President Joe Biden Backtracks Plan to Open Schools in His First 100 Days

All reasonable Americans — meaning not the teacher unions — were on board with President Joe Biden's December plan to open most of the schools in his first 100 days in office. The plan had widespread, bipartisan support.

Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said not so fast, explaining that the plan is to have "some teaching" in person "at least one day a week" in Biden's first 100 days.

While this would still be an upgrade from the status quo, it is far from the vision that the Biden administration pitched to parents and students a few months ago. Even CNN's Jake Tapper can't defend this backtrack:

This is the second blow to Biden's big goal. In his first full day in the White House, his staff released a document that greatly lowered the bar because it didn't even include high schools, just K-8 schools.

"Majority" has a loose meaning these days, huh?

Biden told CBS before the Super Bowl that it's time to reopen schools safely, which is true, yet Norah O'Donnell failed to ask him what the hold up is.

Bill O'Reilly also wondered what the problem is, citing the fact that Catholic schools have been open for months and are doing fine:

"OK. Safely. Safe. We've got to open safely," O'Reilly begins. "All Ms. O'Donnell had to do is go, 'But Catholic schools all over the country are open and have been open since September, and there hasn't been any disaster. Isn't that safe? What's the difference between a Catholic school and the public school?' This is, like, fundamental journalism that is no longer practiced in this country. This isn't brilliance. You got to anticipate what Biden is going to say. 'Oh, yeah, I want to open them, but safely.' 'Yeah. All right. But we already have a parallel track where there are thousands of schools open, private and Catholic, and there hasn't been a problem. So, what's holding you up in ordering the nation's public schools to open? What is the hold up? We need ventilation. Do the Catholic schools not have the ventilation?'

"I don't know whether you get as agitated as I get, because this is the highest level, this is the anchor person of CBS News. Doesn't get any higher than that over there. This is just, I'm going, 'It's not a matter of harpooning Biden. It's how much does the man know? How much does he know? He's the president.'"

There's no doubt that public schools should have reopened months ago. OutKick's Clay Travis discussed the topic Wednesday morning:

Ahh, the science.

Open the schools. All of them. And not just for one day a week.