Biden administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden hails democracy and rebukes Trump after electoral college victory

      by

      [embedded content]
      Joe Biden delivered a sharp repudiation of Donald Trump and declared that the “will of the people had prevailed” in a speech that came shortly after the electoral college officially confirmed his victory.
      It was “time to turn the page” on a presidential election that tested the resilience of American democracy, the president-elect said just moments after Hawaii cast the final four electoral college votes, clearing a milestone that all but ended Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn the results.
      Biden hailed the presidential election and its uncharted aftermath as a triumph of American democracy and “one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty we’ve ever seen in our country”.The final tally – 306 to 232 electoral votes – followed a baseless campaign by the president to reverse the results of an election that saw historic turnout despite a pandemic. Trump lost not only in the electoral college but the popular vote, too – by nearly 7m.
      Yet for weeks, the president has clung to meritless accusations of voter fraud in a slate of battleground states that delivered the victory to Biden. His refusal to concede has sowed doubt among his supporters about the integrity of the vote and undermined faith in the institutions of American governance.
      In a speech delivered from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said “our democracy – pushed, tested, threatened – proved to be resilient, true and strong”.
      Biden, who will become the 46th president of the United States when he is sworn in on 20 January, continued: “We the people voted. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And so, now it is time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout our history – to unite, to heal.”
      Since Biden entered the presidential race last year, he has cast the election as a “battle for the soul” of the nation. In his remarks on Monday night, Biden described his electoral college victory as a fulfilment of that mission and a rejection of Trump.
      The president-elect called Trump’s assault on the democratic process “unconscionable” and assailed Republicans who embraced his unsubstantiated claims about widespread voter fraud. He singled out the 17 state attorneys general and 126 members of Congress who he said helped legitimize a legal effort to throw out tens of millions of votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and “hand the presidency to a candidate who lost the electoral college, lost the popular vote and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse”. The supreme court rejected the lawsuit.
      These officials, Biden said, adopted a position “so extreme that we’ve never seen it before – a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law and refused to honor our constitution”.
      Anticipating further resistance from Trump and his allies, Biden noted that the president and his campaign were “denied no course of action” and stressed that their efforts failed in states with Republican governors and in courts with Republican-appointed judges.
      “They were heard,” he said. “And they were found to be without merit.” More

    • 188 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      US to hold world climate summit early next year and seek to rejoin Paris accord

      by

      The US will hold a climate summit of the world’s major economies early next year, within 100 days of Joe Biden taking office, and seek to rejoin the Paris agreement on the first day of his presidency, in a boost to international climate action.Leaders from 75 countries met without the US in a virtual Climate Ambition Summit co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France at the weekend, marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris accord. The absence of the US underlined the need for more countries, including other major economies such as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia, to make fresh commitments on tackling the climate crisis.Biden said in a statement: “I’ll immediately start working with my counterparts around the world to do all that we possibly can, including by convening the leaders of major economies for a climate summit within my first 100 days in office … We’ll elevate the incredible work cities, states and businesses have been doing to help reduce emissions and build a cleaner future. We’ll listen to and engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power.”He reiterated his pledge to put the US on a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and said the move would be good for the US economy and workers. “We’ll do all of this knowing that we have before us an enormous economic opportunity to create jobs and prosperity at home and export clean American-made products around the world.”António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said: “It is a very important signal. We look forward to a very active US leadership in climate action from now on as US leadership is absolutely essential. The US is the largest economy in the world, it’s absolutely essential for our goals to be reached.”Donald Trump, whose withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement took effect on the day after the US election in November, shunned the Climate Ambition Summit. Countries including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Mexico were excluded as they had failed to commit to climate targets in line with the Paris accord. Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, had sought to join the summit but his commitments were judged inadequate, and an announcement from Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, of a net zero target just before the summit was derided as lacking credibility.The Climate Ambition Summit failed to produce a major breakthrough, but more than 70 countries gave further details of plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement goal of limiting temperature rises to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspirational 1.5C limit.Many observers had hoped India might set a net zero emissions target, but its prime minister, Narendra Modi, promised only to “exceed expectations” by the centenary of India’s independence in 2047. China gave some details to its plan to cause emissions to peak before the end of this decade but stopped short of agreeing to curb its planned expansion of coal-fired power.The UK pledged to stop funding fossil fuel development overseas, and the EU set out its plan to reduce emissions by 55% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.Alok Sharma, the UK’s business secretary, who will preside over UN climate talks called Cop26 next year, said much more action was needed. “[People] will ask: have we done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C and protect people and nature from the effects of climate change? We must be honest with ourselves – the answer to that is currently no,” he said.When Biden’s pledge to bring the US to net zero emissions by 2050 is included, countries accounting for more than two-thirds of global emissions are subject to net zero targets around mid-century, including the EU, the UK, Japan and South Korea. China has pledged to meet net zero by 2060, and a large number of smaller developing countries have also embraced the goal.The task for the next year, before the Cop26 conference in Glasgow next November, will be to encourage all the world’s remaining countries – including oil-dependent economies such as Russia and Saudi Arabia – to sign up to long-term net zero targets, and to ensure that all countries also have detailed plans for cutting emissions within the next decade.Those detailed national plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are the bedrock of the Paris agreement, setting out emissions curbs by 2030. Current NDCs, submitted in 2015, would lead to more than 3C of warming, so all countries must submit fresh plans in line with a long-term goal of net zero emissions. The US will be closely watched for its plans.Nathaniel Keohane, a senior vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said: “The [Climate Ambition] Summit captured and reflected the momentum of recent months, but didn’t push much beyond it. The world is waiting for Biden to bring the US back into the Paris agreement, and will be looking for how ambitious the US is willing to be in its NDC.” More

