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      Trump leaves White House a final time as president as Biden set to be sworn in

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      Donald Trump has left Washington DC and the White House for the final time as president, as Joe Biden prepares to be sworn in at midday on Wednesday.The outgoing president left the White House at 8.18am aboard a helicopter, headed for Joint Base Andrews, where Trump was due to give a speech. Trump had demanded an ostentatious ceremony with a sprawling crowd, but didn’t quite get the latter. TV footage showed several empty spaces among the people who had gathered in a viewing area.Attendees had been told to arrive at the Joint Base Andrews, a military air base used by presidents, between 6am and 7.15am, when the temperature hovered above zero. A campaign-style stage was set up at the base, with total of 17 US flags hung behind a speaker’s podium. Air force one presidential plane was parked in the background, waiting to fly the president out.Trump was due to speak at 8am, but there was a delay. Trump and Melania Trump boarded Marine Force One at the White House at 8.15am, the president offering a wave as he walked to the helicopter. At 8.18am, the helicopter took off, headed for a destination 15 miles south-east of the White House.The helicopter landed just before 8.30am, as the song Gloria by Laura Branigan blasted out at the stage. Trump exited to the sound of Don’t Stop Believing, by Journey. Both songs have been staples at Trump’s rallies.The president had been hoping for a large crowd to see him off. It didn’t happen. Senior Republicans had shunned the event, including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, in favor of attending Biden’s inauguration. Even Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence didn’t make it – a White House official told reporters it would be difficult for Pence to attend both the send off and the inauguration.Trump, who has not left the White House for over a week, had reportedly spent recent days in a dejected mood, but according to CNN, the outgoing president had been “eagerly anticipating” the send off event.Trump is set to board Air Force One after the ceremony and head for the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. His aides are carrying the so-called “nuclear football”, which will continue to be at Trump’s behest until midday.In recent administrations the football – which serves as the key to America’s nuclear arsenal – has passed from the outgoing president to his successor after the inauguration. With Trump set to be in Florida while Biden’s inauguration takes place, the incoming president will instead take possession of a second football. At 12pm, when Biden is sworn in, Trump’s nuclear codes will go dead. More

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      Joe Biden to be sworn in as 46th president amid turmoil and loss in US

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      Donald Trump on Wednesday morning left the White House for the last time as president, hours before Joe Biden is to be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States at a moment of profound turmoil and loss for America.Biden will take the oath of office on the steps of the US Capitol where exactly two weeks prior a mob of Trump supporters breached security barriers and stormed the building in an effort to overturn the results of the presidential election.He is later expected to sign a raft of executive orders to overturn many of Trump “deeply inhuman” policies, aides say. The orders – 17 of them – will see the US rejoin the Paris climate accord. There will be a new mask mandate on federal property and an end to a travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries.The president will also revoke Trump’s emergency declaration that helped fund the construction of a border wall with Mexico. Another day one executive act will be the creation of a new White House office to coordinate the response to the coronavirus and an effort to rejoin the World Health Organisation, which Trump withdrew from after accusing it of incompetence.In the aftermath of the deadly assault on the Capitol and as the death toll from the virus surpasses 400,000, Biden will assume the presidency in a city resembling a war zone and devoid of the celebratory pomp and pageantry that comes with a presidential inauguration.Even before the attack on the Capitol, the inaugural planning committee urged Americans to stay home in an effort to minimize the risk of further spreading the disease.After refusing to concede and only begrudgingly acknowledging his successor, Trump will hold a farewell event at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on Wednesday morning. When Biden takes office, Trump will be nearly 1,000 miles away, at his south Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.Diminished and furious, Trump, who was impeached for a second time on a charge of “incitement of insurrection” after the deadly siege of the Capitol, leaves Washington for an uncertain future. His grasp on the Republican party, once iron-clad, has waned, even as supporters remain loyal. Suspended indefinitely from Twitter, he lost his most powerful megaphone.Whether he mounts a political comeback in 2024 probably depends on the outcome of his Senate impeachment trial, which will forge ahead in the first days of his post-presidency. If convicted, the Senate can vote to disqualify him from ever again holding future office.Biden will be sworn in shortly before noon on Wednesday by Chief Justice John Roberts on the Capitol’s West Front, with a vista of iconic national monuments stretching across the National Mall. Instead of a vast throng of supporters, Biden will look out upon a field of flags from each of the 50 US states and territories representing those who could not attend because of the pandemic.Trump’s absence at the ceremony will be a final show of disregard for democratic norms and traditions that Trump gleefully shattered over the course of his stormy, 1,460-day presidency. Only four US presidents have skipped their predecessor’s inauguration – most recently Andrew Johnson in 1869. Mike Pence, the outgoing vice-president, will attend the ceremony to demonstrate support for a peaceful transition of power.The Clintons, Bushes and Obamas are all expected to attend the ceremony.Biden will take the oath alongside Kamala Harris, who will make history as the nation’s first female, first Black and first Asian American vice-president. She will be sworn in by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and Latina member of the supreme court.Some elements will remain unchanged. Biden is expected to deliver an inaugural address, in which he will appeal for national unity, drawing a sharp contrast with the dark vision of “American carnage” conjured by Trump four years prior. After his remarks, Biden will continue the tradition of reviewing the troops.But Biden will forgo the traditional parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead, the inaugural committee has planned a virtual “Parade Across America” that will begin after his swearing-in.Confronted by remarkable political and cultural upheaval, and the worst public health and economic crises in generations, the committee sought to prepare a mix of celebratory events to mark the occasion – including a star-studded lineup and a number of musical performances – with somber memorials that reflect the pain and loss felt by millions of American families.On the eve of his inauguration, Biden led a remembrance ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool honoring the 400,000 people who died from the coronavirus pandemic. Confronting the virus will be Biden’s most urgent priority after he is sworn in. More

