Whether it is investing in a coal mining community, or in regional tourism, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says new “investing in America” grants being announced Thursday are designed so every community in America feels empowered and included to get back on their feet in the wake of the pandemic.

She said the Commerce Department is making $3 billion in grants available for a myriad of programs, using funds passed as part of the American Rescue Plan.

Interested communities will have to apply for the grants, which exclude businesses.

“It’ll be a nationwide competition to quite literally ‘build back better,'” Raimondo told ABC News’s Karen Travers, using the name President Joe Biden uses for his recovery program. “Building back certain communities from the ground up so that everybody can thrive in the new economy.”

With concerns growing about how long current price surges will last, Raimondo said the Biden administration is watching inflation “very closely.”

“And not, you know, not trying to deny that there’s a link between large fiscal stimulus and inflation,” she said, “but inflation is not the only thing we need to be worried about.”

Raimondo said the kind of funding the Commerce Department is investing in communities can be “quite beneficial” in countering inflation.

“These are investments in productivity. And that’s what we need to be making. Every economist will tell you, you want to invest, to enhance productivity, and that’s exactly what this is,” Raimondo said. “This is investments in infrastructure, investments in skills, education, job training, and those are not inflation creating expenditures of money.”

The grants will be distributed through the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration.

Programs include the “Build back better challenge,” in which regions can apply for up to $100 million to “accelerate recovery and inclusive economic growth by developing new industries or expanding existing ones through planning, infrastructure development, workforce training, innovation and commercialization, access to capital, and more,” the department said.

Those programs include $300 million to invest in communities affected by the shrinking coal mining industry.

“We also need to be there for communities that have been traditionally dependent on coal,” Raimondo explained. “And so that’s what this money is for putting folks to work in those communities, making investments in those communities so they benefit from the transition to renewables, whether that’s retraining, or innovation hubs or building infrastructure.”

Raimondo insisted there would be no political considerations when grants are made to coal mining communities, especially since influential Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin represents West Virginia, a state hit hard by the industry downturn.

“It isn’t just West Virginia. It’s Virginia, it’s West Virginia it’s Ohio with Kentucky it’s you know it’s not about one state it’s about being honest with people and creating jobs for people everywhere,” she explained.

Another program is aimed at getting Americans back to work through investments in worker training and in funding infrastructure projects.

“So, the way it works is pretty simple: a group of companies would come together in a community, they would say, ‘we have 1000 open jobs right now,’ for example, in order to hire people for those jobs. ‘These are the skills they need to have,'” she said. “Then the money that we’re providing would train those people in exactly those skills, and here’s the best part, the businesses have to hire the folks, so that this is not trained, and pray and get a job. This is enroll, train, graduate, get your job.”

The Commerce Department also will focus on providing funds for underserved communities, providing regional tourism grants, and helping communities plan for any potential economic hardship in the future.

Raimondo said the administration is not telling local communities how to invest their money, but rather providing a road map.

“This is bottom up,” she said. “This is not Washington telling any community, how to do economic development. Every community has certain strengths, maybe it’s, a certain talent pool, maybe it’s, I don’t know tourism, maybe it’s a certain kind of skill set, maybe it’s a certain technical know how. So each community wants to build on those strengths, and then use our funds to kind of supercharge those efforts.”

Money will be available almost immediately especially for communities impacted by a lack of tourism because of the pandemic, Raimondo explained.

“There’s so many communities that have lost jobs because of the lack of travel and lack of tourism,” she said. “You need help yesterday and we know that.”

Raimondo also touted the $1.2 billion infrastructure bill being debated in Congress.

In 2016, when she was governor of Rhode Island, she passed “Rhode Works,” a sweeping infrastructure measure targeted at fixing Rhode Island’s roads and bridges, which then were among the worst in the nation. The cornerstone of the program was imposing tolls on truckers to pass through the state in order to fund the project.

“It was none other than Vice President Joe Biden, who traveled to Rhode island with me to stand under a crumbling bridge to say, ‘get behind this governor and let’s make this infrastructure investment happen,'” she said.

She urged Congress to pass the bill, saying that while it might seem controversial now, once communities see money being put into action, it will be seen as favorable.

“It is the right thing to do. And even if it’s controversial at the moment, we got to push it over the finish line is the American people want and deserve better infrastructure,” Raimondo told Travers. “And I promise you, it will be popular once you see the road crews out there making communities better and safer.”

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The TAKE with Rick Klein

The talk after Wednesday’s flurry of activity around Jan. 6 investigations was about separate partisan inquiries covering the same subject — a subject leaders of the two parties don’t see, or don’t claim to see, the same way at all.

Then there’s Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. She could perhaps be the only person standing in the way of final Jan. 6 takeaways devolving into wearying and meaningless “both sides-ism.”

Cheney’s decision to stay on the House select committee, and even back Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rejection of two Republican members who were tapped to serve on it, is about more than a single vote, even a vote that belongs to a former member of GOP leadership.

She is also calling out her own party leader — the man favored to become the next House speaker if Republicans recapture the majority — as offering “disingenuous” rhetoric that should disqualify him from taking over any such job.

“There must be an investigation that is nonpartisan, that is sober, that is serious, that gets to the facts wherever they may lead,” Cheney told reporters.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy outlined questions about security shortcomings at the Capitol that made clear Republicans were looking for an escape that has them aiming at Pelosi in whatever separate probe they launch.