    • 213 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      The Biden team will be 'diverse'. That doesn't mean it will help struggling people | Bhaskar Sunkara

      by

      Joe Biden is inheriting a mess of a country. The pandemic has killed 290,000 people and threatens many more; another 853,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims last month; and stores are reporting spikes in shoplifting for food and baby formula.If Biden has any answers for us, Americans are keen to hear it.Instead, the Biden team and its media allies have talked up one rather specific aspect of the Biden administration: diversity. Over the past few weeks, Biden has announced the White House team he wants to help lead us out of crisis. Yet instead of touting the skills of those selected or what they’ll do concretely to improve working people’s lives, we’ve been hearing about their “lived experiences”.It started with an unlikely subject, Antony Blinken. Blinken is Biden’s nominee for secretary of state and, for what it’s worth, a white guy. A white guy who happened to support the Iraq war and played a key role lobbying his boss to do the same. A white guy who founded a “strategic advisory firm” that works with defense companies the world over. There’s not much to get excited about, right?Not so fast. As one article put it: “Antony Blinken has two toddlers. This is good for fathers everywhere.” Well, maybe not for fathers in the Middle East – but at least we’ll finally have “a dad-rocker in the state department”. Dads of the world, unite!Some of the other expected senior Biden positions are actually from historically oppressed groups. But these announcements seem to follow the same pattern: foreground identity to the expense of real policy.Progressives, for example, have long argued that the Department of Homeland Security should never have been created by the George W Bush administration to begin with. But why abolish a department that makes us less safe and violates our civil liberties when you can just put a person of color in charge of it?When the Biden team announced that Alejandro Mayorkas had been picked to do just that, they cut to the chase. Instead of explaining their plans to remedy some of the horrors of American immigration policy, the Biden team reminded us that “Mayorkas will be the first Latino and immigrant nominated to serve as DHS secretary”.Just one minute later came the breaking news that “Avril Haines will be nominated to serve as national intelligence director, which would make her the first woman to lead the intelligence community”. Haines was deputy CIA director and one of the primary architects of Obama’s drone program. When out of public service, she found time to defend torture and work for both Palantir and Blinken’s firm. All that and Haines is “a bookstore owner/community activist”.On 30 November, Politico reported that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was putting pressure on the Biden administration. They weren’t pushing him to take stronger action on black unemployment, poverty, or the scourge of mass incarceration – they wanted a black secretary of defense. The campaign seemed to be working. “At the end of the day I would say that it’s going to be hard for Biden not to pick the first female secretary of defense, but Jeh Johnson would be the first Black secretary of defense and there are a lot of white faces,” a former senior defense official told Politico.It wasn’t Johnson, but on Tuesday Biden announced that Lloyd Austin was his pick. Lloyd Austin is African American and has served 41 years in the military. His appointment, and those of other former army brass, has alarmed those concerned about the decline of civil control of the military. Also alarming is the fact that last year alone Austin earned more than $350,000 for serving on the board of directors of the military contractor Raytheon.Democrats are continuing their rebrand from the party of FDR’s New Deal to the party of cultural posturingWhat the CBC thinks about all of this is not clear. Their sole interest seems to be about Austin’s racial identity.At the same time, others were celebrating Biden’s selection of an all-female senior communications staff and the appointment of Neera Tanden as budget director. Sure, Tanden is a woman and south Asian; she’s also someone who’s advocated cuts to social security and the looting of Libyan oil to pay for the US bombing of Libya.Some picks are better than others. Janet Yellen, for example, is a center-left economist who, as Ryan Grim notes, has a mixed record but seems to be a genuine step up from Obama-era appointments like Tim Geithner. When announcing Yellen, though, Biden didn’t mention her Keynesian background or any of her academic work about full employment. But he did joke that he “might have to ask Lin-Manuel Miranda to write another musical about the first woman secretary of the Treasury”.If it’s not clear, I’m not thrilled about these appointments, but beyond their substance, it’s very telling how they were rolled out. The Democrats are continuing their steady rebrand from the party of FDR’s New Deal and economic redistribution to the party of diversity and cultural posturing.Racial minorities, women and LGBT people better like what they see, because that’s all they’ll get. Would any of the establishment figures touting the incoming White House’s composition tell a recently laid-off white person not to worry, because a member of “their community” will be in the Biden administration? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. Yet the minority base of the Democratic party is expected to subsist off scraps of representation.It’s a PR trick no different than that one we’ve been recently seeing in corporate America, where your boss will ask you read White Fragility and contemplate your privilege before laying you off. Or where a listing like Nasdaq doesn’t care what unethical stuff you have to do to make money, as long as you’re doing it with a diverse board of directors.This vague touting of backgrounds isn’t just irrelevant to most of our lives, it distracts us from how simple the policy solutions to the crises facing poor and working-class Americans are. If people don’t have healthcare, we can give them comprehensive healthcare through Medicare for All. If they’re struggling financially to raise children, we can provide them with free childcare and universal pre-K. If they’re dealing with housing insecurity, we can expand section 8 vouchers and build affordable housing units. If they don’t have good-paying jobs, we can sturdy up the union movement and create guarantees of public employment.But instead of Democratic leaders actually nourishing the tired, poor and huddled masses with a robust welfare state, we’re told to eat diversity instead. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Susan Rice tapped for top domestic policy role in Biden administration

