to do away with such a policy.  That promise was clearly heard in Central America (and elsewhere).

Thus two months into Biden's presidency (March), over 170,000 immigrants in that month alone were taken into official custody when they crossed the borders (with an unknown number of others obviously also able to slip past these authorities).  This number included nearly 19,000 unaccompanied minors … more than the previous monthly high of 11,800 recorded in May of 2019.

The Biden Administration carefully avoided the word "crisis" … but the situation was/is exactly that.  Biden claimed they were "working on the issue" … referring to the possibility of moving detained individuals from their horribly overcrowded detention facilities to places elsewhere.  But that did not ultimately bring a solution to the larger issue.  And the Republicans were wondering if the Democrats truly wanted a solution to the "non-crisis."

Clearly, voting in America was formerly viewed as a citizen's duty … as well as one of our basic rights.  The system depended on citizens taking an active role in electing their representatives … to make sure that these representatives truly represented their constituencies … and not just themselves (as the world of politics can so easily become).

But just as so much of the idea of American citizenship has become over the years … the duty part has dropped away, leaving only the basic rights part of voting still standing in Americans' understanding of things.  And as such, every effort has been made to make this right as trouble-free as possible … so it no longer feels like something of a duty.

This in turn has caused a huge debate to develop.  It's well known that some people are more likely to vote than others in any election.  And this difference in level of citizenship action has tended to favor Republicans over Democrats.  Thus the Republicans have been in no hurry to see voting made ever easier and easier for those who otherwise would not bother to vote, whereas this is has become matter of urgency for the Democrats.  They need the votes of the stay-at-home types in order to win elections.  Thus "voter reform" is a hot political issue!

Trump actually made it that hot issue in the 2020 elections … claiming high levels of voter fraud because some states had made voting so easy that there was no way of checking to see who voted and if they voted properly.  Trump was hardly able to make his case that he lost the election because of such voter fraud.  But it did leave the question still standing as to how indeed do we see that dead people don't vote (as they have been known to do in the past!) or that people do not vote in two different districts, or that other people don't vote "for them" in mailed-in ballots.  So Republicans want the voting system tightened up, at least security-wise.

Democrats – including Biden – complain that moves to tighten voting laws is just racism come back to life in the form of "Jim Crow on steroids" (his words) … especially as it was Georgia that took to being more specific as to the span and boundaries of voting ... including requiring voters to be able to show personal identification in order to vote.

Attacking Georgia was hardly fair, as the new Georgia law made voting less restrictive than, for instance, New Jersey's voting laws … the latter usually a reliably Democratic Party state.  But no one was complaining about New Jersey's voting laws.  And Biden's (and others') charge that tight voting regulations was "racism" was itself just politics … and, in Biden's citing specific examples of Georgia's "abuses," flat out wrong.

But it's typical of how deeply divided America is today … over virtually every issue to come before the country.  Tremendous pressure has been applied by "civil rights" groups (Democratic Party activists) calling for a boycott of corporations such as Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines operating out of Georgia.  The pressure even got the Major League Baseball organization to pull its All-Star Game out of Atlanta because of the new law … moving the game to Colorado – which has essentially the same voting rules as Georgia!  American Airlines and Dell (and increasingly many other public-opinion sensitive corporations) have taken this opportunity to demonstrate their "political correctness" in strongly opposing the Georgia voting issue.  And Texas seems to be headed for the same problem as it tightens up on voter identification.

All the tension over this issue finally took the specific form of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives' "For the People Act" (H.R.1) … which passed in early March (2021), narrowly and along nearly purely party lines, 220-210.  Needless to say, the bill got stalled up in the Republican-Democrat balanced Senate.

The bill claimed that by putting the power to supervise the nation's elections in the hands of Washington authorities, this would do away with such things as gerrymandering (revising the voting districts in order to favor one party over another), reduce the influence of money in political campaigns, and in general strengthen the ethics rules for federal officeholders.  That sounded good … provided that typically partisan political rationalizing as to how such reforms would actually take effect did not enter into the dynamic.

All of this has been justified by the Democrats as simply advancing "civil rights" … specifically as Biden himself states, "to protect the right to vote, the integrity of our elections, and to repair and strengthen our democracy" and seemingly had nothing to do with securing a tighter hold of the Democratic Party over the nation's elections.  But it's funny how the vote went along almost purely Democratic-Republican lines.  And attitudes pro and con have followed the same, very predictable patterns in the way the American press reacted to all this.

What seems bothersome about this political proposal is the way that it eliminates identity checks necessary to assure the impossibility of double-voting, ballot harvesting, etc.  But most importantly, it is understood by resistant Republicans as designed to eliminate the check to see that a person voting is actually an American citizen … and not one of the illegal immigrants that Biden has allowed to flood the country.  It is well-known that these immigrants are most likely to be very strong Democratic-Party supporters … because of the "generosity" of the Democrats in meeting the hopes and expectations of this highly state-dependent immigrant sector of the American population.

Most tragically, however, it is designed to undo the "restrictive provisions" of the states and local authorities … meaning, to undo one more piece of the nation's federal structure (individual state power balancing national or central power) by taking away a critical piece of state and local power … in favor of a greater concentration of political power in Washington, D.C.

