Author: PolitCens

Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler danced around questions about whether President Donald Trump lost the November 3 election in a debate with her Democratic challenger on Sunday before two Georgia runoffs that will decide control of the U.S. Senate. Facing off with the Rev. Raphael Warnock on a debate stage in Atlanta, Loeffler repeatedly called the political newcomer a “radical liberal,” while Warnock criticized Loeffler’s stock trades after the wealthy businesswoman was appointed senator a year ago. Each criticized the other’s interpretation of the Christian faith. As the debate began, Loeffler sidestepped a question about whether she agreed with Trump’s baseless claims that last month’s election was rigged. Trump has not conceded to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, instead insisting without evidence that the result was because of widespread fraud, claims that state and federal officials have repeatedly rejected. “It’s vitally important that Georgians trust our election process and the president has every right to every legal recourse,” Loeffler said. Warnock countered by asking why Loeffler “continues to cast doubt on an American democratic election. It’s time to put this behind us.” Trump Campaigns in Georgia for Republican SenatorsThe president repeats vote fraud claims while backing GOP candidates in January runoff elections that could decide party control of SenateUphill fight for Democrats Georgia has not elected a Democratic U.S. senator in 20 years, but Biden’s narrow victory there over Trump has given Democrats hope. They face an uphill battle, however, and need to win both races to deny Republicans a Senate majority that could be used to block much of Biden’s legislative agenda. Republicans are training much of their fire on Warnock, the Black senior pastor of the Atlanta church where civil rights champion the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. “My opponent, radical liberal Raphael Warnock, is a socialist,” Loeffler said, an attack she voiced repeatedly throughout the debate. She went through a litany of attacks she has made in her campaign ads, which seek to portray Warnock as anti-police, anti-Israel, Marxist and tied to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and a sermon in which the Black Chicago pastor declared: “God damn America!” Warnock said Loeffler was trying to misrepresent him. “I believe in the free enterprise system,” he said. He accused Loeffler of improperly profiting by “dumping millions of dollars of stock” just after becoming senator and early in the coronavirus outbreak, before the stock market turned down. “I’m OK with the fact that she wants to make money, I just think you shouldn’t use the people’s seat to enrich yourself. You ought to use the people’s seat to represent the people,” Warnock said. The Justice Department closed a probe into stock trades made by Loeffler, along with Senators Dianne Feinstein and Jim Inhofe, earlier this year, shortly before market turmoil tied to the coronavirus, media have reported. All three have denied wrongdoing. Loeffler was appointed to her seat a year ago after its former occupant retired. She trailed Warnock in her complicated 20-candidate November 3 contest, when Warnock got 32.9% and Loeffler took 25.9%. Who’s in Georgia’s US Senate Election Runoffs?Two special elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 will determine which political party controls the US SenateRunoffs, recriminations Senator David Perdue, the other Georgia Republican fighting to hold his seat on January 5, opted out of debating Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff again, leaving his rival alone on stage on Sunday.  Ossoff said Perdue may not want to talk about his frequent stock trades while a senator. Last summer, the Justice Department closed an inquiry into Perdue’s trades in shares of a financial firm without charges, the New York Times reported last month. “Senator Perdue, I suppose, doesn’t feel that he can handle himself in a debate, or perhaps is concerned that he may incriminate himself in a debate, both of which in my opinion are disqualifying for a U.S. senator seeking reelection,” Ossoff said. Perdue’s campaign has said he does not manage his stock portfolio day to day. The road to the runoffs poses challenges for both parties. Biden demonstrated that a Democrat could win in the historically conservative state by defeating Trump there by 49.5%-49.3% in last month’s election. That outcome has sparked recriminations among Republicans, with Trump blasting Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and Loeffler and Perdue calling for the resignation of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, on Saturday night, Trump urged the crowd to vote Republican in the Senate runoffs despite his unsubstantiated claims of significant electoral fraud in the state. He also repeated his allegations of fraud in the national election that cost him the White House. 
