One of Georgia’s top election officials has made an impassioned plea to Donald Trump to tone down his rhetoric disputing the election results, saying the president is “inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence”.
Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, also issued the stark warning that if Trump does not rein in his supporters then “someone is going to get hurt”.
“Mr President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia,” Sterling said at a press conference on Tuesday, during which he became visibly angry. “We’re investigating, there’s always a possibility, I get it. You have the rights to go to the courts. What you don’t have the ability to do – and you need to step up and say this – is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed, and it’s not right. It’s not right.”
Sterling, the voting systems manager for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said last week that he had police protection around his home because of threats he received after election results were announced. Trump lost Georgia to Biden by around 13,000 votes.
Sterling also said that the wife of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had received “sexualized threats”.
Raffensperger has been the target of constant attacks from the president over his defeat in Georgia, and he recently told the Guardian he had received death threats. Last week, Trump had called Raffensperger an “enemy of the people”, Sterling noted, adding: “That helped open the floodgates to this kind of crap.”
Sterling said his anger boiled over when he learned that a contractor helping with the state’s recount received death threats after someone shot video of him transferring a report to a county computer and falsely said the young man was manipulating election data.
Sterling’s plea came as another top Georgia Republican, the state’s lieutenant governor, also spoke out against baseless claims of election fraud.
In an interview with CNN, Geoff Duncan called the amount of election misinformation “alarming”.
“It’s certainly disheartening to watch folks willing to kind of put their character and their morals out there just so they can spread a half truth or a lie in the efforts to maybe to flip an election,” he said. “That’s not what democracy is all about.
“Long term I think we hurt the brand of the Republican party, which is certainly bigger than one person,” he added.
Tensions are high in Georgia, where two runoff elections in January will determine the shape of the US Congress, either by cementing a Republican Senate in opposition to Joe Biden’s presidency or giving the Democratic party a hold on the White House, the House and the Senate.
To underline the importance of the battle, Trump, who has made hardly any public appearances since his 3 November election defeat, will be rallying in the state on Saturday.
Mr. Biden, who also has another German shepherd named Champ, has long been a dog owner. Bob Markel, a friend since childhood, said that around 50 years ago Mr. Biden told him that his two dogs at the time were named Governor and Senator.
“These were sizable dogs,” Mr. Markel recalled. “They were big, just like, apparently, the ones he’s got now, that he’s going to take to the White House.”
Former Representative Bob Brady of Pennsylvania, a longtime Biden ally, said that he “didn’t meet Major, but I met Champ,” describing the pet as “gorgeous.”
“He was probably throwing something around, it could be a toy,” he said, speculating on Mr. Biden’s injury. “I spoke with his guys. He’s fine, he’s fine.”
Mr. Biden campaigned on a message of national unity, and Mr. Brady, alluding to reports about future Biden pets, suggested that the president-elect might extend a hand to fans of felines, too.
Pastor Che Ahn of Harvest Rock Church and attorney Mat Staver argue California Gov. Gavin Newsom implemented the ‘worst restrictions of any state.’
Officials in New York and California are adding themselves to the growing list of leaders who are acting against their own policies when it comes to restrictions put in place as coronavirus cases increase across the country.
San Jose, Calif., Mayor Sam Liccardo’s press team said that he was visiting his parents for Thanksgiving after he called on residents to stay home.
“Let’s cancel the big gatherings this year and focus on keeping each other safe,” Liccardo tweeted a day before the holiday.
The vast majority of the state was placed under strict prohibitions. Hospitalizations in California have increased 89% over the past 14 days and nearly 7,800 coronavirus patients were hospitalized as of Monday. Public health officials warned that people ignoring distance and mask guidelines and gathering for Thanksgiving with non-household relatives could lead to a massive surge in coronavirus cases by Christmas.
Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody on Nov. 14 warned residents to keep holiday gatherings between “immediate household members only” during a virtual town hall, according to NBC Bay Area.
“I cannot emphasize enough, gathering with friends and family who are not in your household is not safe,” she said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on October 9 issued new guidance ahead of the holiday season limiting gatherings to include people from no more than three households and saying that gatherings should be held outdoors with social distancing and masks.
Photos captured Newsom in November at an upscale restaurant in the wine country with a large group that appeared to be appeared to be eating shoulder-to-shoulder indoors and unmasked.
Newsom later apologized, saying he made a “bad mistake.”
In Los Angeles, protesters demonstrated against new restrictions, carrying signs outside Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer’s Echo Park residence and chanted “no science, no data, no shutdown,” as well as, “open L.A.,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
In New York, prominent Brooklyn Democrats were criticized for attending a birthday party where many of the attendees were neither wearing a mask nor practicing social distance, despite the rising number of coronavirus cases in New York City.