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      Biden prepares ambitious agenda even as he cleans up Trump's mess | Analysis

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      The last time a Democratic president took control of the White House, the wreckage he inherited was so great, there was little else his incoming team could prioritize.Twelve years ago, Barack Obama’s blunt-spoken chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, liked to describe the Republican legacy – a financial crisis, deep recession and two wars – as a giant shit sandwich wrapped in a red ribbon.Recovering from the economic crisis of George W Bush’s final year would require most of the Obama team’s focus in their first two years, when they controlled both sides of Congress with large majorities. Obama handed over his signature campaign issue – winding down the war in Iraq – to his vice-president to manage.Now that former vice-president takes over the presidency with even more wreckage to sift through.Joe Biden must overcome a pandemic, rebuild an economy, tackle racist insurrectionists and the ex-president who incited them, and reassert American leadership across a distrustful world. Somehow he must do all that while also confirming his senior officials in a Senate with no working majority.So far the Biden team shows no sign of limiting its ambition in terms of what it hopes Congress will take up – and what it will push through executive action – in its first days and weeks in power. In addition to signing a flurry of executive orders, rejoining the Paris climate accords and restarting the Iran nuclear deal, Biden will also propose sweeping immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented.Comprehensive reform of the nation’s broken immigration system proved beyond the capabilities of both Bush and Obama. It was Bush’s failure to enact immigration reform in 2007 that effectively marked the end of his second-term agenda, as Republicans turned towards a nativist agenda that Donald Trump placed at the heart of his campaign and presidency.The Biden team may be marking a sharp break with the Trump years in prioritizing immigration reform. But what are their realistic prospects for legislative progress in the first year of the Biden presidency?Obama veterans think there may be one good reason why Biden can feel more optimistic about political progress than their own experience in 2009, when Republicans obstructed their action from the outset, would dictate. That reason is the legacy of one Donald Trump.“I think the difference between this and 2009 is that I believe there’s going to be a significant number of Republicans in Congress who think that their party needs a course correction here,” said Joel Benenson, who served as strategist and pollster to both Obama and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. “It doesn’t mean they are suddenly going to be liberal Rockefeller Republicans, but the damage that Trump has done to the party and its image – and it has exacerbated through the events of the last two weeks – is giving them pause.“I don’t think it’s a major shift ideologically, but they have to recognize they are losing large and important sections of the electorate, and that’s going to be problematic for them. They know for their long-term prospects they can’t just be a base party. The biggest political failure of Donald Trump is that he didn’t fundamentally understand that to win the presidency, you have to win the center.”At the heart of that calculation is the singular figure of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, who now finds himself in the minority after six years of control. McConnell was effective as an obstructionist force through the end of the Obama presidency, but he also can be a pragmatic figure when it comes to gaining and holding power.Recent polling underscores McConnell’s challenge: the majority of Republicans are fundamentally misaligned with the majority of the country. Almost two-thirds of the party falsely believes that Donald Trump won last year’s election, according to polling by the Pew Research Center. The same polling showed that more than two-thirds of Americans do not want Trump to play a major political role moving forward, giving him the lowest approval rating of his presidency at just 29%.Congressional Democrats aim to test McConnell’s approach – and his main lever of power, the filibuster – with their first legislation, which would expand voting rights and reform campaign finance.The so-called For The People Act, which passed the house in 2019, aims to tackle gerrymandering, “dark money” donations, and expand voting rights through initiatives such as a national voter registration system. If McConnell filibusters the bill, there will be immediate pressure for Democrats to abolish the filibuster through a change in the Senate rules requiring 51 votes.Senator Jeff Merkley, the Oregon Democrat who has introduced the new bill, said: “Each and every one of us takes an oath to protect and defend the constitution. There’s nothing more fundamental than the ability to vote. That should not be subject to a veto by McConnell. If he exercises a veto, it will cause everyone to figure out how to honor their oath to the constitution that requires us to pass this legislation.”Merkley believes that Democrats can achieve a lot in Congress by using budget reconciliation rules that allow taxing and spending legislation – including climate-related policies – by simple majority votes. But policy changes such as immigration reform will need 60 votes to overcome a likely Republican filibuster, and Merkley expects McConnell to continue with his approach from the Obama years.“I think McConnell is deeply wedded to the strategy of delay and obstruction,” he said. “It has been his fundamental theory of power that if you show the majority in place isn’t getting the job done, it strengthens your case to replace them.”In two years, one-third of the Senate will be up for re-election, representing the class of 2016, when Trump won the presidency, and the senators at risk are overwhelmingly Republican – including Republicans from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Biden won last year.The historical trend is clear: the president’s party tends to lose seats in the first mid-term congressional elections. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all lost control of the House in their first mid-terms. The one president who bucked the trend was George W Bush, in the first elections after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.It’s unclear how the domestic terrorism threat of white supremacist groups – and this month’s insurrection at Capitol Hill – will play out in the next several months, as Trump’s second impeachment trial begins and federal investigations continue to unfold with criminal prosecutions across the country.“The congressional Republican party in the House and the Senate are going to have to be very careful about how they choose to obstruct and govern in the aftermath of the insurrection at the hands of the president they refused to stand up to,” said Benenson. “They could get labeled as complicit with the leaders of the worse episode we have seen since the civil war. They have to be mindful of that.” More