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Republicans and Democrats are working to get Georgia residents to vote in the January 5 runoff election that will decide control of the U.S. Senate. But Republicans are also divided about the results of the November 3 presidential race, with President Donald Trump still asserting widespread voter fraud. Michelle Quinn reports.Video editor: Mary Cieslak
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Officials in Georgia on Sunday rebuffed Republican President Donald Trump’s contention that Democratic challenger Joe Biden fraudulently won the southern U.S. state, declaring that the president-elect’s claim to Georgia’s 16 electoral votes would stand.Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, told ABC News’s “This Week” show that as a conservative Republican he was “disappointed” that Trump lost Georgia, but the people “have spoken” and “we don’t see anything that would overturn the will of the people.”Trump on Saturday asked the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to call a special session of the state legislature to overturn the vote there and award Trump the state’s electors, which alone would not be enough to upend Biden’s unofficial 306-232 advantage in the Electoral College that determines the outcome of U.S. presidential elections.  Kemp declined Trump’s request. Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Republican Geoff Duncan, told CNN on Sunday that he “absolutely” believes Kemp won’t accede to Trump’s demand that the governor persuade state lawmakers to nullify Biden’s victory in the state.FILE – Then-Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, left, walks with President Donald Trump as Trump arrives for a rally in Macon , Georgia, Nov. 4, 2018.“We’re certainly not going to move the goal posts at this point in the election,” Duncan said.Biden won the November 3 vote in Georgia by more than 12,000 votes. Two recounts, including a hand-by-hand tally of the more than 5 million ballots cast, upheld the result.  It was the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had won Georgia since 1992, after Trump captured the state in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Biden is set to become the country’s 46th president after his inauguration on January 20.Trump staged a rally Saturday night in Georgia, briefly assailing Kemp for not helping him overturn Biden’s victory there.“Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. “So far we haven’t been able to find the people in Georgia willing to do the right thing.”Trump voiced grievances and falsehoods about the election, even though there was no evidence, either in Georgia or other contested battleground states, of widespread fraud. William Barr, the Trump-appointed attorney general, told the Associated Press last week that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”   In his Sunday interview, Duncan said Trump’s claims of fraud were “concerning. The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process; they’re only hurting it.”FILE – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 30, 2020.In his ABC interview, Raffensperger, in defending the vote count in Georgia, said that he has received death threats and that his wife has received “sexualized texts and things like that.”“And now they’ve actually gone after people, been following … young poll workers and election workers in Gwinnett County and also our folks at one of our offices,” Raffensperger said. “And so, you’re seeing just irrational, angry behavior. It’s unpatriotic. People shouldn’t be doing that.”Trump fired Christopher Krebs, the government’s most senior cybersecurity official who called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”  In an interview Sunday on CBS News’s “Meet the Press” show, Krebs said he does not know why Trump is continuing his allegations of election fraud, even after he and his campaign have now lost or withdrawn three dozen or more lawsuits alleging vote and vote-counting irregularities.”I don’t know if it’s intentional or willful blindness,” Krebs said. “But this race is over; we’ve got to get ready for January 20th and the next administration.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump traveled to the key southeastern state of Georgia on Saturday to campaign for two Republican senators running against Democratic challengers in the January runoff election that will decide which party controls the Senate, but he mostly repeated his claims of widespread vote fraud.”You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” Trump told the large crowd gathered for the first post-election rally for the president. Few in the crowd wore masks.Democrat Joe Biden, a former vice president, unofficially won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes out of about 5 million cast, the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992.Hours before his trip to Georgia, the president called Governor Brian Kemp, urging the fellow Republican to call a special session of the state legislature to get lawmakers to override the vote results and appoint electors who would back him, according to The Washington Post.The governor refused, according to sources in Georgia and the White House who spoke on condition of anonymity, The Associated Press reported.The Republican Party needs one more seat to maintain its majority in the U.S. Senate. Republican Senator David Perdue must defeat Jon Ossoff in the January 5 runoff election in Georgia, while Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler must overcome a stiff challenge from Raphael Warnock. If the Republicans lose, resulting in a 50-50 Senate, Democratic Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would cast the tie-breaking vote.Trump, a Republican, repeatedly has said without evidence there was widespread fraud in the November election, a claim frequently rejected by federal and state officials.”They cheated and rigged our presidential election, but we’ll still win it. And they are going to try to rig this election, too,” Trump told the crowd Saturday night in Valdosta, Georgia.Hundreds arrive for a President Donald Trump rally in support of Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler on Dec. 5, 2020, in Valdosta, Georgia.Trump’s campaign said it filed a lawsuit Friday in Georgia to nullify the November 3 presidential election results in the state. The campaign and its supporters have filed dozens of similar lawsuits in various states, most of which have been rejected. As the campaign filed the lawsuit in Georgia, Trump’s legal battles were defeated in Michigan and Nevada.The suit in Georgia is the latest legal attempt to reverse Biden’s defeat of Trump. Trump’s campaign said the suit would include sworn statements from Georgia voters claiming fraud. But Georgia election officials, including the state’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, have said several times they have found no evidence of significant irregularities.Biden’s narrow win in Georgia, where a recount Trump’s campaign requested shows Biden winning by 11,769 votes, means any additional support Trump can garner in the state could increase Perdue’s and Loeffler’s chances of victory.Some Republicans are concerned Trump’s appearance in Georgia, however, could discourage voter turnout for the runoff.“Trump’s comments are damaging the Republican brand,” Republican donor Dan Eberhart told The Associated Press. He said Trump is “acting in bad sportsmanship and bad faith” instead of working to maintain Republican control of the Senate.Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the state election dampen Perdue’s and Loeffler’s chances of winning the runoff.“The more Trump talks about the presidential election and gets into criticism of how the election was run here, the bigger a problem that is for the Senate candidates, and the greater likelihood that he could reduce enthusiasm among a segment of the electorate,” Abramowitz said in an interview with Reuters.But a top adviser to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Josh Holmes, told the AP that Republicans “haven’t seen any evidence of lack of enthusiasm in the Senate races.”Loeffler and Perdue are walking a fine line on the campaign trail: They warn voters of the dangers of a Democratic Senate majority but will not say Biden won the White House.They are not alone. The Washington Post contacted all 249 Republicans in the U.S. House and the Senate and reported that only 27 would say Biden won or have called him the president-elect. Two said they considered Trump the winner.Trump’s visit to Georgia comes one day after California certified Biden’s win in that state, giving him more than the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.Presidential electors meet in each state on December 14 to cast their votes. On January 6, the newly elected Congress will officially count the electoral votes and formally name the president.
