Category: Joe Biden

Biden takes over at perilous moment

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Joe Biden’s administration will begin Wednesday at a perilous moment for a country facing nearly unprecedented challenges to public health and national security.

Biden will take over the federal response to a coronavirus pandemic that is surging amid fears that a new more contagious strain will be dominant in March.

He’ll face the challenge of stimulating an economy showing new signs of buckling, and a vaccination effort that has thus far fallen short of targets set by the Trump administration. Continue reading.

Biden wins wide approval for handling of transition, but persistent GOP skepticism on issues will cloud the opening of his presidency, Post-ABC poll finds

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Two-thirds of Americans approve of President-elect Joe Biden’s handling of the transition ahead of his inauguration Wednesday, but mixed confidence in his leadership on major issues along with President Trump’s hold on the Republican Party present sizable challenges for the early days of the new administration, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

Biden enters office with 49 percent of Americans confident that he will make the right decisions for the country’s future, compared with 50 percent who take the opposite view. The 49 percent represents much greater trust than Trump’s 38 percent mark four years ago but much lower than the 61 percent who expressed trust in Barack Obama’s decisions on the eve of his inauguration in 2009.

The equally divided result on the broad question about confidence in Biden’s leadership and decision-making is mainly the result of strong distrust among Republicans about the incoming president, a finding that persists throughout the poll and underscores the degree to which the deeply polarizing presidential campaign — along with Trump’s baseless claims about a stolen election — have shaped Republican attitudes. Continue reading.

Biden Begins Presidency With Positive Ratings; Trump Departs With Lowest-Ever Job Mark

68% of public does not want Trump to remain a major political figure in the future

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As Joe Biden prepares to take office just days after a deadly riot inside the U.S. Capitol, 64% of voters express a positive opinion of his conduct since he won the November election. Majorities also approve of Biden’s Cabinet selections and how he has explained his plans and policies for the future.

Donald Trump is leaving the White House with the lowest job approval of his presidency (29%) and increasingly negative ratings for his post-election conduct. The share of voters who rate Trump’s conduct since the election as only fair or poor has risen from 68% in November to 76%, with virtually all of the increase coming in his “poor” ratings (62% now, 54% then).

Trump voters, in particular, have grown more critical of their candidate’s post-election conduct. The share of his supporters who describe his conduct as poor has doubled over the past two months, from 10% to 20%. Continue reading.

Biden Pledges Federal Vaccine Campaign to Beat a Surging Coronavirus

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Facing looming shortages and rising infections, the president-elect promised mobile vaccination sites, National Guard troops and a federal push to increase vaccine production.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., racing against a surge in coronavirus cases and the emergence of a new variant that could worsen the crisis, is planning a vaccination offensive that calls for greatly expanding access to the vaccine while using a wartime law to increase production.

In a speech on Friday in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden told Americans that “we remain in a very dark winter,” allowing, “the honest truth is this: Things will get worse before they get better.”

“I told you,” he said, “I’ll always level with you.” But he also tried to offer hope for an end to a pandemic that has taken nearly 390,000 American lives and frayed the country’s economic and social fabric. Continue reading.

What’s in Biden’s $1.9 trillion emergency coronavirus plan

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The rescue proposal covers a national vaccination program, direct aid for struggling families and relief for small businesses and communities.

Biden administration officials unveiled the details of a sprawling $1.9 trillion rescue package on Thursday, proposing an extensive response to the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating grip on the nation’s economy.

The Biden plan directs roughly $400 billion to fighting the public health crisis, including through a national vaccination program, scaling up testing and contact tracing and providing paid sick leave to contain the virus’s spread, senior Biden administration officials told reporters ahead of the speech. To fill the lingering holes in the economic recovery, the plan also includes more than $1 trillion in direct aid to struggling families by increasing stimulus checks to $2,000, extended unemployment insurance, rental protections and nutrition assistance. The Biden proposal also allocates $440 billion to small-businesses, local communities and transit systems on the brink.

