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      Biden's outspoken nominee to run budget office deletes 1,000 tweets

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      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) think tank 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.
      Speaking on MSNBC, Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator from Missouri, accused Republicans of displaying “a whole new level of hypocrisy”.
      “The Republican senators are now all of a sudden worried about tweets that hurt their feelings,” she said. “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.”
      In a statement emailed to the Guardian, a transition spokesperson said Biden would “choose the most-qualified, most experienced candidates capable of leading on day one” and “looks forward to working in good faith with both parties in Congress to install qualified, experienced leaders.
      “The president-elect has been heartened to see a number of Republican senators express their desire to work together and indicate that they believe that presidents deserve latitude in building their team.”
      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 on the Daily Beast report. She tweeted: “After my parents were divorced when I was young, my mother relied on public food and housing programs to get by. Now, I’m being nominated to help ensure those programs are secure, and ensure families like mine can live with dignity. I am beyond honored.”
      She has also 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.” More

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      Bipartisan group pitches $908bn Covid-19 relief to break deadlock in Congress

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      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. More

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      Congress races to avoid government shutdown amid pandemic as funding expires

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      The US Congress on Monday began a two-week sprint to rescue the federal government from a possible shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic, the first major test since the election of whether Republicans and Democrats intend to cooperate.Government funding for nearly all federal agencies expires on Saturday 11 December.Congressional negotiators have made progress on how to divvy up around $1.4tn to be spent by 30 September 2021, the end of the current fiscal year, according to a House of Representatives Democratic aide.But more granular details are still unresolved and votes by the full House and Senate on a huge funding bill may come close to bumping up against that 11 December deadline.Still unclear is whether Donald Trump, who was defeated in the 3 November election, will cooperate with the effort.If the post-election “lame duck” session of Congress fails to produce a budget deal, the new Congress convening in January would have to clean up the mess just weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden.Trump has already warned that he would veto a wide-ranging defense authorization bill Congress aims to pass if a provision is included stripping Confederate leaders’ names from military bases.Failure by the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate to pass a spending bill could have dire consequences. Some healthcare operations could be short-staffed or otherwise interrupted at a time when Covid-19 cases in the US have been surging. Nearly 267,000 people have died in the US as a result of the virus.The spending bill could be the vehicle for providing billions of dollars to state and local governments to help them handle coronavirus vaccines on track to be available in coming weeks and months.Beyond pandemic worries, if government funds were allowed to run out next month, airport operations could slow, national parks would close, some medical research would be put on hold and thousands of other programs would be jeopardized as government workers are furloughed, further hurting the struggling US economy.Washington suffered record-long partial shutdowns between 22 December 2018 and 25 January 2019, the result of a standoff between Democrats and Trump over funding the US-Mexico border wall that was a centerpiece of his presidency.This time around, Republicans are seeking $2bn for the southern barrier that most Democrats and some Republican lawmakers claim is an ineffective remedy to halting illegal immigration.Negotiators also have been battling over the amount of money Republicans want for immigrant detention beds.Disagreements over abortion and family planning, education and environment programs also have been simmering. If they cannot be resolved by 11 December, agency shutdowns could be avoided only by Congress passing a stopgap funding bill.Also hovering over the budget debate will be warnings that emergency funds must be allocated in separate coronavirus aid legislation following months of deadlock.Democrats’ most recent offer was a wide-ranging $2.2tn bill to help state and local governments deal with the health and economic crisis, expand Covid-19 testing and supplies, and renew federal direct payments to individuals and families during the pandemic.Their goal is to provide a significant shot of stimulus to an economy that many experts fear could take a second dive in coming months if the pandemic shuts down more businesses.Republicans have deemed that proposal exorbitant and have been sticking with calls for a scaled-down $500bn menu of initiatives.So far there have been no signs of serious negotiations, leaving many to believe a stimulus bill will be the first order of business in Biden’s presidency, which begins on 20 January. More

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      The 'Freedom Force': Republican group takes on the Squad and 'evil' socialism