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After a tumultuous four years marked by trade uncertainty and now a global pandemic, many farmers across the country still supported President Donald Trump at the ballot box. Despite ongoing and unsupported claims of voter fraud, they are coming to terms with his loss in the November election.“It appears that the president’s chances grow dimmer day by day,” said farmer and Illinois Farm Bureau Vice President Brian Duncan.“I certainly think you can see instances of fraud and manipulation, but I find it hard to see that there would be that on the scale you would need to turn it around,” Fred Grieder explained to VOA on his farm outside Bloomington, Illinois. “Yeah, I think it’s done.”Both Grieder and Duncan raise crops in the Midwest state of Illinois, where President-elect Joe Biden won a decisive election victory fueled by support in densely populated areas, like the city of Chicago.But rural Illinois, where President Trump was popular, is important to the nation’s agriculture industry.Only about 1% of the U.S. population lives on a farm, but the agriculture and food industry represent about 5% of U.S. gross domestic product. Illinois is one of the country’s leading producers of corn and soybeans, the primary crops on both Grieder and Duncan’s farms, which is why they are interested in who Biden picks to lead the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).“I’d rather see someone who is more ‘production-ag’ oriented to fill that role who can understand the needs of rural America and the farmers because, really, USDA is the one advocate we have in an administration,” said Duncan, who views the current USDA secretary, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Purdue, as someone who had President Trump’s ear.“Certainly not everything he said or did was supported wholeheartedly in the countryside, but by and large the farmers I talked to saw Secretary Purdue as an advocate and an ally.”“That’s the person who has to go to the president and make sure they advocate for whatever agriculture’s needs are, so that’s going to be a key one,” agreed Mark Gebhards, governmental affairs director for the Illinois Farm Bureau.’There’s a lot of unknowns’Gebhards, who works with government agencies on behalf of Illinois farmers to guide public policy on trade, environmental regulation and government aid packages, also emphasized the vital importance of Cabinet picks for the U.S. Trade Representative and Environmental Protection Agency.“I think farmers felt that President Trump had their backs by providing the Market Facilitation payments that were there to alleviate some of the economic hit because of the trade war that was going on,” he said, using a technical term to describe agricultural government aid packages.Under Trump and Purdue, tens of billions of dollars in government aid flowed to farmers to offset losses in profit resulting from the administration’s escalating trade disputes, mostly with China. Despite recent progress, including the so-called China Phase One Agreement, Beijing hasn’t reached pre-trade war levels of purchases on products such as soybeans.“There’s a lot of unknowns especially when it comes to China, and … China is the big player in the game when it comes to purchases that they make,” Gebhards said.“They are still purchasing more from the competitors of the United States than they are from the U.S.” said University of Chicago political science professor Robert Gulotty in a recent Skype interview.He says China has turned to Brazil and Argentina for grain needs amid the trade dispute.“We haven’t been increasing exports to China despite the fact that China has been importing more from every other country in the world,” Gulotty said. “So that suggests that the U.S. is losing its market share relative to these other countries, and it’s a sign that the U.S. is losing something.”Whether that loss can be attributed to the economic disruption of COVID-19 or Chinese tariffs on U.S. grains, he added, is difficult to determine. Gulotty also says potential benefits of the Trump administration’s aggressive trade tactics may not be realized until well after Trump has left office, something farmers like Brian Duncan describe as “short-term pain for long-term gain.”“Biden is in a better position when it comes to trade policy in some sense, in a negotiation sense, because of the actions the Trump administration has taken,” Gulotty said. “At the same time, though, it’s been quite disruptive.”As Biden continues to assemble his Cabinet, Duncan is taking a wait-and-see approach while preparing for farm life under a new presidential administration.“I hope this administration, like any administration, would look out for rural America, would look for more trade deals, biofuel usage, economic stability, a farm bill that provides an economic backstop,” Duncan said. “All those things I’m hopeful we’ll get. It’s just too soon to know, but I’m hopeful for the best.” 
