Biden warned of four crises. The pandemic was the easy one.

The president has described systemic racial injustice and the threat of climate change as “existential” threats both to America’s role in the world and humanity’s continued survival—and unlike COVID-19 and its economic wreckage, long predate the missteps of the previous administration. On both issues, Biden has made large—but also largely symbolic—strides, from record minority representation within his cabinet to rejoining the global community in committing to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But promises to sign historic legislation to address the issue in the near future, like so many other promises from the Biden administration, remain at the mercy of the Senate filibuster and its defenders. One hundred days into the administration, allies fear that the same crises that survived the Obama administration will continue unabated under Biden. The most diverse cabinet in history was meant to indicate the importance that Biden would place on getting everyone a seat at the table for major conversations, a promise he has largely held to. The Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have been folded in to every major conversation about COVID relief and economic recovery packages, with a large focus on vaccine and health-care equity, although early focus on vaccine hesitancy by Black people was later found to be overblown. But with the withdrawal of Biden’s proposal for a national police oversight board, the future of law enforcement reform now hinges in the ability by congressional Democrats to pass a single bill, the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act—a bill that, unlike Biden’s other “Hail Mary” legislative accomplishments in his first hundred days, can’t be passed by using the reconciliation process to avoid the filibuster.