      by

      [embedded content]
      Susan Rice has been tapped by president-elect Joe Biden to run his domestic policy council, an under-the-radar but highly influential group with broad sway over the administration’s approach to issues including immigration, healthcare and racial inequality.
      The move marks a surprising shift for Rice, a longtime Democratic foreign policy expert who served as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser and UN ambassador.
      Rice’s name had been floated for multiple high-ranking positions in the incoming Biden administration. She was one of the finalists to be Biden’s vice-presidential running mate. She was also considered for secretary of state.
      But the Biden transition team has been wary about tapping anyone who could face a difficult confirmation process. Republicans have been eager to fight aggressively to prevent Rice from making it through the confirmation process and were expected to recall her involvement in the 2012 Benghazi attack in Libya as part of their strategy.
      The domestic policy council position does not require Senate confirmation.
      Biden also nominated Denis McDonough, former chief of staff to President Obama, to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sprawling agency that has presented organizational challenges for both parties over the years. But he never served in the armed forces, a fact noted by a leading veterans organization.
      In selecting Rice and McDonough, Biden is continuing to fill his administration with prominent members of the Obama administration. He will make the formal announcements on Friday, along with his nominations of the Ohio representative Marcia Fudge to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Katherine Tai as US trade representative and Tom Vilsack as agriculture secretary. Vilsack filled that same role during Obama’s two terms.
      “The roles they will take on are where the rubber meets the road – where competent and crisis-tested governance can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, enhancing the dignity, equity, security, and prosperity of the day-to-day lives of Americans,” Biden said in a statement.
      In choosing Rice to oversee the White House council, advisers said Biden was signaling the importance of domestic policy in his early agenda. Though the council was created with the intention of being on par with the White House national security council, it traditionally has had a lower public profile, including for its directors.
      Rice is expected to be more of a force, inside and outside the White House, and her appointment creates a new power center in the West Wing. She has discussed replicating some elements of the national security council in her new role, including a principals committee of cabinet secretaries and others that could bring more structure to domestic policymaking, but also pull more power into the West Wing.
      She is expected to play an active role in the Biden administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Healthcare, immigration and tackling racial inequality are also expected to be among the top issues for the domestic policy shop next year.
      The 56-year-old Rice will be among the most prominent Black women in Biden’s administration.
      Although Biden has insisted his administration will not simply be a retread of Obama’s presidency, he is bringing back numerous familiar faces. His team has defended the moves as a nod toward experience and the need to hit the ground running in tackling the pressing issues facing the nation across multiple fronts.
      Shirley Anne Warshaw, a professor at Gettysburg College who has studied the presidency and cabinets, said following Obama as he builds out his team gives Biden an advantage.
      “This is a much better bench than Obama had because these people have the experience of serving in the Obama administration,” Warshaw said. “In that way, Joe Biden is the luckiest man in the world.” More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden reportedly set to nominate Katherine Tai as top US trade envoy

