I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, April 27.

Today on the podcast, we'll get a Republican take on President Biden's first 100 days in office.

Today is day 98, and he'll be giving a hundred days address before a limited joint session of Congress tomorrow,

socially distance, meaning not the full House and Senate.

With us now, one of the local Republicans who's going to be in that audience,

freshman Congresswoman Nicole Malia Takas of Staten

Island and a bit of nearby Brooklyn, on the early days of the Biden presidency and of her own time

in Congress. You'll remember listeners that Nicole Malia Takas was in the state legislature from

Staten Island previously and was the 2017 Republican nominee for mayor against Bill de Blasio.

Congresswoman, we always appreciate when you come on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you, Brian. Great to be with you.

So Biden has identified four main priorities from day one, the pandemic, the economy, the climate, and racial injustice.

Let me touch each of these with you briefly, time permitting.

The president touts that more than 40% of the country has had at least one vaccine dose.

Cases are down, 16% in the last two weeks, according to the New York Times COVID tracker.

Deaths came down from around 2,000 a day in the winter to around 700 a day right now,

which is better, but that's still a pace of 20,000 COVID deaths a month nationally, which is not okay.

But how do you measure success against the virus, and how would you rate the job the president is doing on that?

Well, I think the main thing is that we've been able to improve access to the vaccination.

I think that that's one thing that the president has done to build on President Trump's success and

Operation Warp Speed and take it to the next level with production and distribution.

You know, the pharmacy program has done very well in getting a lot of the local pharmacies

...