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      One dozen national guard troops pulled from inauguration duties after vetting

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterOne dozen members of the US national guard have been removed from their duties helping to secure Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting – which included screening for potential ties to rightwing extremism, Pentagon officials said on Tuesday.A Pentagon spokesman said the vetting went beyond ties to extremist groups. One guard member was removed from duty after troubling text messages and another had been reported to a tip line, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen Daniel Hokanson, told reporters.Earlier it was reported that two army national guard members were being removed from the mission. That figure grew on Tuesday afternoon and could expand further as vetting continues by the defense department and FBI.About 25,000 guard members have been deployed in Washington in the aftermath of the Capitol attack on 6 January, in which a mob incited by Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn his election defeat rampaged through Congress, seeking lawmakers to kidnap and kill. Five people died, including a police officer who confronted the mob.Senior defense officials subsequently indicated concern that attacks on the inauguration might be launched from within the ranks of the guard.A US army official and a senior US intelligence official, speaking anonymously, had initially told the Associated Press the first two guard members removed had been found to have ties to fringe rightwing militias. No plot against Biden was found, the officials said.The federal government has taken the possibility of insider threats seriously after multiple rioters who breached the US Capitol were revealed to have ties to law enforcement and the military.The mood in the capital remained tense as the Washington Post reported that the FBI had privately warned law enforcement agencies that far-right extremists had “discussed posing as national guard members in Washington and others had reviewed maps of vulnerable spots in the city”.The army official and the intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity due to defense department regulations. They did not say what fringe group the guard members belonged to or what unit they served in.In the Senate, the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol had been “fed lies” by the president and others.McConnell’s remarks were his most severe and public rebuke of Trump. The Republican leader vowed a “safe and successful” inauguration of Biden at the Capitol, which is under extremely tight security.“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of branch of the federal government.”After Biden’s inauguration on the Capitol’s West Front, which McConnell noted the former president George HW Bush called “democracy’s front porch”, “we’ll move forward”, the majority leader said.Republican senators face a daunting choice over whether to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection, in the first impeachment trial of a president no longer in office.In opening remarks at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Biden’s nominee for secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, vowed to get to the bottom of the “horrifying” attack on the Capitol.Mayorkas told the Senate homeland security committee that if confirmed he would do everything possible to ensure “the desecration of the building that stands as one of the three pillars of our democracy, and the terror felt by you, your colleagues, staff, and everyone present, will not happen again”. More

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      Biden cabinet picks: confirmation hearings begin one day before inauguration