The party was held over the weekend to celebrate the 50th birthday of Carlo Scissura, the head of a construction trade organization, New York Building Congress. Attendees included Deputy Brooklyn Borough President Ingrid Lewis-Martin and former Brooklyn Democratic Party Chairman Frank Seddio, the Daily News reported.
The event took place as Gov. Andrew Cuomo limited indoor gatherings to 10 people or less.
“This is a particularly trying time, and there were shortcomings that I regret,” Scissura told Fox News. “I greatly appreciate the gesture of my friends to throw me a surprise party, but we all must follow strict protocols so we can get past this pandemic.”
A person familiar with the event told Fox News that the party was “primarily outside,” that all of the attendees were given a mask, and their temperatures were taken before entering the event.
Cuomo announced a battle plan Monday for the state to attack the coronavirus pandemic and while boasting to reporters his push for mask-wearing has helped curb the number of cases in the state. The announcement was made, however, at a press conference where neither he nor his aides on the dais – including state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker – wore face masks, according to the New York Post.
At the time, Cuomo was surrounded by state troopers, spokespeople, his photographer, reporters, and other aides who all wore masks.
The governor’s head of communications, Peter Ajemian, told The New York Post in an email Monday, “We follow and exceed all health guidance to ensure the safety of our briefings – period.”
Fox News’ Audrey Conklin, Brie Stimson, David Aaro, Jack Durschlag and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser to the campaign, hit back at Barr only minutes after the AP reported his remarks. The two claimed that the Justice Department had not sufficiently investigated allegations of election irregularities and had failed to interview witnesses who claimed to see illegal behavior.
Trump’s legal team has peddled eyebrow-raising conspiracy theories about the election, in spite of election officials in states across the country affirming the vote was fair. Attorney Sidney Powell, in particular, has made waves for falsely alleging instances of foreign interference and voting machines changing votes against voters’ will. Trump’s legal team distanced itself from Powell shortly after.
“With the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud,” Giuliani and Ellis said in a statement.
But their statement is at odds with Barr’s remarks to the AP, in which he attests that most claims were of one-off instances and have been followed up on.
“There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and people don’t like something, they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate,’” Barr said.
The attorney general’s breaking from Trump’s claims stands in stark contrast to his previous, careful support of many of the president’s allegations. In the lead-up to the election, Barr supported the president’s claims that mail-in ballots were vulnerable to mass fraud — an unsubstantiated notion that could have had a serious impact as an unprecedented number of Americans voted by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump has lashed out at members of his own party for failing to support his legal challenges. Republican Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia, in particular, have been targets after they certified their states’ votes for Joe Biden. Trump fired Chris Krebs as the head of U.S. cybersecurity shortly after he said this year’s election was among the safest in history.
Just after the AP reported his remarks, Barr was spotted by reporters at the White House. A White House official told POLITICO that Barr met with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone for a prescheduled meeting.
Barr has been among Trump‘s most loyal allies, playing a critical role during the federal investigations into the Russian interference in the 2016 election. During his AP interview, he revealed that he had granted special counsel authority to the U.S. attorney investigating the origins and conduct of federal probes into the 2016 election.
The move largely shields John Durham, the attorney, from getting fired, particularly as a Democratic administration takes over in January.
Durham‘s probe has faint legitimacy in the eyes of Democrats, who largely view it as retaliation for the investigations into the 2016 election that defined the first half of the Trump presidency.
A bipartisan group of senators unveiled a $908 billion stimulus plan that contains federal unemployment benefits but omits another round of $1,200 direct payments to taxpayers.
The plan also includes aid for strapped state and local governments.
The compromise package represents a concerted effort to break the deadlock on Capitol Hill on another coronavirus relief plan, but it’s unclear whether it will gain traction.
A bipartisan group of senators unveiled a $908 billion stimulus plan on Tuesday directed at breaking the monthslong deadlock on Capitol Hill.
The plan was introduced by a group of lawmakers at a press conference including Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.
“Our action to provide emergency relief is needed now more than ever before,” Manchin said. “The people need to know we are not going to leave until we get something accomplished.”
The concerted effort comes as Congress faces mounting pressure to act before the end of the year with the looming end of several programs keeping struggling people afloat. Provisions within the plan include:
$300 federal weekly unemployment benefits retroactive from December 1 for 18 weeks.
$240 billion in new Paycheck Protection Program assistance for small businesses.
$160 billion in funding for state and local governments.
$51 billion in new healthcare and vaccine-related funds.
A temporary liability shield for businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits.
But the compromise plan omitted another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, likely in an attempt to keep the plan’s price tag under $1 trillion. A previous effort among Republicans to push for a stimulus package of that size failed in July because many GOP senators were reluctant to support a costly plan, pointing to the rising national debt.