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Donald Trump’s campaign said it filed a lawsuit in Georgia state court on Friday seeking to invalidate the presidential election results there, the latest in a series of legal challenges aimed at reversing his loss that have so far gone nowhere.The Trump campaign said in a statement its new lawsuit would include sworn statements from Georgia residents alleging fraud.Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, like Trump, and other state officials have said repeatedly they have found no evidence of widespread fraud in the Nov. 3 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.Trump’s team and various individuals backing him have suffered a string of legal defeats around the country, including in cases filed in Nevada and Wisconsin that sought court orders to reverse those states’ election results.President-elect Biden won the election with 306 Electoral College votes – against the 270 required – to Trump’s 232.A district judge in Nevada on Friday dismissed a case brought by would-be Republican presidential electors and said they must pay defendants’ legal costs after failing “to meet their burden to provide credible and relevant evidence to substantiate” any of the lawsuit’s claims.The Wisconsin Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision declined to act on a case that sought to have the court nullify the presidential election in the state and pave the way for the state legislature to choose Wisconsin’s 10 presidential electors.”Such a move would appear to be unprecedented in American history,” Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote in his concurring opinion of four justices issued on Friday.Trump’s campaign has spent nearly $9 million on its unsuccessful bid to overturn the results of the election, including nearly $2.3 million to lawyers and consultants.The campaign and the Republican National Committee have raised at least $207.5 million since Election Day, much of it from solicitations asking for donations to an “Official Election Defense Fund.”The fine print made clear most of the money would go to other priorities through Trump’s new political action committee, which could fuel his future political endeavors.
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Georgia will hold two special elections Jan. 5, with the results ultimately determining which party will control the U.S. Senate.In the southeastern state of Georgia, a political candidate in a primary or general election must earn more than 50% of the votes. If no one in the race meets that threshold, the top two vote-getters enter into a runoff election.One runoff race features incumbent Sen. David Perdue, a Republican who received 49.7% of the vote on Nov. 3, and Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, who received 47.9%.The other runoff race is for a seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who received 25.9% of the vote on Nov. 3, will face the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who received 32.9%.Republicans need to win just one of the elections to retain control of the U.S. Senate. Democrats need to win both seats to force a 50-50 Senate. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would then be needed to cast tie-breaking votes when needed.Here is a look at the candidates:REPUBLICANSKelly LoefflerLoeffler, 50, is the junior senator from Georgia and was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp after Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned due to poor health. She took office on Jan. 6, 2020. Before becoming a senator, Loeffler worked in the financial services sector. For the November election, she campaigned as a strong supporter of President Donald Trump. She was implicated in an insider trading scandal, allegedly selling stock in companies that would be harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. The Senate Ethics Committee cleared her of wrongdoing. She is the co-owner of the WNBA team the Atlanta Spirit.David PerduePerdue, 70, is the senior senator from Georgia, taking his seat in January 2015. Most of his career has been spent in the private sector, where he was a senior vice president of Reebok, the CEO of a North Carolina textile business and CEO of Dollar General. He generally supported the policies of President Donald Trump but opposed him on tariffs. He was implicated in an insider trading scandal, allegedly selling stock in companies that would be harmed by the coronavirus pandemic. The Senate Ethics Committee cleared him of wrongdoing.DEMOCRATSJon OssoffOssoff, 33, is running for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia against incumbent David Perdue. In 2017, Ossoff ran for Congress from Georgia’s 6th Congressional District but lost. Before running for office, he was an investigative journalist and a congressional staffer. A sharp critic of President Donald Trump, Ossoff is portrayed as a progressive on some issues such as health care and guns but moderate on the economy and national security. He supports statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.Raphael WarnockWarnock, 51, is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia against incumbent Kelly Loeffler. Warnock is an ordained minister and since 2005 has been the senior pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He has also been involved in politics, trying to expand Medicaid, a policy he continues to promote. From 2017 to 2020, he also worked to expand voter registration in Georgia. Warnock has come under criticism for some controversial comments made years ago during sermons, such as “nobody can serve God and the military.” He defended the comment, saying, “What I was expressing was … that as a person of faith my ultimate allegiance is to God.”
