Biden's COVID-19 vaccine plan, Mega Millions jackpot, fast-food workers to strike: 5 things to know Friday

Editors, USA TODAY
·4 min read
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Biden to discuss plans to administer COVID-19 vaccine to Americans

President-elect Joe Biden will deliver remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, Friday about his plan to administer COVID-19 vaccines to the U.S. population, according to his published schedule. Biden has already said he wants Americans to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots during the first 100 days of his administration, a lofty goal to reverse a slow start to the nation's vaccine rollout.But to this point, the president-elect has offered few details on how his administration would achieve the ambitious timeline. During a prime-time speech Thursday evening, however, Biden addressed his proposed $1.9 trillion economic recovery package, which contains $20 billion for a national vaccination program. The program will work in partnership with states, tribes and territories and make the vaccine free to everyone in the United States.

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Fast-food workers plan to strike for higher minimum wage

Fast-food workers across the country plan to strike Friday to send a message to the incoming Biden administration as well as their employers to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Employees of McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast-food chains will stay home or walk off the job in roughly 15 cities, said a spokesperson for the "Fight for $15 and a Union" movement, which has staged walkouts since 2012 and is backed by the Service Employees International Union. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn't budged since 2009; President-Elect Joe Biden has made a minimum wage of $15 an hour a key goal.

Final federal execution of the Trump administration

Dustin Higgs is scheduled for execution on Friday, the last before next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Barring court intervention, the Trump administration will have executed a total of 13 prisoners by January, outnumbering any presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s and outnumbering all states combined.Death penalty experts and advocates say the Trump administration’s execution spree highlights longstanding inequalities in a criminal justice system that continues to disproportionately treat Black prisoners as the worst of the worst criminals while the nation reckons with the issues of racial injustice. Higgs, who is Black, was convicted of kidnapping and killing three women, Biden has promised to eliminate the federal death penalty and to give incentives for states to do the same.

Mega Millions prize keeps growing: Winning ticket could fetch $750M

Friday's Mega Millions jackpot has swelled to a whopping $750 million – the fifth largest in lottery history and the game's second largest ever – after Tuesday night's drawing didn't produce a winner. The jackpot has steadily grown since the fall, with 34 drawings without a winner since September. Both of the nation's major lottery games are flush with cash: Saturday's Powerball drawing is worth $640 million after no one won Wednesday's $550 million drawing. The largest U.S. lottery prize was a $1.58 billion Powerball jackpot split by three winners in 2016.

'WandaVision' brings MCU back from a long hiatus with Disney+ debut

Due to coronavirus-related production delays, Marvel Cinematic Universe fans haven't seen any new original content since "Spider-Man: Far From Home" hit theaters in summer 2019. That changes Friday when the opening two episodes of "WandaVision," the first of 10 upcoming live-action shows tied to the MCU, premiere on Disney+. The series features "Avengers" heroes Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), a powerful witch, and her android love Vision (Paul Bettany) hurdling through decades of TV sitcom history while also suspecting that something isn't quite right in their little suburban slice of heaven. Marvel has already revealed "WandaVision" will directly tie into the upcoming sequels "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and "Captain Marvel 2." Also, Kat Dennings ("Thor") and Randall Park ("Ant-Man and the Wasp") will reprise their characters from previous MCU films.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden talks COVID-19 vaccines, Mega Millions: 5 things to know Friday