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      Confirmation hearings for Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees kicked off on Tuesday, one day ahead of the inauguration and as the next step in Donald Trump’s second impeachment loomed.Senators on the relevant committees began hearings to confirm Janet Yellen (treasury secretary), Avril Haines (director of national intelligence), Alejandro Mayorkas (homeland security secretary) and Antony Blinken (secretary of state). The hearings were merely a first wave of confirmations Congress must process as the new president takes office.Biden will take the oath of office on Wednesday, cementing a massive shift in the American political universe. Once Kamala Harris is sworn in as vice-president – the first Black woman in the role using a Bible once owned by Thurgood Marshall, the first Black supreme court justice, as well as one from a close family friend – Democrats will narrowly control both chambers of Congress.As well as holding confirmation hearings, the Senate must hold a second trial for Trump, even after he has left office. Democrats hope Republican sentiment has shifted away from the outgoing president in response to the riot he encouraged at the Capitol. There are signs that might be the case.On Tuesday, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”John Thune of South Dakota, a member of Republican leadership, told ABC News: “It sounds like we are going to have a trial to examine that and like all senators I’ll fulfill my constitutional duty and listen intently to the evidence, and we will come to the conclusion.”Looking to make good on his promise to lower the political temperature of the country, Biden invited Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress to a prayer session before he takes office, the mere fact of the invitation a tonal shift from how Trump interacted with congressional leaders through his four years in office. Earlier in the day, Biden participated in a sendoff from his home state, Delaware, ahead of his move to Washington. A Covid memorial service was due to take place in the capital in the evening.Biden will need to retain good relations with both parties if he wants any of his policy agenda to become law and cabinet confirmations to go smoothly. WThe Senate will be split 50-50. In any tie, Harris, as vice-president, will hold the deciding vote. In the House, the Democratic majority shrank in the last election but Nancy Pelosi still wields control as speaker.When Biden is sworn in, he will be lagging behind his most recent predecessors on confirmation hearings held, according to data compiled by Axios. Only five Biden nominees will have had hearings by the end of Tuesday, seven fewer than Trump had by inauguration day, six fewer than Barack Obama (whom Biden served as vice-president), seven fewer than George W Bush and nine fewer than Bill Clinton.On the Senate floor on Tuesday, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, noted that Democrats must deal with an unusually heavy load.“All of us want to put this awful chapter in our nation’s history behind us, but healing and unity will only come if there is truth and accountability, not sweeping such a severe charge, such awful actions under the rug,” Schumer said.“So let me be clear. There will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate. There will be a vote on convicting the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. If the president is convicted, there will be a vote barring him [from running for office] again.”Privately, there is a worry among Democrats that impeachment hearings held simultaneously with confirmations will delay cabinet confirmations and progress on legislation. Away from Congress, Biden has said he will reverse key Trump policies by executive order, achieving among other objectives re-entry to the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal.Democrats also worry that impeachment could further fuel the sense of heated national division the new president wants to end.“In 2017, the Senate confirmed President Trump’s secretary of defense and his secretary of homeland security on inauguration day,” Schumer said, adding: “Biden should have the same officials in place on his inauguration day at the very least.“That is the expectation and tradition for any administration, especially in the midst of a homeland security crisis … the way the Senate works, it will take cooperation from our Republican colleagues to swiftly confirm these highly qualified national security officials. But make no mistake, the Senate will move quickly to confirm Biden’s cabinet.” More

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      Janet Yellen says Biden must 'act big' with coronavirus relief package

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      Janet Yellen, US president-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary, told lawmakers on Tuesday that “the smartest thing we can do is act big” on the next coronavirus relief package, adding that the benefits outweigh the costs of a higher debt burden.In testimony at her virtual confirmation hearing, Yellen said her task as treasury chief would be twofold: first to help Americans endure the final months of the coronavirus pandemic, and second to rebuild the US economy “so that it creates more prosperity for more people and ensures that American workers can compete in an increasingly competitive global economy”.Yellen observed that economists and others have noted that the recovery from the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic has been “K-shaped” – with the well-off bouncing back sharply while the less advantaged have slid further into financial difficulties. “This is especially true of people of color,” said Yellen.But Yellen noted that the K-shaped economy long predated the pandemic and said it was the treasury’s role to try to address these inequalities.Yellen’s testimony was a marked contrast to the Trump administration’s fiscal priorities. She called climate change “an existential threat” and argued international cooperation was needed to end the “destructive, global race to the bottom on corporate taxation.”Biden, who will be sworn into office on Wednesday, outlined a $1.9tn stimulus package proposal last week, saying bold investment was needed to jump-start the economy and accelerate the distribution of vaccines to bring the virus under control.“Neither the president-elect, nor I, propose this relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden. But right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big,” Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair, said in prepared remarks to the Senate finance committee.“I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs, especially if we care about helping people who have been struggling for a very long time,” she said in the statement, which was obtained by Reuters.The proposed aid package includes $415bn to bolster the US response to the virus and the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, some $1tn in direct relief to households, and roughly $440bn for small businesses and communities particularly hard hit by the pandemic.Many Americans would receive stimulus payments of $1,400, which would be on top of the $600 checks approved in a pandemic relief bill passed by Congress last month. Supplemental unemployment insurance would also increase to $400 a week from the current $300 a week, and it would be extended to September.Yellen received an endorsement from all living former treasury secretaries, from George Shultz to Jack Lew, who urged senators in a letter to swiftly confirm Yellen’s nomination so she can quickly tackle “daunting challenges” in the economy.“Addressing these pressing issues will require thoughtful engagement by the Department of the Treasury. Any gap in its leadership would risk setting back recovery efforts,” the former secretaries wrote. More