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      A group of incoming Republican congresspeople intends to counter the “radical agenda” of the Democratic party, with the self-professed goal of becoming the Republican party’s alternative to “the Squad” – a group of progressive congresswomen of color including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.Calling themselves the Freedom Force, the Republicans say they will combat the “evil” of socialism and Marxism.“We love our nation. This group will be talking against and giving a contrast to the hard left. We have the Freedom Force versus Squad; we have a group of people who believe in our country, believe in God, family, respect for women and authority, and another group who hates everything I just mentioned,” the Utah congressman-elect Burgess Owens told the Fox News host Laura Ingraham, speaking as a representative of the Freedom Force.Owens said the group would aim to protect small business owners and the middle class. “Business ownership is the foundation of our freedom,” he said on Fox & Friends Weekend. “It’s where our middle class comes from.” He added that the middle class got its power from small businesses, while the left got its power “from misery”.During the interview, Owens – a former Super Bowl champion – also railed against NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem and against the Green New Deal.He pointed to the diversity within his new coalition. “South Korea, Cuba, Iran, Greece, I grew up in Tallahassee, Florida … We’ve all dealt with the harshness, the evil of socialism and Marxism, and so we can talk from experience,” he said.As a final warning to Democrats, he added: “You’re collateral damage if you run a business and you want to go to church and you want to put your kids in school; you’re collateral damage – that’s the way the evil Marxists and socialists roll.”The coalition of Republican lawmakers includes New York’s Nicole Malliotakis; Michelle Steel of California; Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma; Victoria Spartz of Indiana; and Carlos Giménez, Maria Elvira Salazar and Byron Donalds of Florida. More

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      Biden bids to placate the left as he builds centrist transition team

