Tag: Biden administration

Republicans criticized a Biden nominee for her tweets. Democrats see a ‘whole new level of hypocrisy.’

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For the second time this week, Republican senators grilled President Biden’s pick to head the White House budget office over her history of controversial tweets — infuriating critics of the GOP who said the lawmakers were hypocritical for chastising nominee Neera Tanden while failing to speak up about former president Donald Trump’s incendiary tweetstorms now at the center of an impeachment inquiry.

During a heated back-and-forth, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), known for his colorful expressions, accused Tanden of attacking lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“You called Senator Sanders everything but an ignorant slut,” he said, evoking the sexist term famously satirized on “Saturday Night Live.” Continue reading.

Seeking to combat extremists in ranks, the military struggles to answer a basic question: How many are there?

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faces an early test as he races to advance a major initiative targeting far-right extremism in the ranks, a challenge that officials acknowledge is complicated by the Pentagon’s lack of clarity on the extent of the threat following the U.S. Capitol riot.

Austin’s highly unusual order for a military-wide “stand-down,” slated to pause normal operations in coming weeks so troops can discuss internal support for extremist movements, underscores the urgency of the task ahead for the retired four-star general, who last month became the nation’s first African American Pentagon chief.

The Jan. 6 events at the Capitol, in which Trump supporters stormed Congress in an attempt to prevent President Biden from taking office, laid bare the appeal of white-supremacist and anti-government groups among some veterans and, in smaller numbers, currently serving troops. Among the 190 people charged in the siege, at least 30 are veterans. Three are reservists or National Guard members. Continue reading.

Wave of departures leaves federal court seats for Biden to fill

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A growing number of federal judges have announced their departures in the weeks since President Biden was sworn in, giving the new administration an early opportunity to start making inroads into former President Trump’s success at filling the judiciary with conservative judges.

There are currently 57 vacancies in the federal district and appellate courts and another 20 seats that will become vacant in the coming months. At least 25 of those vacancies were announced after Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

The group of departures includes Emmet Sullivan, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by former President Clinton in 1994. Sullivan presided over several high-profile cases during the Trump era, including the prosecution of Michael Flynn on charges that the former White House national security adviser had lied to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian diplomat during Trump’s transition period. Continue reading.

As oceans rise, Democrats put all hands on deck for climate change

White House and congressional Democrats agree moving away from fossil fuels, creating green jobs are top priorities

As the 117th Congress enters its second month and the Biden administration fills out its Cabinet, Democrats in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government are in agreement that climate change deserves swift attention and in alignment that legislation to support the transition from fossil to clean energy is a good place to begin.

Even President Joe Biden’s nominees for director of national intelligence, secretary of Agriculture, Treasury secretary and deputy Defense secretary, not traditionally posts with ecological focuses, described climate change as a critical issue.

If there was doubt that the Senate under Democratic control would approach climate change as an all-hands-on-deck threat, Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., aimed to lay it to rest on Feb. 3, calling the warming globe “the existential threat of our time.” Continue reading.

DOJ asks Trump-appointed US attorneys to resign

The Justice Department on Tuesday asked US attorneys appointed by former President Donald Trump to submit their resignations, a turnover that spares two top prosecutors in Delaware and Connecticut overseeing two sensitive Trump-era investigations.

The resignations are effective February 28, US attorneys were told on a conference call with acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson, according to two Justice officials familiar with the matter. A number of acting US attorneys who aren’t Senate confirmed or who were appointed by the courts are expected to remain in their posts until a Biden appointee is approved by the Senate, prosecutors were told Tuesday.

Delaware US Attorney David Weiss has been asked to remain in office, where he is overseeing the tax probe of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. John Durham, appointed as special counsel by former Attorney General William Barr to reinvestigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, will also continue his work, but he is expected to resign as US attorney in Connecticut, a Justice official said. Continue reading.

Trump left behind a damaged government. Here’s what Biden faces as he rebuilds it.

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More than 18 months after the Agriculture Department relocated two research agencies from Washington to Kansas City, Mo., prompting a major exodus from both divisions, the agencies are still struggling to regain their strength.

Even after a round of hiring in the past year, the permanent staff of the Economic Research Service is down 33 percent from where it was near the end of the Obama administration, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture workforce has declined 34 percent. According to USDA, they have 115 and 130 job vacancies, respectively.

“We lost some of the nation’s best economists and agricultural scientists in the previous administration,” USDA spokesman Matt Herrick said in an email. “It will take time for the new administration to rebuild USDA’s scientific and research agencies and restore their confidence and morale.” Continue reading.

Buttigieg in quarantine after possible Covid exposure

DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg is quarantining for the next 14 days after a member of his security detail tested positive for Covid-19. 

According to a press statement by DOT chief of staff Laura Schiller, the agent had been in close contact with Buttigieg, “including this morning prior to the agent’s positive result.“

Buttigieg also took a routine Covid PCR test Monday morning and the virus was not detected, nor is Buttigieg having symptoms. He has received the first dose of the vaccination and will get the second dose “when his quarantine is completed,” Schiller said. Continue reading.

Denis McDonough confirmed as President Biden’s veterans affairs chief

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The Senate on Monday confirmed Denis McDonough as President Biden’s veterans affairs secretary, choosing a non-veteran but a manager with years of government service to lead the sprawling health and benefits agency.

McDonough, 51, was chief of staff during Barack Obama’s second term and held senior roles on the National Security Council and on Capitol Hill before that. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that although he is not a veteran, his long career as a behind-the-scenes troubleshooter and policymaker would serve him well at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a massive bureaucracy beset by multiple challenges.

“I can unstick problems inside agencies and across agencies, especially at an agency as large as VA,” McDonough told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee in January. Continue reading.

Blinken turns away from Trump-era approaches, starting with media relations

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken tried to reset the U.S. government’s relationship with the news media on his first full day in office, calling an independent press essential to the country’s global image and a “cornerstone of our democracy.”

“You keep the American people and the world informed about what we do here. That’s key to our mission,” he said to reporters in the State Department briefing room Wednesday.

Blinken’s attempt to overhaul the combative relationship between State Department officials and the media is among the decisions he is facing about what to keep or discard from the Trump era as President Biden pledges to bring unity and transparency in U.S. governance. Continue reading.

Blinken Takes Over at State Dept. With a Review of Trump’s Policies

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The Senate confirmed Antony J. Blinken as secretary of state. He is looking to reverse the Trump administration’s confrontational approach to diplomacy.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Antony J. Blinken as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, installing President Biden’s longtime adviser with a mission to rejoin alliances that were fractured after four years of an “America First” foreign policy.

A centrist with an interventionist streak, Mr. Blinken was approved by a vote of 78 to 22, a signal that senators were eager to move past the Trump administration’s confrontational approach to diplomacy.

“Blinken is the right person to reassure America’s prerogatives on the global stage,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said before the vote. Continue reading.