In early January of 2021, a bill was introduced with 202 co-sponsors (Democrats, naturally) to create a new state entitled, Washington, Douglass Commonwealth (named after Frederick Douglass) … with two voting Senators and one Representative allotted it … members of the Democratic Party to be sure.¹ Whether this would require amending the Constitution (changing the provisions of the 23rd Amendment) or not is debatable … and how the American voting public at large stands on this matter also seems debatable – depending of course on whose poll you consult.  Of course, Biden and Harris are also supporters of this action.

¹Ever since Washington, D.C. was given the right to choose its own presidential electors in 1961 (the 23rd Amendment), D.C. has been the strongest Democratic Party supporting constituency in the nation.  This is hardly surprising, as the Democratic Party represents perfectly the idea that the immense Washington bureaucracy should be running the country.  In fact it is surprising that there are any Republicans at all in this district!  Thus in the 2020 elections, the Democrat Biden received 92.15% of D.C.'s vote, compared to the Republican Trump's 5.4%, a D.C. voting spread identical to that of the 2016 race between Hillary Clinton and Trump.

In early April (2021) Biden issued an executive order setting up a 36-member presidential commission to look into the matter of the Supreme Court.  The last time that the Supreme Court supposedly needed some updating was back in 1975 when President Ford set up just such a commission of 10 members drawn from the Department of Justice to look into matters of structure and jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.  Biden's commission includes no members of the Department of Justice ... but does include members with well-known political sentiments about the fact that since Trump appointed three "originalist" justices to the Court, the Left has had its path of judicial legislation (getting its ideological agenda put in effect by the federal courts when it had no chance of doing so in Congress) cut off. There has been talk about the need to expand the Court by adding four more justices … which would give Biden the opportunity to appoint justices who could swing the Court balance back to a majority of "progressive" justices willing to be more accommodating to the idea of judicial legislation.

However what it is exactly that Biden's commission is supposed to achieve remains unclear.  "Reforming" the Supreme Court is a tricky matter.  FDR attempted this back in 1937 … and it all blew up in his face politically.  So Biden knows that he has to go slowly on this matter.

Twitter, one of the internet's biggest online communities, banned Trump from access to its operations, citing various legal/moral reasons for doing so.  Whatever.  But it certainly shut down the voice of one of America's leaders, like him or not ... according to Twitter's own decision on the matter.  That's tremendous power.  Does it belong in a free country?

Apparently, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon and other companies agreed with Twitter … tightening up some of their own rules and regulations concerning the communications that flow through their operations.  Certainly Facebook cuts out postings it considers inappropriate, for whatever reasons it deems necessary.

But how does this not become simply the enforcement of political correctness on the portions of the American conversation that flows through these huge (almost monopolistic) operations?  For instance, what kinds of books could Amazon advertise, even move to the front in its presentations … and what kinds could it push to the back of its listings … or even exclude altogether.  That's tremendous power.

Some have proposed anti-trust action or "trust-busting" to be waged against these huge, almost monopolistic, organizations.  But the legislation that authorizes such governmental action does not really address the kinds of dynamics these companies represent.  Furthermore, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act allows these companies to do exactly the kind of censoring that has raised this issue in the first place.

But then also, does government regulation of these companies designed to keep that conversation "free" not itself potentially pose a threat to free speech?  Twitter and the others qualify as "private" companies.  Do we want private companies coming under government control of what it allows and does not allow?  But how private are they when they hold such full control over the public conversation?

So the debate is very complicated.  It is also heating up considerably … right in keeping with the heated political division in America that is also deepening considerably.

Biden and the Democrats have pushed hard for a multi-trillion-dollar federal "infrastructure" program put forward by the Democrat-controlled House – which the Senate has done its best (complements of a Democrat and Republican balance in the number of seats each holds in the Senate) to pare down in size ... to avoid a further expansion of the government's debt – as of this writing almost $28 trillion and still climbing rapidly.

Biden claims he will bring a $3.5 trillion budget closer to a balance by enacting new corporate taxes, raising the rate from 21% to 28% of corporate earnings … with the Republicans replying that to maintain corporate profitability, companies will be required to raise the prices of their goods and services to cover the new tax expenses, thus adding to an inflation rate that is already growing rapidly.

Furthermore, the Republicans want the Democrats to cut back on their "infrastructure" shift to this larger governmental role in managing or controlling the American economy … claiming that the Biden plan simply moves the country closer to Socialism.  But the Democrats answer that these measures are badly needed … in order to move to a "carbon-free" energy world, improve local water-treatment operations, improve American education, and increase welfare support (the latter very important especially if the Democrats are going to be welcoming masses of immigrants to the country).

On the other hand, the Republicans have indicated that they were willing to support about 30% of that figure … focused solely on "physical infrastructure," such as roads and bridges.

Meanwhile, Democrats are complaining about how unfair it is that the Republicans are employing the filibuster rule to stall action on the program … even though they certainly were big supporters of the filibuster when the Republicans previously held the majority in the Senate.  There exists the possibility of getting around the filibuster by employing special "budgetary" techniques.  But even then, with a 50-50 vote split in the Senate (which however Vice President Harris could break with her vote), trying to get around this opposition sets a precedent that the Democrats realize that they might regret in the future.

In short, "infrastructure" has become largely a matter of ideology and politics … and not just about material development of the nation by the federal government – which itself had only very limited constitutional support prior to Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society.