THE BIG STORY

The highlights of Joe Biden’s first press conference since taking office

It is vexing that, during his first formal press conference since taking office, President Joe Biden did not field one question about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The president began the press conference by announcing that his administration was upping its target of COVID-19 vaccines administered in the first 100 days, doubling the goal to 200 million doses. The initial 100 million doses goal was set in December.

He also told reporters his administration had been focused on “urgent problems” like COVID-19 and economic fallout from pandemic-related shutdowns.

But reporters quickly moved on from COVID-19, which is still killing around 1,000 Americans per day. No more questions about the pandemic — but Biden was asked repeatedly whether or not he will run for president in three years.

The rest of the press conference focused on issues including changing the Senate’s rules, voting rights, and immigration.

👉 Biden moved closer to supporting radically changing the Senate rules. He agreed that the filibuster was a relic of the Jim Crow era, but stopped short of calling for the procedure to be abolished.

👉 The president said he’s negotiating with Mexico to take back more families at the Southern border.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

The Biden administration is looking for more federal volunteers to help overcrowded border stations

The government is asking more federal employees to volunteer their time at the southern border to assist with the increase in unaccompanied immigrant children who have been stuck in overcrowded facilities.

According to a new job posting, federal workers would help with the efforts to place the unaccompanied children with a family member and out of US custody as officials try to cut down on the overcrowding.

Employees who take on the role would interview children and collect contact information for their family members in the US and elsewhere.

SNAPSHOTS

Prosecutors are accusing a member of the Oath Keepers of lying about his paramilitary training. Kelly Meggs had a 97-second phone call with the Oath Keepers' founder, Stewart Rhodes, on the day of the Capitol insurrection, prosecutors said.

University of Southern California will pay $1.1 billion to settle decades of sexual abuse claims against a school gynecologist. The settlement for women who say they were sexually abused by campus gynecologist George Tyndall is believed to be one of the largest settlement payouts in higher education history.

Britney Spears asked her dad to resign as her conservator in a new court filing. A lawyer for Britney filed a petition requesting that the pop star's father, Jamie Spears, be removed as her conservator.

Kim Kardashian confirmed Kanye West’s tweets calling her a “white supremacist” were the “final straw” and the reason she began thinking about divorce. In this week’s episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, we get more insight into how Kanye’s twitter outbursts were received by the Kardashians.

YOUTUBE'S CULTURE PROBLEM

I’m not convinced the David Dobrik scandal will change anything about YouTube culture

David Dobrik is one of the biggest YouTubers on the planet. He’d long cultivated a clean image, and built his following on it, including becoming the center of the content collective Vlog Squad.

Last week, that image was destroyed after Business Insider reported that a woman who wished to remain anonymous said she was raped by Vlog Squad member Dom Zeglaitis in 2018. Dobrik, who issued a second apology after his first was criticized, has lost some of his biggest partners in the fallout of the story.

But as Tanya Chen writes, because we’ve been here so many times with other YouTubers, it’s hard to feel like any kind of substantial change is coming — because the problem is, fundamentally, not Dobrik himself, but YouTube culture.

YouTube / David Dobrik

TAKE A BREATHER

Ease into the weekend with these longreads

Netflix’s college admissions documentary is a compelling anatomy of a scam. We’ve all heard of the college admissions scandal by now, but Alessa Dominguez writes that Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal, Netflix’s new documentary, goes beyond the celebrity dimension of the story and reveals the layers of a broken system.

Is this what Justin Bieber really wants? You may have noticed that Justin Bieber is back with Justice, an inconsistent album with plenty of songs that will dominate the charts. I listened so you don’t have to, and I came away wondering: is this what Bieber wants?

How are you feeling about the end of the pandemic? Excited? Anxious? All of the above? We want to know for an upcoming BuzzFeed News story.

Wishing you clarity as to what you really need today,

Elamin