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      So far, Joe Biden has avoided one of the biggest potential pitfalls of the transition process that will end with him moving into the White House: infuriating the left wing of the Democratic party.Yet Biden’s transition has also yielded the results he wanted in terms of ushering in a team of experienced figures drawn mostly from his own circle of friends and advisers who have given a decidedly centrist tone to the incoming administration.Biden has so far named his senior staff, who don’t require confirmation from the Senate, to a generally positive response. As he’s begun unveiling his nominations for cabinet secretary positions, the reaction from leftist quarters of the Democratic party – and its cadre of often young activists primed to attack – has mostly turned out to be be a mix of yawning and marginal grumbling.There has also been applause for naming women and people of color to top posts in an administration that also includes Kamala Harris as vice-president.“I appreciate that the Biden transition is trying to make an argument for diversity of its selections, but if we’re being honest, what we’re seeing is a valuing of experience in people who have served in key important posts and [who] understand what it’s going to take to try to be effective bureaucrats in those posts,” said Faiz Shakir, the manager for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.“As a progressive, I care deeply about vision and what you want to do when you hold those posts. However, that is not to dismiss or downplay the value of experience. So they are selecting for their experience and that has its upshots.”So far, Biden has avoided nominating ostentatious prospects to cabinet posts, opting instead to bring in veterans of the agencies they are set to run.Biden picked Antony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state, to run the state department. Biden picked former secretary of state John Kerry to a new high-ranking post as climate tsar. Biden named Jake Sullivan, a longtime national security aide to the former vice-president to be national security adviser. To serve as director of national intelligence Biden picked Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA. For the treasury department, Biden plans to appoint the former Federal Reserve chairwoman, Janet Yellen.More telling is who Biden hasn’t appointed. He hasn’t brought on a liberal standard-bearer like Elizabeth Warren. And the president-elect passed over Democrats with a national profile who campaigned for him, like the former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg whose name had been floated for ambassador to the UN. He picked Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a former ambassador and state department official. The former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice was seen as a frontrunner for that job.Yet the progressive groups most eager to bash top agency picks from such an establishment Democrat like Biden are somewhat satisfied.“We are encouraged by Joe Biden making one of his first major appointments John Kerry, as it demonstrates the urgency of taking bold, global action on the climate crisis,” Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of the Justice Democrats political action committee said in a statement.“But America also needs a domestically focused climate tsar who directly reports to the president and will oversee an Office of Climate Mobilization agreed to in the Biden-Sanders taskforces.”We are encouraged by Joe Biden making one of his first major appointments John KerryShakir called the Blinken pick “a solid choice”. When Ron Klain was announced as chief of staff, Warren even tweeted that he was a “a superb choice”. The liberal outside group Democracy for America called Yellen a “historic, progressive choice for Fed Chair in 2013. If selected, she’ll be a historic, progressive choice for treasury secretary.”There are signs, though, that the Biden administration and liberals are just enjoying a perhaps temporary detente as the Trump era winds down and before Biden has even occupied the Oval Office. Not all appointments have been without grumbling.Liberal groups have expressed opposition to the longtime Biden adviser Bruce Reed, possibly running the Office of Management and Budget, an agency charged with producing the administration’s budget. Leftwing congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have signed a petition against Reed, calling him a “deficit hawk” and criticizing his past support for benefit cuts, like social security.There have also been rumblings that the transition could meet turbulence if Biden decides to install Brian Deese, a former OMB official, at the head of the national economic council. Some of the strongest ire from liberals has been directed at the idea of the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel becoming secretary of transportation.The constellation of progressive activists and groups that form the left of the party also have preferred candidates. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution group want New Mexico congresswoman – and Native American – Deb Haaland to run the Department of the Interior.The importance of progressives battling with Biden over nominees is that it could complicate his ability to set up a functional cabinet and retain the broad electoral coalition that elevated him to office.But the real sticking point to Biden’s choices is likely to be confirming these nominees with a Senate where Democrats either have a slim majority or are still stuck in the minority with Republicans in control. That issue will be decided by two Georgia run-off Senate races that will go to the polls in early January, with both parties pouring huge amounts of cash and manpower into the contests.“It is a tremendous dark cloud over the personnel process,” said Bill Dauster, a former deputy chief of staff to then Democratic-Senate leader, Harry Reid. Dauster added that “it’s clear from statements Republicans have made that they intend to ration out their Senate confirmations in a stingy way”.Part of Biden’s argument to placate senators – like Sanders and Warren – who had been angling for influential administration posts is that their current position is essential in the powerful upper chamber of American government.“We already have significant representation among progressives in our administration,” Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. “One thing is really critical: taking someone out of the Senate, taking someone out of the House – particularly a person of consequence – is a really difficult decision that would have to be made. I have a very ambitious, very progressive agenda. And it’s gonna take really strong leaders in the House and Senate to get it done.”Justice Democrats shot back that Biden’s picks could have been better, and in that response statement offered a list of non-white male progressives for the remaining cabinet positions.Biden so far has avoided naming any senator to a cabinet position, and instead prioritized agency experience above all else. Reinforcing that priority, there are signs that Sally Yates, a former acting attorney general, is the heavy favorite to run the Department of Justice. Outgoing Alabama senator Doug Jones, a longtime friend of Biden’s who has kept in contact with him, is another potential candidate, although Yates appears more likely. More

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      Biden campaign boasts its voter outreach beat Obama's 'by a mile'

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      Although the dust is still settling on the 2020 US presidential election it is clear this cycle was one of significant breakthroughs for Democrats. With historic voter turnout for recent times, Joe Biden’s team secured a Democratic win in Georgia, something that hadn’t happened since 1992, and there was record turnout among young people and Black Americans.Ashley Allison, Biden and Kamala Harris’s national coalitions director, said the campaign put a greater effort into building a broad coalition of voters than ever before.“This campaign made a larger investment in coalition work than any other presidential campaign by a mile,” said Allison, who worked on African American outreach for Obama’s 2012 campaign in Ohio, which swung for Obama that year almost entirely due to the Black vote.She may well be right: the Biden camp had close to 500 employees working on outreach this year. It had a virtual headquarters and people on the ground in key battleground states. Biden’s organizing team reached more than 37 million by phone – and in the final weeks of volunteering, they called, texted and knocked on more than double the number of doors the Obama team did in 2012 even as Obama’s campaign is frequently referred to as ground zero for the technological revolution in political campaigning.But with the coronavirus pandemic largely preventing the team from physically knocking on doors, they needed to find a way to safely create an in-person presence. That consisted of dropping literature at people’s doors with handwritten notes and following up with phone calls. Phone-banking teams would call in to video chats, trying to recreate the energy of a traditional phone-banking room, to overcome the ennui of calling alone during a global shutdown.In Arizona, which the Democrats flipped for the first time in 24 years, Biden’s coalitions team did extensive outreach in the Navajo Nation, with indigenous people playing the ceremonial drum to engage voters as they were coming in so they would see themselves as part of the voting experience. In Nevada, horse parades marched down the streets.“We wanted to engage voters in a time where people were feeling so distant due to the pandemic,” said Allison. More

