Tag: President-Elect Biden

Republicans call for unity but won’t acknowledge Biden won fairly

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The call for unity came from one of President Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, nearly a week after a pro-Trump mob rampaged the U.S. Capitol in a riot that left five people dead.

“What happened at the Capitol on January 6 was as wrong as wrong can be,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told colleagues during a virtual committee meeting about Democrats’ demands that Trump be removed from office. Now was the time for “healing,” and in Jordan’s opinion, that meant allowing the president to finish out his term.

The committee chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), pressed him on one point. Hadn’t Jordan and more than 140 other Republicans given oxygen to the false conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that motivated the Capitol rioters — that the election had somehow been stolen — when they had voted to object to certifying the electoral college results? Continue reading.

Republicans call for unity but won’t acknowledge Biden won fairly

Washington Post logo

The call for unity came from one of President Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, nearly a week after a pro-Trump mob rampaged the U.S. Capitol in a riot that left five people dead.

“What happened at the Capitol on January 6 was as wrong as wrong can be,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told colleagues during a virtual committee meeting about Democrats’ demands that Trump be removed from office. Now was the time for “healing,” and in Jordan’s opinion, that meant allowing the president to finish out his term.

The committee chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), pressed him on one point. Hadn’t Jordan and more than 140 other Republicans given oxygen to the false conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that motivated the Capitol rioters — that the election had somehow been stolen — when they had voted to object to certifying the electoral college results? Continue reading.

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 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.

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.

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.

Ivanka Will Attend Biden Inaugural In Bid To ’Save Her Political Career’

The Internet is unleashing mockery after Ivanka Trump let it be known she plans to attend the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden. At any other point in U.S. history it would not even have been news, but rather, an assumption and expectation that the First Daughter and advisor to the outgoing president would attend the event, but these are strange times.

The eldest Trump daughter isn’t planning on attending for patriotic reasons, nor for a chance to witness history first hand, nor to support the incoming administration.

Ivanka is worried that her promising political career is in jeopardy and she’s doing whatever she can to save her reputation,” according to the Daily Mail, citing a White House insider who says, “Ivanka is convinced that by attending Biden’s inauguration she will come across as a good sport and will gain future supporters.” Continue reading.

Biden announces veteran diplomat William Burns as nominee for CIA director

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President-elect Joe Biden early Monday announced former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns as his nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Burns is a former career diplomat with more than three decades of experience in the Foreign Service. He retired in 2014 and currently serves as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has served in various national security roles across both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Burns was U.S. ambassador to Russia between 2005 and 2008 and was U.S. ambassador to Jordan from 1998 to 2001. Continue reading.