On January 20, 2021, President Trump’s term will come to an end. It ends a long way from what now seems like the almost halcyon days of April when Mr. Trump predicted that we would keep coronavirus deaths to 60,000 deaths and substantially below 100,000. According to Johns Hopkins, 72,261 people died in December alone, with a one-day record of 3,750 on December 30, 2020. That was a high until the Thursday, January 7 numbers saw deaths over 4000.
The year ended with average weekly unemployment claims at 836,000, with many of those people filing claims under the uncertainty over whether the President would sign the close-our relief-appropriations/relief bill before the holidays. Other concerns included the number of people slipping into poverty. The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University released a study that if Congress or the President refused an extension of unemployment benefits, 4.8 million more people would move into poverty in January 2021, with the increase split between 1.3 million children and 3.5 million adults.
Despite the insurrection of January 6, 2021, we moved one step closer to the end of the 45th president’s term on January 7, 2021. Although the formal tradition of recognizing the final electoral college count did not follow more than 200 years of history, Joseph Biden will become the 46th President of the United States at noon on January 20, 2021, as prescribed by the United States Constitution.