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Vice President Mike Pence is trying to help Republicans project a unified front in two high-stakes Senate runoffs as he campaigns in Georgia a day ahead of President Donald Trump’s potentially volatile visit to the state that will determine which party controls the Senate in January. The vice president is campaigning Friday with Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, with the GOP roiled by Trump’s continued denial of his own defeat and his baseless attacks that Republican officials in Georgia, including the governor and secretary of state, enabled widespread voter fraud on behalf of President-elect Joe Biden. Pence navigated Trump’s refusal to concede as he rallied Republicans two weeks ago alongside Perdue and Loeffler. At two north Georgia rallies, he promised to fight for “every legal vote” but spent more time emphasizing the stakes of Senate control. But this time, Pence arrives as Georgia completes another recount of presidential ballots and with some of the president’s supporters – including lawyers once considered allies of the president’s re-election campaign – urging a boycott of Perdue’s and Loeffler’s January 5 runoffs. FILE – Republican candidate for Senate Sen. David Perdue speaks during a campaign stop at Peachtree Dekalb Airport in Atlanta, Nov. 2, 2020.The vice president’s visit also comes on the same day that former President Barack Obama will appear in a virtual rally with the Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, in a show of the kind of party unity that Republicans have difficulty fashioning with the president calling Governor Brian Kemp “hapless” and dubbing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “an enemy of the people.” Perdue and Loeffler have attempted to steer clear of the intraparty divide, calling for Raffensperger’s resignation but generally focusing more on the consequences of Senate control rather than questioning the outcome of the first round. But Republicans in Washington and Georgia nonetheless voiced concerns that Trump on Saturday will continue those lines of attack rather than focus his efforts on GOP enthusiasm in the second round. “They are hyper aware of Trump’s latest comments and latest tweets and the negative impact it could be having,” said Republican donor Dan Eberhart of the senators’ advisers. “And those folks go to bed every night hoping there’s no Trump tweet while they sleep.” FILE – Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Sen. Kelly Loeffler gestures to supporters at a campaign rally in Marietta, Ga., Nov. 11, 2020.White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed any such concerns, though she embraced the idea that Trump can make or break the runoffs for Republicans.  “The president’s presence in Georgia will push Senators Loeffler and Perdue over the finish line,” she said Friday, noting that Republicans enjoyed their own turnout boost this fall to narrow House Democrats’ majority and defend Senate Republicans who’d been seen as vulnerable.  Republicans need one more seat to command a Senate majority that could counter a Biden presidency. Democrats need a sweep to force a 50-50 Senate and set up Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to tilt the chamber to Democrats as the tiebreaking vote. Trump has tweeted in support of Perdue and Loeffler but has spent more energy blasting Kemp and Raffensperger and suggesting, falsely, that the two officials have the legal authority to reverse Biden’s victory in Georgia. State law gives them no such option. Initial returns showed Biden with a lead of more than 14,000 votes out of about 5 million cast. An initial hand recount put Biden’s margin at about 12,500. As Pence arrived in the state, Georgia officials were in the final stages of a third count requested by Trump’s campaign. Perdue and Loeffler greeted Pence together late Friday morning at Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta before a scheduled event at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the vice president and the senators discussed the coronavirus pandemic and the development of vaccines. The trio will appear Friday afternoon at a rally in Savannah. Demonstrating Friday’s unity efforts, U.S. Representative Doug Collins, Loeffler’s erstwhile GOP opponent in the Senate race, flew to Georgia with Pence and participated in a roundtable at CDC headquarters along with the two senators. Before the CDC roundtable, Collins, Loeffler and Perdue huddled in front of a bank of television cameras and photographers.  Kemp, a Trump supporter and at one time a staunch ally, was not part of Pence’s public itinerary. But separately, the governor noted that Friday marked one year since he named Loeffler as his choice to fill the Senate vacancy created by Republican Senator Johnny Isakson’s retirement. “I’m proud of what Kelly has accomplished, but there’s more work to be done,” Kemp said via his official Facebook page. “Let’s unite as Georgia conservatives and send Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue back to Washington.”  
 
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Joe Biden said Thursday that he will ask Americans to commit to 100 days of wearing masks as one of his first acts as president, stopping just short of the nationwide mandate he’s pushed before to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The move marks a notable shift from President Donald Trump, whose own skepticism of mask-wearing has contributed to a politicization of the issue. That’s made many people reticent to embrace a practice that public health experts say is one of the easiest ways to manage the pandemic, which has killed more than 275,000 Americans.
The president-elect has frequently emphasized mask-wearing as a “patriotic duty” and during the campaign floated the idea of instituting a nationwide mask mandate, which he later acknowledged would be beyond the ability of the president to enforce.  
Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Biden said he would make the request of Americans on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.  
“On the first day I’m inaugurated, I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask — not forever, just 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction” in the virus, Biden said.
The president-elect reiterated his call for lawmakers on Capitol Hill to pass a coronavirus aid bill and expressed support for a $900 billion compromise bill that a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced this week.
“That would be a good start. It’s not enough,” he said, adding, “I’m going to need to ask for more help.”
Biden has said his transition team is working on its own coronavirus relief package, and his aides have signaled they plan for that to be their first legislative push.
The president-elect also said he asked Dr. Anthony Fauci to stay on in his administration, “in the exact same role he’s had for the past several presidents,” as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert.  
He said he’s asked Fauci to be a “chief medical adviser” as well as part of his COVID-19 advisory team.FILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, speaks during a Senate hearing on COVID-19, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Sept. 23, 2020.Regarding a coronavirus vaccine, Biden offered begrudging credit for the work Trump’s administration has done in expediting the development of a vaccine but said that planning the distribution properly will be “critically important.”
“It’s a really difficult but doable project, but it has to be well planned, ” he said.
Part of the challenge the Biden administration will face in distributing the vaccine will be instilling public confidence in it. Biden said he’d be “happy” to get inoculated in public to assuage any concerns about its efficacy and safety. Three former presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — have said they’d also get vaccinated publicly to show that it’s safe.
“People have lost faith in the ability of the vaccine to work,” Biden said, adding that “it matters what a president and the vice president do.”FILE – President Donald Trump participates in a Thanksgiving video teleconference with members of the military forces.In the same interview, Biden also weighed in on reports that Trump is considering pardons of himself and his allies.