Both Democrats and President Donald Trump support a second wave of direct payments to taxpayers.
Lawmakers have not passed a coronavirus relief bill since the spring, when Congress approved over $3 trillion to support people and businesses as the economy collapsed under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic. Negotiations between the White House and congressional Democrats ultimately went nowhere over the summer and in the run-up to the election.
Instead, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has for months touted a $500 billion relief plan that would provide funding for schools, public-health systems, and small businesses. But Democrats blocked it twice and say it’s not enough to address the economic and health crises. They have sought at least $2.2 trillion in further spending.
The Trump administration has largely withdrawn from the relief talks and put McConnell in charge. On Tuesday, McConnell said he was in conversations with the White House about designing a plan that could draw the support of Trump.
Trump has largely been quiet on the matter since his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden. But the bipartisan proposal drew a chilly reception from the White House.
The economy needs more government support, experts say
Many experts say the economy is in need of additional government support as it enters a perilous stretch of the pandemic. Coronavirus cases are surging nationwide, prompting states to renew restrictions in a bid to thwart the spread of the virus.
Nearly 12 million people are also at risk of losing all of their jobless aid the day after Christmas if Congress doesn’t step in. Other protections, such as an eviction moratorium and a deferral of student-loan payments, expire next month.
Ernie Tedeschi, a policy economist at Evercore ISI, said the plan would help support people and businesses going into early next year as Biden takes office. But he raised concerns about attaching another expiration date for programs aiding unemployed people, similar to how the CARES Act rescue package did in March.
“Cementing an end date for the package is a risk because we don’t know how the virus is going to evolve,” Tedeschi said in an interview. “The US is entering some tough winter months, and March 31 will probably be the very beginning of vaccine distribution.”
Some conservatives say the US economy is recovering on its own, citing the unemployment rate, which has fallen from a high of 14.7% in April to 6.9%.
“We don’t need another trillion-dollar spending bill. The economy is growing much faster than everyone thought,” Steve Moore, an outside economic advisor to Trump, told Business Insider. “The stock market is booming, and the only thing that’s holding down the economy is these blue states that are locking down their businesses.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday urged a compromise.
“We need to come together and come to an agreement that will not satisfy any one of us completely but gets the job done,” the New York Democrat said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
Wearing a black boot on the right foot he recently fractured while playing with one of his dogs, Biden appeared in his home city, Wilmington, Delaware, for an event that stressed the gravity of the situation but sought to offer hope.
“We’re going to create a recovery for everybody,” Biden said. “Our message to everybody struggling right now is this: help is on the way.”
Biden’s nominations would put several women in top economic roles, drawing a clear contrast with Donald Trump and reflecting his commitment to diversity.
They include Janet Yellen, who if confirmed by the Senate will be the first woman to lead the US treasury in its 231-year history. Biden said he “might have to ask Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the musical about the first treasury secretary, [Alexander] Hamilton, to write another musical” about his new nominee.
Yellen led the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018, focusing on maximising employment and less on price inflation. In remarks on Tuesday, she noted the damage caused by the pandemic.
“Lost lives, lost jobs, small businesses struggling to stay alive or closed for good,” she said. “So many people struggling to put food on the table and pay bills and rent.
“It’s an American tragedy and it’s essential we move with urgency. Inaction will cause a self-reinforcing downturn, causing yet more devastation. And we risk missing the obligation to address deeper structural problems.”
Biden and Yellen in Wilmington on Tuesday. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP
Biden’s nominees have all expressed support for government spending to boost employment, reduce inequality and help women and people of colour, disproportionately harmed by the downturn.
But they will face stiff headwinds from the pandemic, now estimated to be killing one American a minute. The US has 4% of the world’s population but 19% of its coronavirus deaths – more than 268,000 – with record caseloads and hospitalisations forcing renewed economic restrictions in some states.
November saw the biggest two-week jump in unemployment benefit applications since April. Several aid programmes are set to expire this month, although a bipartisan group of House and Senate members unveiled a $908bn relief bill on Tuesday in an effort to break a political stalemate.
Biden said: “The team I’m announcing today will play a critical role in shaping our plan for action starting on day one and move fast to revive this economy.”
His “Build Back Better” plan, he said, was based on a simple proposition: “Reward hard work in America, not wealth. It’s time to invest in infrastructure, clean energy, climate change, manufacturing and so much more that will create millions of good-paying jobs. It’s time we addressed the structural inequities in our economy that this pandemic has laid bare.”
Other picks include Cecilia Rouse, an economist at Princeton University who would be the first Black woman to lead the Council of Economic Advisers; the economists Heather Boushey and Jared Bernstein as council members; and Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress thinktank, as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
“I’ve known Neera a long time,” Biden said. “A brilliant policy mind with critical practical experience across government. She was raised by a single mom on food stamps, an immigrant from India who struggled, worked hard and did everything she could for her daughter to live out the American dream, and Neera did just that. She understands the struggles millions of Americans are facing.”