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      Biden to 'hit ground running' as he rejoins Paris climate accords

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      Joe Biden is set for a flurry of action to combat the climate crisis on his first day as US president by immediately rejoining the Paris climate agreement and blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, although experts have warned lengthier, and harder, environmental battles lie ahead in his presidency.In a series of plans drawn up by Biden’s incoming administration for his first day in office, the new president will take the resonant step of bringing the US back into the Paris climate accords, an international agreement to curb dangerous global heating that Donald Trump exited.The Democrat, who will be sworn in on Wednesday, is also set to revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a controversial cross-border project that would bring 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from Alberta, Canada, to a pipeline that runs to oil refineries on the US’s Gulf of Mexico coast. The president-elect is also expected to reverse Trump’s undoing of rules that limited the emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas drilling operations.“Day one, Biden will rejoin Paris, regulate methane emissions and continue taking many other aggressive executive climate actions in the opening days and weeks of his presidency,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was a climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House, now with the Progressive Policy Institute.Bledsoe said Biden’s nominees to tackle the climate crisis, spearheaded by the former secretary of state John Kerry, who will act as a climate “envoy” to the world, is “by far the most experienced, high-level climate team US history. They intend to hit the ground running.”The aggressive opening salvo to help address the climate crisis, which Biden has called “the existential threat of our time”, is set to include various executive orders to resurrect a host of pollution rules either knocked down or weakened by the Trump administration.The US will convene an international climate summit in Biden’s first few months in the White House and is set to join a global effort to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are used in refrigeration and air conditioning and contribute to the heating of the planet.Biden has also vowed to support federal government scientists beleaguered by years of climate change denial and sidelining of politically inconvenient science by the Trump administration.“It will be a starkly different approach to the Trump administration on almost every front,” said Helen Mountford, vice-president for climate at the World Resources Institute. “Science will once again guide America’s policymaking and inauguration day will mark a new era for climate ambition in the US. He will have a lot on his plate but there’s no doubt that Biden intends to make a full court press on climate change.”However, climate experts point out that simply re-establishing Barack Obama’s climate policies will not be enough to help the world avoid the worst ravages of heatwaves, flooding and mass displacement of people.“It’s not sufficient for where the science says we need to be and it’s not sufficient because we’ve lost critical time over the last couple of years,” said Brian Deese, Biden’s nominee for director of the National Economic Council. Planet-heating emissions dipped in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic but are already surging back to previous levels despite the UN warning countries must at least triple their emissions cuts promised under the Paris deal.Biden has pledged to cut US emissions to net zero by 2050 and has a $2tn plan he claims will create millions of new jobs in energy efficient retrofits for buildings and clean energies such as solar and wind. These ambitions have been bolstered by Democrats’ slender control of the US Senate, although several of the party’s senators, such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who once shot a piece of climate legislation with a gun in a TV campaign advertisement, are wary of big-spending climate bills. US lawmakers have been divided and inert on climate legislation for a decade, despite polls showing record bipartisan support for climate action among the American public.The outcome of the political wrangling will be most keenly felt by poorer people and people of color who disproportionally live near sources of air and water pollution such as coal-fired power plants and highways. Biden has promised to help these communities but will need to “put his money where his mouth is”, said Mustafa Santiago Ali, a former senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency.“Folks will be more focused on the greenhouse gas side of the paradigm, which is maybe a quarter of the work,” Ali said. “There needs to be a comprehensive federal strategy for environmental justice. We have to rebuild trust with communities that we took decades to build up and then was broken. The bogeyman, which is Trump, may be gone but we still need to focus on dismantling that structural environmental racism. Trump just threw more gasoline on what was already there.” More