“It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice,” Biden said.
Biden committed that his Justice Department will “operate independently” and that whoever he chooses to lead the department will have the “independent capacity to decide who gets investigated.”
“You’re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons, nor are you going to see in our administration the approach to making policy by tweets,” he said.
In addition to considering preemptive pardons, Trump has spent much of his time post-election trying to raise questions about an election he lost by millions of votes while his lawyers pursue baseless lawsuits alleging voter fraud in multiple states.  
Republicans on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, have largely given the president cover, with many defending the lawsuits and few publicly congratulating Biden on his win.
But Biden said Thursday that he’s received private calls of congratulations from “more than several sitting Republican senators” and that he has confidence in his ability to cut bipartisan deals with Republicans despite the rancor that’s characterized the last four years on Capitol Hill.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
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Trump aides have expressed skepticism that the president, who continues to falsely claim victory and spread baseless claims of fraud, would attend Biden’s inauguration. Biden said Thursday night that he believes it’s “important” that Trump attend, largely to demonstrate the nation’s commitment to peaceful transfer of power between political rivals.
“It is totally his decision,” Biden said of Trump, adding, “It is of no personal consequence to me, but I think it is to the country.”
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Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has named Tina Flournoy, a veteran Democratic strategist and aide to the Clintons, as her chief of staff, the transition team announced Thursday.
Flournoy’s appointment as Harris’ top staffer adds to a team of advisers led by Black women. Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, is the nation’s first female vice president. Flournoy joins Ashley Etienne as Harris’ communications director and Symone Sanders as her chief spokeswoman.
Flournoy has served as chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton since 2013. That follows a career that took her to top posts at the Democratic National Committee, in the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Al Gore and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and with the American Federation of Teachers.
Bill Clinton called her appointment “great news for our country.”
“Tina Flournoy is incredibly smart, strong, and skillful, with deeply rooted values. She’s done a wonderful job as my chief of staff for nearly 8 years, and I will miss her—but I’m thrilled about VP-elect Harris’ choice,” he tweeted.
Harris also announced Rohini Kosoglu as her domestic policy adviser and Nancy McEldowney as her national security adviser. Kosoglu had served as Harris’ top adviser during the general election campaign. McEldowney is a former ambassador to Bulgaria and has 30 years of service in various diplomatic and foreign affairs jobs.
“Together with the rest of my team, today’s appointees will work to get this virus under control, open our economy responsibly and make sure it lifts up all Americans, and restore and advance our country’s leadership around the world,” Harris said in a statement.
Former colleagues describe Flournoy as a no-nonsense operative who has both policy and political chops. Matt McKenna, who was Bill Clinton’s spokesperson from 2007 to 2015, noted the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy and said Flournoy will skillfully manage competing demands for her time.
“(Harris) represents so many things to so many people, and they’re all going to want some of her time. She needs someone who can honor the historic nature of her candidacy and her victory and her place in the world,” he said.
Harris has regularly joined President-elect Joe Biden and offered remarks at briefings on the economy, the coronavirus and health care since the two won the November election. The transition team has yet to announce whether she’ll focus on any specific issues or initiatives.
Flournoy has never held a position with Harris. But Minyon Moore, another former Clinton aide and close friend of Flournoy’s, is assisting Harris with staffing during the transition. It’s unclear if any of Harris’ former Senate staff or longtime political advisers will join the vice president’s office.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, is meeting virtually Thursday with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team about the surging coronavirus pandemic in the country and the likely start soon of widespread vaccinations of millions of Americans.Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, was for months the face of the government’s response to the pandemic.But his dire warnings about the health risks of the virus eventually peeved President Donald Trump, who sidelined him in favor of more optimistic medical views ahead of last month’s national election in which Biden defeated Trump. Biden has promised to listen to the advice of medical experts like Fauci as tens of thousands of new infections in the United States are being recorded daily. More than 273,000 Americans have been killed by the virus, more than in any other country, according to Johns Hopkins University.The 79-year-old Fauci, a career government civil servant, told CBS News that his discussions with Biden’s “landing team” at his agency will center on the new administration’s priorities to quickly start inoculations after two proposed vaccines are likely approved by government drug regulators in the next two weeks.”Having served six (White House) administrations, I’ve been through five transitions, and I know that transitions are really important if you want to get a smooth handing over of the responsibility,” Fauci said.Fauci said he has not yet spoken with Biden but expects to do so soon.  