Biden noted that Tanden would be the first woman of colour to run the OMB. But she has already proved his most divisive pick, drawing criticism from Republicans. Some analysts suggest she is a “sacrificial lamb”, likely to be denied confirmation in a fight that might distract attention from other nominees.
Since being nominated, Tanden has deleted more than a thousand tweets, some of which were critical of senators who will vote on her confirmation, the Daily Beast reported.
Claire McCaskill, a former senator from Missouri, told MSNBC: “It’s a whole new level of hypocrisy. The Republican senators are now all of a sudden worried about tweets that hurt their feelings. This is just ridiculous.
“We’ve had a president who has used his Twitter account like a battering ram, going after not just his political opponents but Republican senators, unfairly, with incredibly brutal tweets. Now all of a sudden it’s a disqualification for someone to serve in the cabinet that engaged in her own opinion on Twitter? I think that’s dumb.”
Tanden has also been unpopular on the left, having been a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for Sanders’s 2020 campaign, tweeted: “Everything toxic about the corporate Democratic party is embodied in Neera Tanden.”
For Biden, Tuesday’s sober and determined presentation was the latest sign that the transition is gathering unstoppable momentum despite Trump’s false claims of vote rigging and refusal to concede.
On Monday, Biden received his first full classified intelligence briefing since winning the 3 November election, after Trump delayed the process for weeks. And Arizona and Wisconsin officially recognised Biden’s victory, meaning Trump’s legal team has lost six of six attempts to stop states certifying their results. Trump has pursued challenges in numerous states but most have been tossed out.
Yet the president continues his quixotic effort. The Trump campaign on Tuesday asked the Wisconsin supreme court to determine if 221,000 absentee ballots that allegedly lacked information should be excluded from vote totals. Biden won the state by about 20,000 votes.
The electoral college, which selects the president based on state-by-state results, is scheduled to meet on 14 December. Biden will take office on 20 January.
The campaign has lost or withdrawn lawsuits in other battleground states that sought to invalidate ballots for Biden.
The new suit, which skips the lower courts, comes a day after state elections commission chair Ann Jacobs signed a so-called determination of the win for Biden, giving him Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes. Trump had won the state in 2016.
Biden is projected to win 306 votes in the Electoral College when that body meets Dec. 14.
Jacob’s determination came after a recount of ballots in Democratic strongholds Dane and Milwaukee Counties failed to result in any net gain of votes for Trump. Those partial recounts cost Trump’s campaign $3 million.
The Trump campaign claims that “a pattern of activities improperly undertaken … affected the Election.” Without explicitly alleging fraud, for example, it says more than 170,000 absentee ballots were “improperly counted” because they were issued to voters who did not first submit a written application. However, in a press release announcing the suit, the campaign claimed that “unlawful actions” affected the approximately 221,000 ballots and asserted, without evidence, that “fraud and abuse” had “irrefutably altered the outcome of this election.”
Trump has claimed he won the election and is refusing to concede to Biden. The president, his surrogates and his campaign’s legal team, led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have loudly spread a raft of unproven fraud conspiracies to bolster their claim that the election was illegitimate.
But in a series of court cases, the campaign has not argued that voter fraud or election fraud were committed. Rather, the lawsuits have focused on disputes over state election rules, such as the distance from which volunteers can observe ballots being counted, and whether mistakes on mail-in ballot envelopes should be disqualifying.
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a $908bn Covid-19 relief bill aimed at breaking a months-long deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over new emergency assistance for small businesses, unemployed people, airlines and other industries.
The measure has not been written into legislation. Nor has it been embraced by the Trump administration, President-elect Joe Biden or leaders in the Senate or House of Representatives, all of whom would be needed for passage.
But it comes with the backing of a group of conservatives and moderates who claim it will appeal to a broad swath of Congress. Economists and senior government figures, including the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, have warned the US economy is at risk unless Congress acts.
Lawmakers are hoping to wrap up their work for the year by mid-December but they still have a massive government-funding bill to approve or else risk agency shutdowns starting on 12 December. If the bipartisan coronavirus aid bill gains traction, it could either be attached to the spending bill or advance on a separate track.
“It would be stupidity on steroids if Congress left for Christmas without doing an interim package,” said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat.
Earlier this year, more than $3tn in coronavirus aid was enacted, which included economic stimulus measures and money for medical supplies. But since then negotiations about more aid have stalled in Congress.
On Tuesday Powell told Congress that the outlook for the US economy was “extraordinarily uncertain” as the rise in Covid-19 cases continues to take an economic toll on the country. The latest monthly jobs report, released on Friday, is expected to show that the pace of recovery in the jobs market is continuing to slow.
