President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday described the $900 billion congressional stimulus proposal as a “good start” and said he believed Congress should pass it.
“That would be a good start. It’s not enough,” Biden said during a Thursday interview with CNN host Jake Tapper.
“I think it should be passed,” Biden continued. “I’m going to ask for more … when we get there to get things done.” Continue reading.
The president-elect’s economic team is filled with people who are familiar with the issues of unemployment and economic inequality.
IN RECOUNTING HER childhood, Neera Tanden likes to cite the role the government played in keeping her and her mother on track following the divorce of her parents at the age of 5.
“My father left for a time, and my mother had to be on welfare,” Tanden said during an address to the 2016 Democratic convention in Philadelphia. “She worked hard to support me and my brother. We used lunch vouchers at school and food stamps at the supermarket.”
“It wasn’t easy, but we eventually got back on our feet because of the investment Democrats have made in struggling families like mine,” she told delegates and party leaders in attendance. Continue reading.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris garnered her own share of the news spotlight Thursday, announcing senior members of her White House team, including Tina Flournoy — currently a key aide to former President Clinton — as her chief of staff.
Harris’s first joint interview with President-elect Joe Biden since winning the election is also scheduled to be broadcast prime-time Thursday on CNN.
The contours of the role Harris will carve out for herself are still becoming clear. Continue reading.
President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday asked Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, to serve as his chief medical adviser.
Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that he asked Fauci to serve in the position in addition to staying on in his longtime role as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“I asked him to stay on the exact same role he’s had for the past several presidents, and I asked him to be a chief medical adviser for me as well, and be part of the COVID team,” Biden told the network in his first joint interview with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris since the election. Continue reading.
President Trump declined Thursday to say whether he retains confidence in Attorney General William P. Barr, who this week undercut the president by saying he had not seen any evidence of fraud on a scale that would alter the election results.
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge to the presidential election filed by Trump’s campaign, a new blow to his floundering efforts to overturn the election.
Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris named Tina Flournoy as her chief of staff and selected other key aides Thursday as the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden forged ahead with its transition to power. View the post here.
Internal census documents reveal errors involving more than 900,000 records nationwide
Internal documents released Wednesday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee show the Census Bureau has run into far more problems than publicly disclosed in its rush to finish tabulating results from the 2020 count, possibly resulting in delays that would let the incoming Biden administration have final control over results.
The documents identify errors involving more than 900,000 records across the country. The problems vary from calculating ages correctly to missing or double counting thousands of people. Agency officials have also identified problems in tens of thousands of records in states on the verge of gaining or losing congressional seats, such as Texas and California.
Correcting those problems will require several delays, according to the documents the committee released Wednesday as part of three sets of internal Census presentation slides dated mid-to-late November. Continue reading.
The list of Republicans who are breaking with President Trump over his wild assertions about widespread voter fraud and acknowledging the reality of President-elect Joe Biden’s election win is growing longer.
So is the list of the president’s targets as he refuses to concede and rages against allies who, in his eyes, have shown insufficient loyalty.
The developments have divided Trump and some of his allies in the final weeks of his administration and raised concerns about the negative impact his attacks on the electoral process could have on the Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will decide if Republicans hold the majority. Continue reading.
President-elect Joe Biden will take office under pressure to repudiate and rescind many, if not most, of the more than 400 executive actions President Trump has used to tighten the U.S. immigration system. But Biden also will start his term in a bind that could make such changes difficult to accomplish in short order.
Biden’s administration will inherit an enforcement system cracking under the strains of the coronavirus pandemic, a crippling immigration court backlog and a demoralized workforce at the Department of Homeland Security, where leadership instability and administrative chaos have been signatures of Trump’s tenure.
At the U.S.-Mexico border, tens of thousands of migrants with pending asylum claims are waiting to enter the United States, some in squalid tent cities that resemble refugee camps. U.S. border agents have been making arrests at a soaring rate — more than 2,000 per day in recent weeks — as the economic fallout from the pandemic and devastating hurricanes in Central America threaten to trigger a new wave of illegal migration to the United States. Continue reading.
The president-elect is lining up appointees to fill lower-level jobs that don’t require running the gauntlet on Capitol Hill.
Now that he’s chosen a big chunk of his Cabinet nominees, President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is focusing increasingly on selecting candidates for government positions that do not require Senate confirmation.
Concerned about Republicans slow-walking confirmation hearings for Cabinet appointees and hollowed-out federal agencies, Biden and his aides are eager to place mid- to lower-level officials across the federal government, particularly in national security roles, to ensure his administration can begin to enact his agenda immediately, according to three people familiar with the situation.
By quickly selecting candidates for slots that don’t require Senate confirmation, such as deputy assistant secretaries, the transition team also can try to ensure that many of those hired can obtain security clearances by the time Biden takes office. Continue reading.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to create a diverse Cabinet that represents a multicultural United States, and he’s taken steps with his initial nominations to fulfill the promise.
But that hasn’t put an end to the pressure or blocked criticism from supporters who say he has more to do to meet the mark.
Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the top Black lawmaker on Capitol Hill who played a critical role in Biden’s victory in the Democratic presidential primary, last week expressed disappointment over the lack of Black people named to prominent positions to date. Continue reading.