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Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, was questioned under oath this week as part of a civil lawsuit alleging misuse of nonprofit funds for Donald Trump’s inauguration four years ago.District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine’s office disclosed in a court filing on Tuesday that the deposition had taken place that day.In a January 2020 lawsuit, Racine claimed Donald Trump’s real estate business and other entities misused nonprofit funds to enrich the Trump family.According to the suit, a tax-exempt nonprofit corporation called the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee coordinated with the Trump family to grossly overpay for event space in the Trump International Hotel in Washington.Racine’s lawsuit alleged that in one case, the nonprofit paid more than $300,000 to hold a private reception at the Trump hotel for the president’s three oldest children – Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric – on the inauguration evening of Jan. 20, 2017.“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” Racine said earlier this year.His lawsuit seeks to recover $1 million that was allegedly funneled directly to the Trump family business.A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The inaugural committee has said its finances were independently audited, and that all money was spent lawfully.Although campaign finance laws restrict the size of campaign contributions, inauguration committees can accept unlimited donations, including from corporations.The $107 million raised by Trump’s inaugural committee, chaired by real estate developer and investor Thomas Barrack, was the largest in history, according to Federal Election Commission filings.Former Trump campaign aide Richard Gates served as deputy chairman of the inaugural committee.Gates was one of several Trump associates convicted in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
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Federal judge Stephanos Bibas pulled no punches when he issued a scathing opinion last Saturday rejecting the Trump campaign’s latest attempt to overturn the outcome of the November 3 presidential election.“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” Bibas wrote in a FILE – Election workers, right, verify ballots as recount observers, left, watch during a Milwaukee hand recount of presidential votes at the Wisconsin Center, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 20, 2020.But Bibas, 51, is not just another judge on another court. He is a Trump appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, with jurisdiction over Pennsylvania and two other states. A former member of the conservative Federalist Society, Bibas was appointed in 2017, one of 53 appellate judges the president has put on the federal bench since he took office, more than any other president since Jimmy Carter.   Bibas is not the only Republican-appointed federal judge to dismiss Trump’s claims of rampant voting fraud and tabulation irregularities. Steven Grimberg of the Northern District of Georgia and several other Republican-appointed judges, have ruled against the president.   Judicial independence To skeptics who view judges as little more than politicians in robes prone to issuing politically motivated opinions, the notion that a Trump-appointed judge would weigh against the president’s interests may be hard to fathom.   But that is a misconception, said Joseph R. Grodin, a former associate justice of the California Supreme Court. Despite the country’s deep political and ideological divisions, “judicial independence is alive and well,” he said in an interview with VOA.  Grodin said most judges simply follow the law and decide cases on their merits, so it was no surprise that Bibas found the evidence-free Trump lawsuit without merit.  Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University, noted that federal judges are given life tenures designed to protect them from political influence.  “The federal courts have worked precisely as designed in the last four years, but particularly in the last four weeks,” he said. “Federal judges, including Trump appointees, have consistently ruled against the president’s challenges to the election. They have stated that the president has not submitted sufficient evidence to justify the type of sweeping relief that he has requested.”  FILE – A canvas observer photographs Lehigh County provisional ballots during vote counting in Allentown, Pennsylvania, November 6, 2020.Republican-appointed judges did not always side with the Democrats on important election issues throughout the 2020 campaign cycle, particularly regarding mail-in voting during the pandemic, a concept Trump and Republicans vigorously attacked as prone to corruption. In the months leading up to the general election, while a number of federal district courts upheld efforts by states to accommodate voting by mail, Trump-appointed appellate judges often cast the deciding vote to block them, according to Josh Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky.   Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and a professor at Loyola Law School, said that while Trump’s appointments have made the federal judiciary clearly more conservative, courts have been acting as they were designed to perform.   “That hasn’t changed in the post-election period, and there’s no reason to expect that it would,” Levitt said.   Levitt said the courts have afforded the Trump campaign and other Republican plaintiffs ample opportunity to make their case that the election was marred by widespread fraud.  “And at every stage, the litigants have failed to come forward with any reliable evidence that anything improper happened,” Levitt said in an interview with VOA.   FILE – The Maricopa County Elections Department officials conduct a post-election logic and accuracy test for the general election as observers watch the test, November 18, 2020, in Phoenix, Arizona.Bibas’ opinion on behalf of the 3rd Circuit came in response to a major lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign on November 9, two days after Biden was declared the presidential winner after securing Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.   The FILE – Ghana Goodwin-Dye signals to motorists participating in a drive-by rally to certify the presidential election results near the Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, November 14, 2020.And in Georgia, another state Trump lost, Grimberg, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, threw out a lawsuit seeking to stop the certification of the state’s election results.  “To interfere with the result of an election that has already concluded would be unprecedented and harm the public in countless ways,” he wrote. “Granting injunctive relief here would breed confusion, undermine the public’s trust in the election, and potentially disenfranchise over one million Georgia voters.” Supreme Court While Trump wants the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his cause, experts say the high court is all but certain to shun a case that has been repeatedly dismissed by the lower courts.   Turley said Republicans have raised legitimate concerns about voting irregularities but that Trump’s “reckless rhetoric” about fraud has undermined his legal prospects before the high court.    “I cannot imagine a worse approach to seeking relief before the United States Supreme Court,” Turley said.  Even if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, it is far from certain that the justices will rule in Trump’s favor. Turley noted that two of Trump’s three Supreme Court picks — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — have voted against Trump and his administration on key issues.  With his court losses mounting, Trump appears increasingly resigned to the fact that he may not be able to get the Supreme Court to rule in his favor.   