The plan was unveiled at a Capitol Hill news conference, amid a surge in coronavirus cases, with significant increases in deaths and hospital resources at a breaking point.
The Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, urged quick action on the bipartisan plan as she ticked off business closures mushrooming in her state “during a pretty dark and cold time of year”, with many suffering job losses and “food insecurity”.
The proposal would provide emergency aid through 31 March, including $228bn in paycheck protection program funds for hotels, restaurants and other small businesses. State and local governments would receive direct aid, the lawmakers said.
The Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, appealed for help from Congress, noting in an interview on CBS that his state has more than 5,000 coronavirus patients in hospitals and not enough money to distribute the much-awaited Covid vaccines that are expected to be available beginning this winter.
US airlines would receive $17bn for four months of payroll support as part of $45bn for the transportation sector that also includes airports, buses and Amtrak passenger rail, according to two people familiar with the plan.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a Republican, said the bill contained $560bn in “repurposed” funding from the Cares Act enacted in March, with the remaining $348bn in new money.
The measure includes provisions Republicans have been pressing for, including liability protections for businesses and schools. But it is far more expensive than the $500bn that the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has been advocating.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and her fellow Democrats would win a central demand with the aid to state and local governments, which face layoffs of frontline workers.
A compromise $300 a week for four months in additional unemployment benefits is in the package, according to the lawmakers. Democrats had been seeking $600.
Separately, a group of Democratic senators introduced legislation on Tuesday that would extend until October 2021 the $600 a week in jobless benefits for workers who lost their jobs due to Covid-19.
While it is significantly below the $2.2tn Pelosi sought in her last offer to the White House before the 3 November elections, the $908bn is for a relatively short period, potentially opening the door to additional requests for money once the Biden administration is in place.
Pelosi and the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, were expected to discuss coronavirus aid and the must-pass government funding bill later on Tuesday.
Janet Yellen, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary, gives remarks Tuesday in Wilmington, Del., as Biden and other members of his economic team look on. If confirmed, Yellen would be the first female treasury secretary in history.
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Janet Yellen, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary, gives remarks Tuesday in Wilmington, Del., as Biden and other members of his economic team look on. If confirmed, Yellen would be the first female treasury secretary in history.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Updated at 2:09 p.m. ET
With the number of confirmed coronavirus cases spiking and the nation’s job market struggling to pull itself out of the abyss caused by the pandemic, President-elect Joe Biden has formally announced the advisers he hopes can guide the United States back to solid economic footing.
The six-person economic team Biden has tapped — which was revealed on Monday — is a who’s who list of veterans who served in previous Democratic administrations and, if confirmed, includes a number of historic firsts.
Speaking from Wilmington, Del., Tuesday, the president-elect referred to the group as “first-rate” and well-equipped to meet the dual challenges the pandemic and the sputtering economy present.
“A team that’s tested and experienced, it includes groundbreaking Americans who come from different backgrounds but who share my core vision for economic relief here in the United States of America,” Biden said.
He cited the two-track economic recovery amid the pandemic, in which working people continue to struggle while the wealthy get further ahead. Biden said Congress should come together to pass a “robust” aid package, but also repeated his call for “immediate relief” in the lame-duck period, before he takes office.
He also laid out a laundry list of economic goals that must be addressed early on in his administration. These include keeping businesses and schools open safely, delivering economic relief for those who have lost jobs or had hours cut, stabilizing the nation’s health care system and addressing racial inequities the virus has laid bare.
“Our message to everyone struggling right now is this: Help is on the way,” Biden said.
The incoming administration’s economic team is led by Janet Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair who Biden nominated for treasury secretary. Yellen would become the first woman to lead the department in its 231 years of existence.
Other nominees and appointees include Cecilia Rouse, who was selected to be chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Like the treasury secretary, the post requires Senate confirmation.
And should she be confirmed, Rouse, who currently serves as dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, would also be a trailblazer.
She would be just the fourth woman and the first Black woman to lead the CEA since it was established nearly 75 years ago.
Other Biden-Harris transition economic appointees include Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey as members of the CEA. Both served as economic advisers to Biden during his time as vice president.
Biden also named Wally Adeyemo, who, if confirmed, would become the Treasury Department’s first Black deputy secretary.
Perhaps no other name on Biden’s proposed economic team has created more blowback from Republicans than Neera Tanden. She also needs Senate confirmation to serve as Biden’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Tanden — who is the CEO of the left-leaning public policy organization the Center for American Progress and a veteran of both the Clinton and Obama administrations — would be the first woman of color to lead OMB.
But as rumblings of her nomination began to surface over the weekend, Republicans cast immediate doubt on her chances of getting confirmed.