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      Eleanor review: sensitive and superb biography of a true American giant

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      As the 2020 US presidential election winds toward a tortuous and dysfunctional certification, it is tempting to imagine that intrigue and machinations belong only to this particular heated moment in American life and history. That would be wrong.There is always intrigue in American politics, though nothing approaching the current state of near-sedition. We would be also be wrong if we dated the role of iconic first ladies only as far back as Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, or even Jackie Kennedy. Before there was Jackie or Hillary or Michelle, there was Eleanor. Niece to one president, wife to another; activist, global citizen; mother of the Democratic party in the mid-20th century, when the mother of the party was still a thing.You will find all these identities in David Michaelis’s elegant new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, but the beauty of this robust volume is that there are so many more Eleanors to meet. Awkward girl; yearning and unappreciated wife; shy but committed romantic; resolute partner; distant mother. Michaelis, a veteran biographer, shows us all these many faces, rendering a complex and sensitive portrait of a woman who bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, reimagining herself many times with both courage and resilience.Born into the strictures of upper-class white womanhood, Eleanor was conversant with and adjacent to political power from an early age. Born to a beautiful, critical mother and an affectionate, drug- and alcohol-addicted father, she might well have been identified in the 21st century as an adult child of an alcoholic, with all the needy and compliant behavior implied. Her mother, Anna, consumed with keeping up appearances, was no better than any other woman of her class; indeed, her constant mockery of the young Eleanor certainly compounded the child’s insecurity and desire to truly belong. Michaelis writes with great sensitivity, utilizing Eleanor’s own recollections and other research materials to set the backdrop for recurring themes in his young subject’s life, including her mother’s “ritualized humiliation … as often as not in front of company”, including her mocking nickname of “Granny”.With both parents and a brother dead by the time she was 10, Eleanor found herself introduced to tragedy – as well as to something steadfast within herself: “No matter what happened to one in this world, one had to adjust to it.” And adjust she did, to her grandmother’s strictures, her mother-in-law’s disdain, the ambitions of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This biography gives equal weight to Eleanor’s personal and political longings, her frustrations with her husband and her fury at his indiscretions; and her own loves, requited and otherwise.At the same time, however, Michaelis reveals, again and again, that Eleanor found her truest self through duty, hard work and sometimes punishing overachievement. She felt most loved in partnership and was misled by the illusion of it. Longing to be the center of one person’s love, she settled instead for the larger, public love of a generation as she wrote, traveled and agitated to change the world. What is especially refreshing about this biography are the ways in which Michaelis refuses to hide the fact that Eleanor’s struggles for justice had limits, drawn not only by her grudging acceptance of a political spouse’s role, but also through the limitations of her race and class.Impressively, the author does not sugarcoat or diminish the casual racism and xenophobia of the age, highlighting FDR’s use of the N-word and comfort with segregation, as well as the well-documented anti-Asian racism undergirding the internment of Japanese citizens during the second world war. Indeed, Michaelis’s framing of these deficiencies in American political life helps us to trace their provenance in our own era and allows us to see what Eleanor was up against in her bravest as well as her most timid moments.Her commitment to global citizenship and human rights served to mirror white activists in that period as well as this one: they find the courage to fight for human rights and dignity in the far corners of the globe yet choke at the exact moment when their courage could be most effective. She found herself in full command of the symbolic gesture – making it possible for Marian Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln memorial and resigning from the Daughters of the American Revolution but refusing to attend the concert herself, at a moment when such a symbolic gesture might have made a greater difference.These sections will not surprise many African or Japanese Americans. Such readers will likely have personal experience with the failures of white Americans who talk a good game about democracy and equal justice under law, but who can’t deliver when the chips are down. Indeed, Michaelis does such an excellent job of outlining Eleanor’s grueling work to bring to fruition the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the country’s domestic deficiencies during and after FDR’s presidency are drawn in sharp relief. More