      by

      [embedded content]
      Joe Biden is set to nominate Katherine Tai to be the top US trade envoy, according to two people familiar with his plans.
      Tai, who is the chief trade counsel for the House ways and means committee, will be tapped as the US trade representative, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
      The role is a cabinet position, and the Senate will vote on whether to confirm Tai for the position. Biden’s selection of Tai, who is Asian American, reflects his promise to choose a diverse cabinet that reflects the makeup of the country.
      Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Tai earlier oversaw China trade enforcement for the office of the US trade representative, setting US strategy in trade disputes with China. Biden’s trade representative will inherit a trade war with China, put on pause by an interim trade pact in January that left many of the hardest issues unresolved and US taxes remaining on $360bn in Chinese imports.
      As the top trade staffer at ways and means, Tai handled negotiations last year with the Trump administration over a revamped North American trade deal. Under pressure from congressional Democrats, Trump’s trade team agreed to strengthen the pact to make it easier for Mexican workers to form independent unions and demand better pay and benefits – decreasing the incentives for US firms to move south of the border to take advantage of cheap and compliant labor.
      The administration also dropped from the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) what Democrats considered a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies that could have kept drug prices high.
      Tai is considered a problem-solving pragmatist on trade policy, which often breaks down into an ideological divide between free traders and protectionists. In a letter to Biden on 24 November, the California Democratic representative Judy Chu, the chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and nine other female House members praised Tai’s “experience and diplomatic abilities’’ and said she is “uniquely qualified’’ to deal with Canada and Mexico on the USMCA and with US-China trade tensions.
      Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member on the finance committee, called Tai “an inspired choice” for the position.
      “Ms Tai has the experience she needs to succeed as USTR, and her record of getting wins for American workers demonstrates she knows how to champion the values that matter to US families,” Wyden said. “She worked closely with me and my staff to craft the strongest ever protections for American workers in a trade agreement, and pass them into law with bipartisan support.”
      He urged Senate Republicans to quickly confirm her. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Lloyd Austin: retired army general nominated as Biden defense secretary

      by

      [embedded content]
      Joe Biden on Wednesday formally nominated Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star army general and the former commander of the American military effort in Iraq, to be his defense secretary, casting him as uniquely qualified to lead a diverse military at a particularly challenging moment for the nation and the world.
      If confirmed by the US Senate, Austin, 67, would make history as the first African American to lead the Pentagon, overseeing the 1.3 million active duty men and women who make up the nation’s military.
      But his nomination has put some Democrats in a bind, as they weigh their commitment to civilian control of the military against a desire to elevate a history-making nominee to the role.
      “In my judgment, there is no question that he is the right person for this job at the right moment, leading the department of defense at this moment in our nation’s history,” Biden said at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday afternoon. He called Austin the “definition of duty, honor and country” and a leader “feared by our adversaries, known and respected by our allies”.
      Biden said Austin would help renew America’s relationship with allies, frayed by the Trump administration, and orient the defense department to confront threats ranging from pandemics to the climate emergency to refugee crises.
      Yet Austin faces resistance on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress have long warned against nominating a former commander to lead the Pentagon in a nation that prides itself on civilian control of the military. Federal law requires a seven-year waiting period between active duty military service and serving as the secretary of defense.
      Austin retired in 2016, after a decorated 41-year military career. As such, Congress would have to grant a waiver for him to serve as defense secretary. In his remarks, Biden said he respected the need to draw a clear line between the military and civilian leadership, but urged Congress to grant Austin a waiver, as it did for retired marine general Jim Mattis to become Donald Trump’s defense secretary in 2017.
      “I would not be asking for this exception if I did not believe this moment in our history didn’t call for it.” he said. “It does call for it.”
      Speaking after Biden, Austin sought to allay concerns over his recent service, vowing to approach the role as a “civilian leader” with “deep appreciation and reverence for the prevailing wisdom of civilian control of our military”.
      “I recognize that being a member of the president’s cabinet requires a different perspective and unique responsibilities from a career in uniform,” Austin said. “And I intend to keep this at the forefront of my mind.” More