“Neera Tanden, who has an endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators’ whose votes she’ll need, stands zero chance of being confirmed,” tweeted Drew Brandewie, a spokesman for Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa struck a much more conciliatory tone on Capitol Hill Monday when asked about Yellen as treasury secretary.
“I believe she’d get a favorable view,” Grassley said, adding he didn’t want to make a judgement on her nomination until the confirmation hearings have transpired.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called President-elect Joe Biden‘s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a “nutjob” on Monday as he urged voters to help Republicans retain control of the Senate by winning the crucial Georgia runoff elections.
Graham made the remarks during an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity. The senator denounced Biden’s OMB nominee Neera Tanden, a former Obama administration official who now leads the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, while admitting that the prospect of two Democratic wins in Georgia “scares the hell out of” him.
“If we win both seats in Georgia, I’ll be the budget chairman,” Graham said. “The OMB director has to come before the budget committee for hearings to be confirmed. I think I would ask different questions than Bernie Sanders, who would be the budget chairman if Democrats win in Georgia.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R) attends a hearing in Washington, D.C. on October 15, 2020. Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty
“If you want to make sure this nutjob Tanden doesn’t become the director of the budget, in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, then make sure we win in Georgia,” added Graham.
Republicans have already signaled that they could block the confirmation of Tanden. There’s a chance that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could even refuse to even allow her nomination to be voted on. Before his Fox News appearance on Monday, Graham said that Tanden would face an “uphill” battle to be confirmed.
Tanden’s pointed past criticisms of the Trump administration and Senate Republicans has made her a particularly divisive choice for a prominent role in the incoming Biden administration. As a noted opponent of Medicare for All and a critic of Senator Bernie Sanders, she also faces opposition from some in the progressive wing of the Democratic party.
Republicans only need to win one of the two Senate seats being contested in Georgia on January 5 to maintain control of the upper chamber. Polling suggests that incumbent GOP Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are both locked in tight races with Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
If the Democratic candidates win both seats, the Senate would be split 50-50. However, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would hold the power to breaking any ties, effectively giving the party full control of Congress in addition to the White House.
Although Graham’s discussion on Fox News seemed to be based on the assumption that Biden would take office after President Donald Trump leaves, the senator has also been a prominent voice boosting the president’s ongoing unverified claims of a “stolen” election. Graham urged Trump to attend Biden’s January 20 inauguration if the president-elect “ends up winning” on Monday.
Newsweek reached out to the Biden transition team for comment.
Joe Biden’s nominee for a key economic post has deleted more than a thousand of her own tweets, some of which were critical of senators who now hold her fate in their hands.
The Daily Beast first reported the steps by Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress (CAP) thinktank who Biden has nominated to lead the federal Office of Management and Budget.
“Can people on here please focus their ire on [Senate majority leader Mitch] McConnell and the GOP senators who are up [for re-election] this cycle who enable him,” Tanden wrote in June 2019, in a tweet recovered by the Beast.
Tanden named those “enablers” as Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, John Cornyn, David Perdue, Thom Tillis “and many more”.
A tweet calling McConnell “#MoscowMitch”, a common nickname for the majority leader among liberals during the investigation of Donald Trump’s links to Russia, was also among those deleted.
Tanden’s fate may hinge on two runoff elections in Georgia in January. If Democrats win both seats – one held by Perdue – they will control the Senate via Kamala Harris’s casting vote as vice-president. That would make Tanden’s confirmation achievable – if party discipline held.
But Tanden, a former policy aide to Hillary Clinton, has also been a fierce critic of senators from the Democratic side of the aisle, for example the progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.
“It’s an odd choice for Biden and his ‘healing’ presidency to bring someone in who is so combative, especially on Twitter, being that we just ended a four-year Twitter presidency,” Josh Fox, a climate activist and Sanders surrogate, told the Beast. “She causes ire unnecessarily.”
Fox also said CAP “pretends to be aligned with progressive values, but Neera Tanden seems so cynical that she attacks progressive policies like a ban on fracking, the Green New Deal and Medicare for All”.
The Massachusetts progressive Elizabeth Warren is among prominent Democratic senators who have backed Tanden.
Republicans have been quick to tell reporters Tanden will not be confirmed if their party can help it. On Monday, Cornyn, from Texas, told reporters he thought Tanden was Biden’s “worst nominee so far”.
“Her combative and insulting comments about many members of the Senate, mainly on our side of the aisle, [create] certainly, a problematic path,” he said.
The Beast said Tanden had deleted at least one tweet in support of MJ Hegar, the Democrat Cornyn beat for re-election last month.
Jen Psaki, Biden’s incoming White House press secretary, said Tanden was “a brilliant policy expert and she knows how vital funding for [government] programs is. As a child for a period her family relied on food stamps to eat, on Section 8 vouchers to pay the rent and on the social safety. Her fresh perspective can help meet this moment.”