Less than a week before Biden takes office, the proposal comes at a consequential time for the country. More than 4,200 people had died as a result of the coronavirus on Tuesday, a new daily-record high. Fears that the economic recovery is losing ground are mounting as nearly a million people filed for unemployment last week and the country lost jobs in December, marking the first decline since the recovery began in May. Continue reading.

QAnon Congresswoman Says She Will ‘Impeach Biden’

Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced Wednesday night that she plans to file articles of impeachment against President-elect Joe Biden the day after he takes office. Her statement was met with silence from Republicans who had slammed the second round of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump as divisive.

“On Jan. 21, 2021, I’ll be filing Articles of Impeachment against Joe Biden for abuse of power,” Greene tweeted after the House of Representatives voted 232-197 to impeach Trump for the second time.

Greene took to far-right network Newsmax to confirm her intention later in the evening: “I would like to announce on behalf of the American people, we have to make sure that our leaders are held accountable. We cannot have a president of the United States that is willing to abuse the power of the office of the presidency and be easily bought off by foreign governments, foreign Chinese energy companies, Ukrainian energy companies. So on Jan. 21, I will filing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden.” Continue reading.

Fact-checking Biden’s speech on his coronavirus economic relief plan

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President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday night announced his nearly $2 trillion economic plan to deal with the economic fallout from the coronaviruspandemic. There were five factual claims he made that caught our interest.

When we queried the Biden-Harris transition team, we received citations for each factoid within 15 minutes — setting a standard for a response that we hope is maintained. The Trump White House, of course, rarely responded to such queries, generally because the president’s claims almost never could be supported.

“Just since this pandemic began, the wealth of the top 1% has grown by roughly $1.5 trillion since the end of last year — four times the amount for the entire bottom 50%.”

The source for this statistic is the Federal Reserve, which has a website showing the distribution of household wealth in the United States since 1989. Continue reading.

Experts warn of vaccine stumbles ‘out of the gate’ because Trump officials refused to consult with Biden team

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Even as COVID-19 cases continue to overwhelm hospitals, the Trump administration balked at close communication with its successor

The last time a presidential transition began during a national emergency — in 2008 amid the Great Recession — the outgoing Bush administration set aside partisanship to work closely with incoming Obama officials on how to deal with the economic collapse.

“Everyone was completely responsive to any question,” said Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama. “They talked to us about major decisions.”

That smooth handoff is in stark contrast to what is happening now as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to assume power during a double-barreled crisis involving a lethal virus and its economic fallout that experts say demands close cooperation. Instead, as thecoronavirus overwhelms U.S. hospitals and kills more than 3,300 people a day on average, the Trump administration has balked at providing access to information and failed to consult with its successors, including about distributing the vaccines that offer the greatest hope of emerging from the pandemic. Continue reading.

Biden pushes for $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package

GOP critics immediately call it too much, too fast

President-elect Joe Biden began lobbying Congress to quickly approve a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid plan to improve vaccine distribution, provide direct payments to Americans and bolster state and local government coffers.

In a televised speech Thursday evening, Biden delivered a message that appeared tailored for Republicans and more fiscally moderate Democrats who are unlikely to cheer the prospect of another costly pandemic relief bill just weeks after lawmakers approved a $902 billion package.

The former Delaware Democratic senator argued that lawmakers not only have an “economic imperative to act now” but a “moral obligation” to help the nation weather a pandemic that has killed more than 385,000 Americans. Continue reading.

Biden’s chief aide says president wants teams, no rivals

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As he takes office in the face of the most substantial set of crises facing any new president in almost a century, President-elect Joe Biden is structuring an incoming administration around teams meant to break down the fiefdoms and silos that have at times vexed many of his predecessors.

If former President Obama built his Cabinet as a team of rivals, Biden is building a team of allies.

The Biden transition has structured its nominees and senior officials into policy pods, Cabinet members and policy coordinators introduced together over the course of the two-month transition, designed to use the levers of government across departments and agencies. Continue reading.