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| Good morning, Daily Briefing readers! Today is a historic day as President Joe Biden will give his first joint address to Congress, just shy of his 100th day in office. In other news, as pressure from the community mounts, a hearing is scheduled to consider the release of video that shows the shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. |
| Steve and Jane are here with Wednesday's news. |
| Let's get started with some other items that are on people's minds today. |
| 💰 New this morning: Biden will propose a sweeping $1.8 trillion plan Wednesday for national paid family leave, universal pre-kindergarten, free community college and subsidized child care. To help pay for the plan? Biden is calling on Congress to raise taxes on wealthy Americans for the first time in nearly a decade. |
| ⚖ The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is charged with protecting employees across the country from workplace discrimination, harassment and retaliation. But employees inside the EEOC's Dallas district say they have faced the exact workplace discrimination they signed up to combat. |
| 🚨 Police in Alameda, California, released bodycam footage late Tuesday that shows officers pinning Mario Gonzalez, 26, to the ground for more than five minutes during an arrest last week that ended in his death. |
| ⚖ Biden announced Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of Harris County, Texas — home to Houston — as his nominee for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Gonzalez has publicly criticized immigration policies instituted by the administration of former President Donald Trump. |
| 🏫 The NCAA Board of Governors voted unanimously to extend President Mark Emmert's contract through Dec. 31, 2025. Columnist Dan Wolken says that if you think the influential presidents would have had enough after a year of missteps, "you have severely underestimated their capacity for tolerating embarrassment." |
| 🌎 A TikTok video went viral capturing Sam Johnson, CEO of telehealth platform company VisuWell, following teenager Dalton Stevens in Franklin, Tennessee, where Johnson called Stevens an idiot for wearing a dress to prom. VisuWell's board of directors has since fired Johnson. |
| 🎶 Britney Spears has requested to address the court in the ongoing battle over her conservatorship by her father, Jamie Spears, which has come under renewed scrutiny following the release of the documentary "Framing Britney Spears" and because of the #FreeBritney movement. |
| 🎧 On today's 5 Things podcast, jobs reporter Paul Davidson talks about a surge in job openings, but not in job candidates. You can listen to the podcast every day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your smart speaker. |
| Here's what's happening today: |
Biden to give first formal address to Congress |
| President Joe Biden will address a joint session of Congress for the first time Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET. Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will sit behind him, the first time two women will appear behind a president during a speech to Congress. The event will allow Biden to claim progress during his first 100 days, which is historically known as a benchmark for a new president's administration. In her invitation, Pelosi asked Biden to "share your vision for addressing the challenges and opportunities of this historic moment." |
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Hearing scheduled to consider release video that shows shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. |
| A judge has scheduled a hearing Wednesday to consider formal requests to publicly release video of North Carolina sheriff's deputies fatally shooting Andrew Brown Jr. The scheduled hearing comes after North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper called for a special prosecutor as pressure built on authorities to release the footage. Earlier in the week, Brown's family saw redacted body camera video of the shooting, with one of his sons calling what he saw in the footage an "execution." Results from an independent autopsy commissioned by his family showed Brown was shot five times — including a fatal shot to the back of his head. Although a judge will consider Wednesday whether to release video of the shooting, it's unclear how soon the judge could rule. Similar cases have taken weeks to play out. |
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What else people are reading: |
| 🟢 A California couple pleaded with Ford years ago to buy back a defective 2014 Ford Fiesta, but the company declined. Now, Darice and Edward Wirth will be paid over $49,000, about three times what they sought for the leased vehicle they returned early. |
| 🟣 Justin Bieber debuted locs on Instagram Sunday, sharing several pictures of his controversial new hairstyle that elicited both calls of racial insensitivity and praise. |
| 🟣 Anthony Mackie, who is taking over the mantle of Captain America from Chris Evans after the events of Disney+'s "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," says getting his own movie "would be everything." |
| 🔵A Miami private school says it won't employ anyone receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, citing misinformation about the risks of vaccination. |
| 🟣 A 12-year-old boy in Colorado died this month after participating in a challenge on TikTok where people choke themselves until they become unconscious. Internet challenges have exploded on social media and, while some are well-intentioned, others pose health risks. They are especially attractive to adolescents for several reasons. |
 | | The TikTok logo seen on a smartphone | | Getty Images photo; USA TODAY graphic | |
Supreme Court to hear First Amendment cheerleader case |
| The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in the case of a high school cheerleader who lashed out on Snapchat after being cut from her team. The court's decision could decide whether schools may punish students for the things they say off-campus, including on social media sites used widely by American teens. Brandi Levy, then 14 years old, made a profanity-laden social media post in 2017 aimed at her school, her team and "everything." The case may wind up as one of the Supreme Court's most important decisions on student speech in a generation. Civil liberties groups fear the court will turn schools into speech police, limiting students' First Amendment rights, while schools counter that they must be free to discipline off-campus speech that leaches into the classroom to protect students from bullying that can be amplified online. |
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Newsmakers in their own words: Response to LaPierre elephant hunt |
| Wildlife conservationists are outraged after video released by two news outlets shows Wayne LaPierre, Jr., the head of the National Rifle Association, and his wife fatally shooting two endangered savannah elephants in Botswana in 2013. |
| The video, which was originally filmed for an NRA-sponsored television series but never aired due to public relations concerns, shows LaPierre failing to kill the elephant with three shots at point-blank range as the animal lies immobile on the ground. |
One year since 1 million COVID-19 cases |
| In the year since the United States marked the grim milestone of 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases , it's added over 30 million more to the tally. As of Wednesday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University data, the U.S. has more than 32.17 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 573,000 deaths.Worldwide, there have been close to 150 million cases and 3.1 million deaths. More than 232 million vaccine doses have been administered in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued relaxed mask-wearing guidelines Tuesday. Fully vaccinated individuals can now unmask while walking, running, hiking or biking outdoors alone or with members of their household. |
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'I love my airline, but they didn't love me back' |
| Carol Madden, a 69-year-old flight attendant who has worked for Southwest Airlines since 2016, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the airline and is seeking more than $3 million in damages. Madden alleges that the airline's lax COVID-19 protocols during mandatory training last summer and slack contact tracing after an attendee tested positive led to her husband's death from the virus. |
 | | Carol and Bill Madden were married for 35 years. | | Photo courtesy of Carol Madden | |
| In the filing of a motion to dismiss the case, Southwest expressed its sympathy to Madden and others who have lost family members to COVID-19 but said blaming the airline for his death is "misplaced." |
Judge 'not yet persuaded' about voter privacy in Arizona recount |
| A judge hearing a challenge from Democrats to voter privacy policies during the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate's recount of 2.1 million 2020 presidential election ballots in Maricopa County – which includes metro Phoenix – raised concerns during a hearing Tuesday about whether voter secrecy is being upheld. "I am not yet persuaded that there has been a showing that the rights of the voters in Maricopa County are being protected," Superior Court Judge Daniel Martin said. Martin also declined to extend a previous judge's order that Cyber Ninja, the contractor overseeing the election audit, comply with state voter privacy laws, at least until he hears more Wednesday. Also on Tuesday, after previous days of silence, journalists got limited access inside the Phoenix arena where the contractors are attempting to hand count all of the county's ballots cast in the election. President Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona's 11 electoral votes. |
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ICYMI: Some of our other top stories published Tuesday |
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| Contributing: The Associated Press |
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