Tanden did not comment. But she has changed her Twitter biography. It now reads: “Director of OMB nominee, liberal, Indian American, feminist, mom, wife. Not in that order. Views expressed are most definitely my own.”
Among those involved in the latest effort include Democratic Sens. Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Mark R. Warner (Va.), as well as Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, has also been involved in the discussions but won’t appear at a news conference later Tuesday unveiling the plan. Among the Republicans involved are Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Bill Cassidy (La.), in addition to Romney and Collins.
Pressed on whether comments such as DiGenova’s could be met with legal action, Krebs replied: “We’re taking a look at all our available opportunities.”
DiGenova’s attack against Krebs came on a Monday episode of the “The Howie Carr Show,” during which he criticized the former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for concluding that the election was conducted securely.
“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity,” DiGenova said, “that guy is a class-A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”
Trump ousted Krebs last month after his agency, CISA, shared a statement issued by a group of federal officials, election supervisors and voting technology vendors — including a CISA representative — deeming the 2020 election to be the “most secure” in U.S. history.
Asked Tuesday whether he worried about his own safety in the wake of DiGenova’s attack and others, Krebs said he was “not going to give them the benefit of knowing how I’m reacting to this. They can know that there are things coming, though.”
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Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said on Monday that he expects President-elect Joe Biden to have a “very little” impact on the federal judiciary as the Republican Party will “freeze” his picks, if they retain Senate majority.
“If the last two years of the Obama administration were any indication, they’ll freeze them out,” Durbin said during an interview with Politico. “Hope springs eternal, but I believe in history.”
Durbin’s comments come amid election turmoil, with many GOP lawmakers refusing to work with Biden.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley also spoke to Politico and said, “I imagine they’ll have a tough time just because I’m not going to vote for people who I think are, to use my words, ‘judicial imperialists.'”
“But maybe he’ll surprise me if [Biden] is indeed the president, who knows, maybe he’ll send up nominees who are constitutionalists and textualists. I kind of doubt it,” Hawley said, according to Politico.
When Biden takes office in January, he will have less judicial vacancies to fill than Trump, who was inaugurated with 112 vacancies, including a Supreme Court justice. Biden will have 59 vacancies to fill when he takes office, with 36 nominees currently pending.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the Crossfire Hurricane investigation on Capitol Hill November 10. When Joe Biden takes office, he will have 59 vacancies to fill when he takes office, with 36 nominees currently pending. Pool/Getty
Despite Biden’s projected win in the 2020 presidential election, many Senate Republicans have expressed that they plan to continue confirming judges during Trump’s time as a lame-duck president.
“The good news is that we’ve done a good job—and we’re not done as you know—filling the vacancies that there are on the appellate courts to minimize the opportunity for more liberals on it,” said North Dakota Republican Senator Kevin Cramer, Politico reported.
Amid divisive rhetoric from Democrats and Republicans, lawmakers from both parties have noted that they will need to compromise on Biden’s judiciary nominees.
Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, told Politico that, “If we keep the Senate, then it’ll be a negotiation.”
Cornyn continued, “Perhaps [Biden] will welcome the fact that the most radical nominees will not be confirmed by a Republican majority. That we’ll actually have to negotiate and come up with something that’s agreeable to both sides.”
Similarly, Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons told the publication that “If anyone can sit down and work out with [McConnell]…a way to come to an agreement that we will move nominees, it’s President-elect Biden. I have lived through years and years of McConnell’s obstruction. I know this will be a challenging task.”
Prior to Durbin’s comments on Monday, he published an op-ed on CNN.com on November 25, where he wrote that, “President-elect Joe Biden’s judicial and executive nominees could receive prompt and fair consideration, bringing balance back to our courts and ensuring the agencies under our jurisdiction are fully staffed with qualified officials to protect our national security and civil rights.”
Newsweek reached out to Durbin’s office and Biden’s transition team for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
President-elect Joe Biden has called for bipartisan unity since he announced his candidacy but the objections from both conservatives and progressives to his pick to head the White House Office of Management and Budget was likely not what he had in mind.
Voices from the left and the right protested after Biden announced Monday he would nominate Neera Tanden, who heads the left-leaning Center for American Progress, as his budget chief at the same time he officially unveiled other senior members of his economics team, including Janet Yellen, whom he tapped as his Treasury secretary.
As many conservatives derided her for being too liberal and many liberals dismissed her as too conservative, Tanden seemed to attempt to assuage the latter critics’ concerns by pointing to her reliance on public food and housing programs as a child and vowed that as the director of OMB she would “help ensure those programs are secure.”
