Tag: President-Elect Biden

Anticipating Senate bottlenecks, Biden races to fill agency jobs

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.

Biden takes steps toward creating diverse Cabinet

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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.

Biden budget pick sparks battle with GOP Senate

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Joe Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden to head the White House budget office is setting the stage for the biggest confirmation battle of the president-elect’s first weeks in office.

Senate Republicans are vowing to oppose Tanden, a close ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who has often slammed GOP lawmakers on Twitter and referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as “Moscow Mitch.” 

She also hit McConnell on Twitter for not telling President Trump to wear a mask at his daily press conferences and has deleted tweets that appeared to be critical of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key moderate, GOP aides pointed out. Continue reading.

Here’s when Biden’s win becomes official — and how Trump has been trying to prevent that

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The president has failed to halt the certification of the vote in all six states in which he tried to challenge the results, falsely claiming they were the work of widespread fraud.

President Trump and his allies have tried to undo the results of the 2020 election with falsehoods about voting security, lawsuits and direct pressure on Republican legislators and officials — an effort critics have denounced as an unprecedented subversion of democracy.

One of Trump’s immediate goals has been to delay or derail formal certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win in key battleground states, either by persuading judges to block the process or compelling officials not to certify results, based on false claims that the election was tainted by massive voter fraud.

That effort has failed. All six battleground states in which Trump was challenging the results — Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin — have formally certified Biden’s win. Continue reading.

Arizona, Wisconsin certify Biden’s win; president-elect names inauguration planning committee

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NOTE: This article is provided free to all readers by The Washington Post.

Arizona and Wisconsin certified their results Monday, giving President-elect Joe Biden a win in two more states where President Trump has contested the election. Trump allies have pledged to continue court challenges in the two states.

The action came as Biden forged ahead with plans for his presidency, announcing a committee to organize his Jan. 20 inauguration and formally unveiling his economic team. Biden was also set to get his first President’s Daily Brief, a classified compilation of information from intelligence agencies, though it was not announced whether he had yet received it. Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris received the briefing, at the Commerce Department. View the post here.

Biden’s economic team gets mixed reviews from Senate Republicans

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President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced his choices for key members of his economic team, with Senate Republicans complimenting one of his top picks and bashing another.

Biden said he would nominate former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen to serve as Treasury secretary and Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, for director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Yellen, who was last confirmed by the Senate in 2014 when Democrats were in the majority, earned positive remarks from some GOP senators on Monday. Continue reading.

Biden announces all-female White House communications team

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President-elect Joe Biden on Sunday unveiled what his transition team says is the first entirely female White House communications team in U.S. history. 

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced the members of their White House senior communications staff, calling the women “diverse, experienced, and talented.”

“Communicating directly and truthfully to the American people is one of the most important duties of a President, and this team will be entrusted with the tremendous responsibility of connecting the American people to the White House,” Biden said in a statement. Continue reading.

Election revealed an economic paradox: Those doing well voted for change

What was already a very divided country remains one. And one of the biggest dividing lines is economic.

Political analysts might be still rehashing the 2020 presidential election a year from now, but two things were obvious even before former Vice President Joe Biden was declared the winner the Saturday after Election Day.

What was already a very divided country remains one.

And one of the biggest dividing lines is economic.

The economic health of the country has long been a factor in presidential elections, yet apparently not always in ways one might expect. Continue reading.

Monumental economic challenges await Biden’s Treasury secretary

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The next Treasury secretary will join the Biden administration amid an almost yearlong economic downturn and with limited fiscal tools at their disposal to cobble together a recovery plan.

Janet Yellen, President-elect Joe Biden’s expected pick, would be one of the most experienced economists to lead the Treasury Department, having served as both Federal Reserve chair and head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

But the immediate challenges will be monumental. Continue reading.

Assassination in Iran Could Limit Biden’s Options. Was That the Goal?

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The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist is likely to impede the country’s military ambitions. Its real purpose may have been to prevent the president-elect from resuming diplomacy with Tehran.

WASHINGTON — The assassination of the scientist who led Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon for the past two decades threatens to cripple President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s effort to revive the Iran nuclear deal before he can even begin his diplomacy with Tehran.

And that may well have been a main goal of the operation.

Intelligence officials say there is little doubt that Israel was behind the killing — it had all the hallmarks of a precisely timed operation by Mossad, the country’s spy agency. And the Israelis have done nothing to dispel that view. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long identified Iran as an existential threat, and named the assassinated scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, as national enemy No. 1, capable of building a weapon that could threaten a country of eight million in a single blast. Continue reading.