McCarthy and his allies also say the House-approved committee is designed to embarrass former President Donald Trump and his supporters. Trump, who months ago committed to booting Cheney out of office next year, would readily agree.

But when the select committee holds its first hearing on Tuesday, Cheney will be there. As she explores ways to make sure her presence is felt, that fact alone will give an extra dose of credibility — even bipartisanship — to the endeavor.

The RUNDOWN with Averi Harper

The White House is changing its tune on COVID-19 procedures.

The White House will now announce any official who tests positive for COVID-19 if they have had close contact with the the president, vice president, first lady or the second gentleman.

“An email from our COVID-19 operations protocol team has been sent to White House staff informing them of the official policy — that if you are in close contact with a principal, and test positive for COVID 19, your case will be disclosed to press along with any other relevant details,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. “We will share the name of the staffer if that individual agrees to do so; of course, we respect their privacy.”

Previously, White House officials said they would only announce cases of “commissioned officers,” or senior staff with “assistant to the President” in their title.

The marked difference came after Psaki confirmed a breakthrough case of the coronavirus in the White House.

Officials have not announced any changes to COVID-19 measures like testing or reinstating masking, but new cases at the White House make the “independence” from COVID-19 that Biden hoped would arrive by July 4 feel even more elusive.

The TIP with Alisa Wiersema

The outlook on what will happen with the national push for federal voting rights legislation is still unclear, but the issue of voter ID requirements remains a fixture in debates across state legislatures.

In a memo circulated Wednesday, Pennsylvania state Rep. Seth Grove — who also serves as the chairman of the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee — said he plans to reintroduce his state’s voting bill, H.B. 1300, which Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed earlier this month. Grove pegs his move on a Philadelphia Inquirer report that quotes Wolf indicating support for voter ID rules, despite previously citing such measures as nonstarters for advancing H.B. 1300.

The Pennsylvania Governor is the latest of several high-profile Democrats to lean into more nuanced positions on voter ID laws. Sen. Joe Manchin included voter ID requirements in his voting legislation compromise last month and was promptly backed by voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams.

Wolf previously voiced support for a handful of other provisions originally outlined in H.B. 1300, but it remains to be seen whether he will be open to renegotiating the bill after already vetoing it.

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(WASHINGTON) — When the pandemic hit Alexandria, Virginia, the economic outlook was bleak.

In April 2020, the city projected a budget shortfall of up to $100 million as businesses shut down and workers lost their jobs, eliminating key revenue from sales, tourism and income taxes.

“Early on it was catastrophic for us,” Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson told ABC News. “Every week, unfortunately, I was getting a notification from hotels, large restaurants, telling us that they were shedding workers.”

But a year later, those dire budget projections still haven’t become a reality. In fact, the city just passed its spending plan for the first tranche of $30 million in aid it had received from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The proposal includes investments in infrastructure, food assistance and a guaranteed basic income pilot program giving out $500 to about 150 families.

“We’re working on a variety of different ways to try to help our residents: food insecurity, housing insecurity [and] other efforts to ensure that they get back on their feet in the aftermath of this,” Wilson said.

It’s a story playing out from coast to coast. Thanks to generous federal relief funds, a rebound in consumer spending and stock market gains, state and local governments that had predicted economic calamity are now finding themselves flush with cash.

“So far, we are seeing that a lot of states [that] talked about how they were going to have to raise all sorts of taxes and cut all sorts of spending, and it didn’t happen,” Richard Auxier, a senior policy associate at the Tax Policy Center, told ABC News.

Auxier said that while it’s too soon to say that states are out of the woods, federal support has helped keep them afloat during the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan Act passed in March included $350 billion in direct aid to state, local and tribal governments. A Treasury Department spokesperson told ABC News about $200 billion of that funding has already been paid out.

Unlike the previous two COVID-19 relief laws, there are fewer restrictions on how states can use the money, which must be obligated by 2024 and spent by 2026.

“By the time the third major piece of legislation came around in 2021, there was a big desire to give them that freedom, to have some slack on how they want to spend it,” Auxier said.

President Joe Biden is now urging some cities to use some of the funds toward fighting crime — for example, by paying overtime to police officers.

The Cherokee Nation is receiving $1.8 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act as well. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told ABC News the funding is going toward $2,000 stimulus checks for every resident, as well as investments in mental health, broadband internet and a new hospital.

“The number one plan was to get relief directly to our citizens,” Hoskin told ABC News.

In the meantime, 13 Republican state attorneys general are suing the Biden administration because they want to use the federal aid to fund tax cuts, which is one of the few restrictions under the current law.

“It’s not a matter for the federal government to decide Arkansas’s own tax structure,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge told ABC News. “That’s where the federal government’s overreaching.”

In Maryland, Comptroller Peter Franchot established a working group to determine where the federal money has been going. He said the funding has been a “game-changer” that it helped the state avoid bankruptcy. But he added that it’s clear some of the money isn’t going to the hardest-hit communities that need it the most.

“Some of it will be well spent, [but] a lot of it probably won’t be,” Franchot told ABC News. “That’s the nature of having a fire hydrant of cash come into the state suddenly.”

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