Biden’s transition website also played up her humble background, saying she “relied on food stamps and Section 8 housing as a child – a social safety net that offered her single mother the foundation she needed to land a good job and punch her family’s ticket to the middle class.” And it said her career had “focused on pursuing policies designed to support working families, foster broad-based economic growth, and curb rampant inequality.”
Similarly, Biden’s incoming press secretary Jen Psaki said Tanden is a “brilliant policy expert” who “knows how vital funding for govt programs is” because “as a child for a period her family relied on food stamps to eat, on Section 8 vouchers to pay the rent and on the social safety.”
But such assurances appeared unlikely to sway progressives detractors like Brianna Joy Gray, the former press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, who tweeted, “Everything toxic about the corporate Democratic Party is embodied in Neera Tanden.”
Sanders, who would be the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee that will hold Tanden’s confirmation hearings, and Tanden have had a strained relationship. Tanden worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, including her hard-fought primary campaign against the Vermont independent.
In 2019, Sanders criticized the “destructive role” of the Center for American Progress under Tanden. “Neera Tanden repeatedly calls for unity while simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas,” Sanders wrote in a letter.
Gray and others pointed to comments Tanden made during her tenure as a health care reform adviser to former President Barack Obama where she expressed a willingness to include cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in a budget deal with Republicans. Others decried her opposition to “Medicare for All.”
Not all progressive figures objected to Tanden’s nomination. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said Tanden, along with Biden’s other picks for his economic team, is “committed to full employment, boosting wages, reducing inequality.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, tweeted, “Neera Tanden is smart, experienced, and qualified for the position of OMB Director.” And he objected to Republican calls to block her nomination, saying, “The American people decisively voted for change – Mitch McConnell shouldn’t block us from having a functioning government that gets to work for the people we serve.”
“Such a great choice to lead OMB,” tweeted Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. “@NeeraTanden will bring the experience and humanity urgently needed in this position. Congratulations!”
Many conservatives, who remember her as one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, said they had no doubts about Tanden’s liberal bona fides.
“Neera Tanden is a big-government, big-spending radical liberal who’s a terrible choice for OMB Director,” tweeted Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. “It’s just more proof that @JoeBiden and the Democrats will continue to move further and further to the Left.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told The New York Times “she’s not just a liberal ideologue, she’s a partisan activist who’s gone after senators of the majority party. She seems to have chosen a path that doesn’t lead to a senate confirmed office.”
Sen. John Cornyn told reporters Tanden was Biden’s “worst nominee so far” because of caustic tweets she had posted in the recent past.
“I think, in light of her combative and insulting comments about many members of the Senate, mainly on our side of the aisle, that it creates certainly a problematic path,” he said. Earlier Monday, Drew Brandewie, Cornyn’s communication director said Tanden “stands zero chance of being confirmed” because of an “endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators whose vote she’ll need.”
The former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted that Tanden’s nomination was a “sacrifice to the confirmation gods.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. – who is expected to chair the Budget Committee – told reporters Tanden’s confirmation could be an “uphill battle.”
Tanden has been highly critical of a number of Republican senators during the Trump administration – referring to them as the president’s “enablers” – including McConnell whom she accused of “weakness and recklessness on Russia.”
A number of tweets appeared to have been deleted from Tanden’s account Monday night, but according to The Wall Street Journal, she also once tweeted, “I’m glad McConnell is fiddling, while the markets burn.”
A Google search for posts on McConnell under her account revealed at least four tweets that were no longer available.
A look at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine showed that the number of tweets under Tanden’s account declined from 88,600 on Nov. 16 to 87,600 as of Monday morning. By 8 p.m. EST Monday, the number of tweets on her account dropped to 87,500.
To put the volume of her tweets in perspective, President Donald Trump, arguably the platform’s best-known user, has posted nearly 59,000 tweets since joining Twitter in March 2009, a year before Tanden.
During the contentious confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, she accused Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, of making a “pathetically bad faith argument as cover for President Trump’s vicious attacks on survivors of sexual assault,” according to the Journal.
“She is the worst,” she said of Collins in another tweet at the time.
Collins told reporters Monday she didn’t know much about Tanden, “but I’ve heard that she’s a very prolific user of Twitter.”
And the criticism of her Twitter activity extended to the left as well.
Gray said Tanden was “a woman who is openly disdainful of Bernie Sanders and his coalition, but who is friendly with extreme bigots online.”
A number of Tanden’s supporters dismissed the criticism, arguing many of those condemning her tweets had tolerated far worse from Trump.
“Republican Senators who have cowered in fear over a mean Trump tweet now lashing out at Neera Tanden is a particularly severe case of cowardice,” said Joe Lockhart, White House communications director under former President Bill Clinton.
“If Republican Senators really think mean tweets are disqualifying for high office, then they should have voted to impeach Trump,” tweeted Ben Rhodes, a former speechwriter for Obama.
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