Tag: President-Elect Biden

Biden’s transition moving ahead at full speed

Will announce coronavirus efforts on Monday

When Joe Biden was named president-elect on Saturday, his transition operation was already full speed ahead.

Biden plans to announce his own version of the coronavirus task force on Monday to help shape his administration’s response to the ongoing pandemic, with former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and former FDA Commissioner David Kessler among the leaders, according to deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield.

Bedingfield, appearing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” echoed other Biden campaign and transition officials who have said they intend to hit the ground running. Continue reading.

Washington braces for unpredictable post-election period

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President Trump’s time left in office is ticking down after Democrat Joe Bidenwas projected as the president-elect on Saturday, setting the stage for an unpredictable lame-duck period.

Trump is unlikely to concede the race in the immediate future, but people close to him believe he will ultimately leave the White House when his term ends. What happens in the roughly 70 days until Inauguration Day remains uncertain, however, even to many people close to the White House and the Trump campaign.

The president is expected to pursue legal challenges to the election results in key battleground states, even though some initial lawsuits have already been rejected and others would not change the outcome. There are also rumblings he could fire agency heads in the coming days, and some White House staffers have started circulating their resumes elsewhere. Continue reading.

Biden’s COVID-19 crisis team takes shape as virus rages

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President-elect Joe Biden will find himself facing an immediate public health crisis when he takes office in January, putting pressure on his health team now to hit the ground running.

The pandemic is expected to be raging this winter, as cases and hospitalizations are on the rise in the fall months with no sign of slowing as the weather gets colder.

Biden has been receiving briefings for months from health experts, led by Vivek Murthy, surgeon general during the Obama administration, and David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Other experts who have briefed Biden include Celine Gounder of New York University and Yale’s Marcella Nunez-Smith. Continue reading.

This is the face of radical-Republican contempt

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Joe Biden just won more votes than anyone else in American history, but the next four years may go down in history as the stymied presidency. That’s because it looks highly unlikely that the Democrats will get a majority in the Senate, leaving the chamber under the iron-fisted control of Mitch McConnell, patron saint of polluters and profiteers.

Even before noon on Jan. 20, 2021, Donald Trump will be in a position to do enormous harm that will complicate the Biden presidency. Indeed, we should expect Trump is already looking for ways to use his last eight weeks in office to punish our nation—or at least the states that voted for Biden.

That assessment comes not from me, but from Trump himself. His life philosophy is a single word: revenge. Continue reading.

Top Republicans Are Silent on Biden Victory as Trump Refuses to Concede

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The top Senate Republican issued no statement congratulating President-elect Biden, while a leading House Republican echoed President Trump’s protestations that the election was not, in fact, over.

WASHINGTON — As President Trump refused to concede defeat on Saturday, top Republican congressional leaders followed suit, refraining from releasing the customary statements congratulating the victor that have been standard among senior lawmakers in both parties when a presidential election has been declared.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader and Republican of Kentucky, declined on Saturday to acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, with an aide instead pointing reporters to a generic “count all the votes” statement Mr. McConnell released on Friday before the results were known.

In that statement, released on Twitter as Mr. Trump preemptively contested the outcome of the election, Mr. McConnell had outlined “how this must work in our great country.” “Every legal vote should be counted,” he said. “Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the process. And the courts are here to apply the laws & resolve disputes.” Continue reading.

As Biden wins presidency, Trump supporters insist election isn’t over as they protest his loss

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PHOENIX — Activists and supporters of President Trump insisted Saturday that the presidential election was not finished, displaying defiance after Joe Biden secured victory in the closely fought race.

From here in the Arizona desert to Philadelphia, Trump backers echoed the president’s attacks on the integrity of the election, which continued Saturday with his statement that “this election is far from over.” They made baseless allegations of voter fraud and pledged to keep fighting in court while claiming Biden did not legitimately win. 

“We know the election is being stolen,” said Michael Breitenbach, a 47-year-old construction manager in Philadelphia who was holding a Trump flag Saturday morning not long after news outlets called the race. “When the count is fair and legal, Donald Trump will have won by a landslide, and you can bank on that.” Continue reading.

Biden: “This is the time to heal in America”

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President-elect Joe Biden said “this is the time to heal in America” and called on the nation to come together to get the coronavirus under control, address systemic racism, confront climate change and “restore decency.”

Driving the news: Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris addressed the nation Saturday night at a drive-in style rally in Wilmington, Del., hours after news networks projected Biden as the winner of the U.S. presidential election.

  • The milestone comes exactly 48 years after Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate. Continue reading.

Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies

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President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country’s politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities.

He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.

Although transitions of power can always include abrupt changes, the shift from Trump to Biden — from one president who sought to undermine established norms and institutions to another who has vowed to restore the established order — will be among the most startling in American history. Continue reading.

For Joe Biden, unassuming opposite of Trump, victory means a title that has eluded him for three decades: President-elect

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Joe Biden, the son of a car salesman and a homemaker, the product of Catholic schools and public universities, the six-term senator and two-term vice president, has craved one title above all others in decades of trying and decades of failing. On Saturday, he won it: president-elect.

The man who was wrong for the moment in two previous presidential campaigns had enough longevity to convince voters that he was right for this one. And now the man who was once one of the nation’s youngest senators will become the nation’s oldest president.

Draping himself and his campaign in basic attributes such as decency and empathy to try to salve a country shattered by a viral pandemic and economic collapse, Biden used a deliberately laid-back approach to slay the reelection hopes of a man he believed threatened the fabric of American democracy. Continue reading.

Why Republicans and others concerned about the economy have reason to celebrate Biden in the White House

On day one, a newly inaugurated President Joe Biden will have to address a devastated economy – much like he and former President Barack Obama did a decade ago. 

What can the country expect? 

Forecasting how the economy will perform under a new president is generally a fool’s errand. How much or how little credit the person in the White House deserves for the health of the economy is a matter of debate, and no economist can confidently predict how the president’s policies will play out – if they even go into effect – or what challenges might emerge.  Continue reading.