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President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud have put doubt in the minds of many Republicans. One state that has seen recounts after the election is Georgia, a state that has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1992. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee shows the diversity of opinions among Republicans on the outcome of the presidential election.Producer: Barry Unger. Camera: Joel Brewer, Michael Catron.
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Attorney General William Barr has given extra protection to the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, giving him the authority of a special counsel to complete the work without being easily fired.
 
Barr told The Associated Press Tuesday he had appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as a special counsel in October under the same federal statute that governed special counsel Robert Mueller in the original Russia probe. He said Durham’s investigation has been narrowing to focus more on the conduct of FBI agents who worked on the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane.
 
Under federal regulations, a special counsel can be fired only by the attorney general and for specific reasons such as misconduct, dereliction of duty or conflict of interest. An attorney general must document such reasons in writing.  
 
The investigations grew out of allegations of cooperation between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russians to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
 
“I decided the best thing to do would be to appoint them under the same regulation that covered Bob Mueller, to provide Durham and his team some assurance that they’d be able to complete their work regardless of the outcome of the election,” Barr said Tuesday.  
 
Biden’s transition team didn’t immediately comment on the appointment.  
 
The current investigation, a criminal probe, had begun very broadly but has since “narrowed considerably” and now “really is focused on the activities of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation within the FBI,” Barr said. He said he expects Durham would detail whether any additional prosecutions will be brought and make public a report of the investigation’s findings.
 
In an Oct. 19 order, obtained by The Associated Press, Barr says Durham is authorized “to investigate whether any federal official, employee or any person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence or law enforcement activities” directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, anyone associated with the campaigns or the Trump administration.
 
A senior Justice Department official told the AP that although the order details that it is “including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III,” the Durham probe has not expanded. The official said that line specifically relates to FBI personnel who worked on the Russia investigation before the May 2017 appointment of Mueller, a critical area of scrutiny for both Durham and for the Justice Department inspector general, which identified a series of errors and omissions in surveillance applications targeting a former Trump campaign associate.
 
The focus on the FBI, rather than the CIA and the intelligence community, suggests that Durham may have moved past some of the more incendiary claims that Trump supporters had hoped would yield allegations of misconduct, or even crimes — namely, the question of how intelligence agencies reached their conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to veto a major defense spending and policy bill unless it includes eliminating a law protecting internet companies from liability for material posted by users. Trump’s threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) came in a late Tuesday tweet, and at a time when the $740 billion bill is in the hands of a committee to reconcile two different versions passed by the Senate and House of Representatives. He called the law involving internet companies, known as Section 230, a form of “corporate welfare” and “a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity.” Section 230, which is a liability shielding gift from the U.S. to “Big Tech” (the only companies in America that have it – corporate welfare!), is a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity. Our Country can never be safe & secure if we allow it to stand…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2020Lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties have called for changes to the Section 230 protections without wholesale repeal. Jon Berroya, head of the Internet Association that represents tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Reddit, said in response to Trump’s veto threat that repealing Section 230 would itself amount to a national security threat. “The law empowers online platforms to remove harmful and dangerous content, including terrorist content and misinformation,” Berroya said.  “Section 230 also underpins countless ecommerce websites, apps, and services that are helping small businesses across the country keep the lights on during a pandemic.” Trump and other conservatives have made unproven accusations that companies such as Facebook and Twitter stifled conservative content.   With tech companies seeking to combat misinformation surrounding last month’s national elections, Twitter and Facebook have placed labels on numerous Trump posts as he repeated unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to veto a major defense spending and policy bill unless it includes eliminating a law protecting internet companies from liability for material posted by users. Trump’s threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) came in a late Tuesday tweet, and at a time when the $740 billion bill is in the hands of a committee to reconcile two different versions passed by the Senate and House of Representatives. He called the law involving internet companies, known as Section 230, a form of “corporate welfare” and “a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity.” Section 230, which is a liability shielding gift from the U.S. to “Big Tech” (the only companies in America that have it – corporate welfare!), is a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity. Our Country can never be safe & secure if we allow it to stand…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2020Lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties have called for changes to the Section 230 protections without wholesale repeal. Jon Berroya, head of the Internet Association that represents tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Reddit, said in response to Trump’s veto threat that repealing Section 230 would itself amount to a national security threat. “The law empowers online platforms to remove harmful and dangerous content, including terrorist content and misinformation,” Berroya said.  “Section 230 also underpins countless ecommerce websites, apps, and services that are helping small businesses across the country keep the lights on during a pandemic.” Trump and other conservatives have made unproven accusations that companies such as Facebook and Twitter stifled conservative content.   With tech companies seeking to combat misinformation surrounding last month’s national elections, Twitter and Facebook have placed labels on numerous Trump posts as he repeated unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.
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