    • 213 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      After the Trump years, how will Biden help the 140 million Americans in poverty? | Mary O'Hara

      by

      After four punch-drunk years of Donald Trump, the weeks since the November presidential election have presented a chance, despite his machinations to overturn the result, to reflect on what might come next for the tens of millions of Americans struggling to get by. What lies around the corner after the departure of an administration that brought so much destruction matters to the lives of the least well-off and marginalised people?
      President-elect Joe Biden sought to reassure people that he was on the case when he announced his top economic team last week. “Our message to everybody struggling right now is this: help is on the way,” he said, offering a steady economic hand to a weary public rattled by the virus and an unprecedented economic crisis.
      Many people are simply so relieved that Biden and Harris won that they talk about “getting back to normal” after the chaos. That’s an understandable reaction given all that’s transpired. However, getting back to normal isn’t an option. Nor should it be the goal. When Trump took power, around 140 million Americans were either poor or on low incomes even without a pandemic – a staggering proportion.
      For decades the wages of those at the top soared while paychecks for those at the bottom flatlined. Gender and racial income and wealth disparities endure. Despite widespread support for boosting minimum earnings, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn’t been increased since 2009. Roughly 60% of wealth in the US is estimated to be inherited. And, as if this wasn’t enough to contend with, in 2020 billionaire wealth surged past $1tn since the start of the pandemic. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) calculates that the wealth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos alone leapt by almost $70bn to a colossal $188.3bn as the year draws to a close.
      Over the past four years I asked myself frequently what another term of the Trump wrecking ball would mean for the people at the sharp end of regressive policies and a reckless disregard for the most vulnerable in society. Thankfully, that is no longer the question. The question now is: after all the carnage, what next?
      So far, indications are that Biden and his team recognise that as well as confronting the gargantuan challenges unleashed by Covid-19, longstanding inequities cannot be left unchecked. The presidential campaign was calibrated to highlight this, including around racial injustices. Overtures have been made, for example, on areas championed by progressives such as forgiving loan debt for many students and expanding access to Medicare. Biden has also pledged to strengthen unions and, well before the pandemic during his first campaign speech, endorsed increasing the federal minimum wage to $15.
      Even in the face of unparalleled challenges – and while a lot rides on a Democratic win in the two Georgia Senate run-offs in January – Biden could and should “use all the tools” at a president’s disposal to shift the dial quickly, says Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the IPS. Examples include placing conditions on workers’ pay for companies bidding for federal contracts and leveraging the presidential “bully pulpit” to try to push proposals such as a minimum wage hike through the Senate.
      There is also a genuine opportunity for the new administration to spearhead a concerted focus on policies affecting more than 61 million Americans who are disabled – a group all too often ignored in presidential campaigns and sidelined in policy. Biden’s disability plan makes for a comprehensive read. Off the bat, if the new administration takes steps to overturn the “abject neglect of disability rights enforcement” under Trump in areas ranging from education to housing it would be off to a good start, argues Rebecca Cokley, director of the disability justice initiative at the Center for American Progress.
      The pandemic is the most pressing challenge facing the incoming administration. However, structural inequalities, the people lining up at food banks, the children going hungry or homeless, historic injustices and the out-of-control concentration of wealth, must also be priorities. Right now, the US at least has a chance to finally put some of this right. However in the UK, with the end of the Brexit transition period looming and the chancellor under pressure to fend off accusations that another dose of austerity isn’t on the way, it’s a whole different story. The lessons in both countries from past mistakes – ones that harm those most in need – must be learned.
      • Mary O’Hara is a journalist and author. Her latest book, The Shame Game: Overturning the toxic poverty narrative, is published by Policy Press. She was named best foreign columnist 2020 by the Southern California Journalism Awards More