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      The Georgia runoff: an historic battle for control of the US Senate

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      Reporter Khushbu Shah discusses the runoff in Georgia. Republicans have 50 seats in the Senate and the Democrats 48, so much hangs on the outcome of the 5 January electionOn 5 January, control over the US Senate will be decided by Georgia’s runoff, where the Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue face the Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff respectively in two races. With the Republicans holding 50 seats and the Democrats 48, the results will play a key role in Joe Biden’s ability to legislate and govern during his time as president. Donald Trump lost the state of Georgia, which had previously been a longtime Republican stronghold, but polls indicate a tight contest in both Senate races.Khushbu Shah, editor in chief of the Fuller Project, talks to Mythili Rao about the runoff and what the candidates are offering. Huge amounts of money have gone into this election, with billionaire Republicans on Wall Street opening their wallets to try to protect Perdue and Loeffler’s seats. Khushbu also discusses Georgia’s long history of voter suppression and the impact it could have this time. Continue reading… More

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      US surpasses 17m coronavirus cases just a day after setting record death toll – live updates

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      Biden picks Deb Haaland for interior secretary – reportCongress closes in on $900bn Covid aid bill as Friday deadline loomsFDA says extra doses of vaccine contained in Pfizer vials can be usedBiden and Pence will soon receive Covid vaccine Sign up to receive First Thing – our daily briefing by email 9.44pm GMT Joe Biden released a statement today emphasizing the need for the US government to prioritize cybersecurity, as new details about the recent hack of several federal agencies continue to emerge.“I want to be clear: my administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government — and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office,” the president-elect said in his statement. 9.24pm GMT Senator Mitt Romney criticized the White House for its “inexcusable silence and inaction” over the recent hack targeting US government agencies, which has been attributed to the Kremlin.pic.twitter.com/iEsWD1V4KI Related: Deep US institutional secrets may have been exposed in hack blamed on Russia Continue reading… More

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      Biden picks Deb Haaland as first Native American interior secretary

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      President-elect will also nominate regulator Michael Regan to head Environmental Protection AgencyJoe Biden has chosen lawmaker Deb Haaland as interior secretary and will nominate regulator Michael Regan to head the Environmental Protection Agency, in two diverse and influential picks to handle crucial issues such as public lands, pollution and the climate crisis, according to leading media outlets.Haaland, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico since 2019, would be the first Native American cabinet secretary and one of the first Native Americans ever to serve in a US cabinet. The department’s jurisdiction covers tribal lands and vast tracts of protected American wilderness, including jewels such as Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks. Continue reading… More

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      Biden taps Pete Buttigieg for transportation post and Jennifer Granholm for energy

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      Joe Biden has picked Pete Buttigieg, his former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, to be his transportation secretary, in a move which would make the former South Bend mayor first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate to a cabinet post.The nomination came as more picks for senior positions in Biden’s incoming administration emerged on Tuesday, including Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, to run the energy department.Buttigieg confirmed he had been tapped as transportation secretary in a tweet on Tuesday evening, saying he was “honored”.This is a moment of tremendous opportunity—to create jobs, meet the climate challenge, and enhance equity for all.I’m honored that the President-elect has asked me to serve our nation as Secretary of Transportation.— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) December 16, 2020
      Biden said in a statement that Buttigieg was a “patriot and a problem-solver who speaks to the best of who we are as a nation”.“I am nominating him for secretary of transportation because this position stands at the nexus of so many of the interlocking challenges and opportunities ahead of us,” Biden said, “Jobs, infrastructure, equity, and climate all come together at the DOT, the site of some of our most ambitious plans to build back better.”Biden’s decisions comes as he rounds out his cabinet of top officials to run federal agencies, having already selected former Obama adviser Tony Blinken as his secretary of state, retired Army Gen Lloyd Austin as his secretary of defense and former Fed chair Janet Yellen as his treasury secretary. He’s also picked former agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to reprise that role in the Biden administration, and Ohio representative Marcia Fudge to serve as housing secretary.Buttigieg is one of the few white men Biden has picked to serve as a cabinet secretary. Granholm’s selection as energy secretary was widely reported on Tuesday and confirmed to the Associated Press by four people familiar with the plans, although Granholm has yet to comment publicly.Granholm served two terms as Michigan’s governor and defeated the husband of the US education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to win her second term. In November, she penned an op-ed for the Detroit News calling for Michigan’s auto industry to invest in a low-carbon economy, stating that “the time for a low-carbon recovery is now”.“She’s really a student of the [energy] transition,” Skip Pruss, who directed the Michigan department of energy, labor, and economic growth under Granholm, told Politico. “If you were to ask me what was a limitation in Michigan, I would say that she was slightly ahead of her time.”Buttigieg, 38, ran an upstart presidential campaign and proved to be a competitive candidate with a knack for building a notable warchest. After he dropped out of the Democratic primary for president, he quickly endorsed Biden.Buttigieg’s name had floated around lists for multiple cabinet positions. He was often mentioned as a possible candidate for ambassador to the United Nations, a position that some of his supporters noted could help improve his international relations credentials and give him an opening to New York donors. But Buttigieg was passed up for Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a veteran American diplomat.His name had been mentioned for other positions including secretary of Veterans Affairs. But Buttigieg, a navy veteran, was not interested in that job, according to multiple Democratic supporters. Buttigieg’s team has denied any report or suggestion that he turned down an offer to run that department. He had also been mentioned as a possible secretary of commerce.Throughout his presidential campaign, Buttigieg struggled to get any traction among African American voters. He will probably face similar questions on how his tenure as mayor of South Bend affected African Americans. Still, as transportation secretary Buttigieg will be involved in a part of the Biden administration that affects African Americans across the country.Buttigieg’s appointment was met with praise by some high-profile Democrats.“As a former mayor, he knows the importance of investing in safer, more efficient interstate roads and bridges, and in the connections provided by a secure rail network,” New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, said in a statement. “President-elect Biden has chosen the right person to lead on delivering the promise of clean energy and electric vehicles, on creating new union jobs, and on investments in environmental justice – all of which are inextricably intertwined within our transportation infrastructure.”Biden’s selection of Buttigieg for transportation secretary drew praise from LGBTQ rights groups, with one calling it “a new milestone in a decades-long effort” to have LGBTQ representation in the US government.“Its impact will reverberate well-beyond the department he will lead,” added Annise Parker, president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Institute.The South Bend chapter of Black Lives Matter, however, denounced Buttigieg‘s impending nomination. The group had made their displeasure of Buttigieg known during his presidential campaign, following the 2019 South Bend shooting of a Black man by a white police officer.“We saw Black communities have their houses torn down by his administration,” said Jorden Giger, BLM’s South Bend leader, in a statement, referring to Buttigieg‘s effort to tear down substandard housing. “We saw the machinery of his police turned against Black people.”Biden also plans to tap the former Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy to become his domestic climate czar, spearheading Biden’s ambitions for a massive, coordinated domestic campaign to slow climate change. Her counterpart in climate efforts will be the former secretary of state John Kerry, earlier named by Biden as his climate envoy for national security issues.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Biden hails democracy and rebukes Trump after electoral college victory

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      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

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

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      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

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

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      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

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      Susan Rice tapped for top domestic policy role in Biden administration

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      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