Our live coverage has ended. You can read more on the Biden transition here
As he was leaving the podium following his remarks on national security Monday, President-elect Joe Biden said he supports $2,000 direct payments when asked by a reporter.
Asked if he supported the larger stimulus checks, without turning around or breaking stride, Biden replied “yes,” and walked off the stage.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and future second gentleman Douglas Emhoff will receive their Covid-19 vaccine in Washington, DC, tomorrow, a transition official tells CNN.
Harris’ vaccination will occur live on camera, the official added.
Harris’ vaccination comes exactly one week after President-elect Joe Biden received his vaccine.
Emhoff is expected to receive his vaccination separately, but it’s unclear if it will take place before or after Harris receives hers. Other details on timing were not immediately provided.
President-elect Joe Biden said in remarks today that there are “road blocks” for his team at the Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department that are impairing transition efforts on key national security areas, calling it “nothing short of irresponsibility.”
“We need full visibility into the budget planning underway at the Defense Department and other agencies in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch up that our adversaries may try to exploit,” he said.
Biden continued, saying, “We just aren’t getting all the information that we need.” He added, “it’s nothing short of irresponsibility.”
Read more about Biden’s remarks here.
President-elect Joe Biden delivered remarks today from Wilmington, Delaware, after receiving a briefing from members of his national security and foreign policy agency review teams.
According to transition officials, the briefing focused in large part on the findings of the review teams since the delayed beginning of the formal transition process.
Biden noted that with some agencies they have been working with during the transition they have received “exemplary cooperation,” but have “encountered obstruction” from the political leadership from agencies such as the Department of Defense.
Some context: Biden has vowed to take a markedly different approach to governing than President Trump, particularly when it comes to foreign policy.
He has vowed to undo Trump’s “America First” isolationist foreign policy and restore the United States’ reputation on the world stage.
Biden has pledged to rebuild international alliances and has said that global challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis, require partnerships and international coordination.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received a national security briefing from their team of experts on Monday.
Biden and Harris will deliver brief remarks on the subject later Monday.
Reporters were allowed in for a short period, during which Biden stressed the importance of the country’s recommitting to global alliances after Trump’s presidency.
Harris thanked those participating for their service and commitment to the country.
Among those participating were Secretary of State-designate Tony Blinken, Defense Secretary-designate Lloyd Austin, incoming National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Avril Haines, Biden’s pick for director of national intelligence.
President-elect Joe Biden will deliver remarks tomorrow afternoon on the coronavirus pandemic from Wilmington, Delaware. His transition team advises the remarks will start at 3:45 p.m. ET.
Biden’s remarks come as the nation continues to battle a surge in cases and a record number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations.
More Americans were hospitalized this past week than any other week of the pandemic, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Six states set new records Sunday for the most Covid-19 patients hospitalized: Alabama, California, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Meanwhile, more people traveled through US airports Sunday than any other day this pandemic, setting the stage for waves of new infections across the country.
Coronavirus vaccines continue to be administered and distributed across the country, but current figures fall well short of initial predictions and the US vaccination program appears to be taking longer than Warp Speed officials projected.
Coronavirus is one of Biden’s key priorities, and earlier this month the President-elect detailed his plan to combat the pandemic, including asking Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days after he takes office.
The Trump campaign has sent 554 fundraising solicitation emails to supporters since 11 p.m. on election night, Nov. 3, and 195 text messages, per CNN’s count.
The daily appeals showed little sign of slowing down during the holiday season. There was just one email sent to the list on Christmas Day, a holiday greeting with no solicitation.
Ahead of the holiday, the appeals asked supporters to sign a holiday card for the President. There has been a push in recent days for supporters to donate $30 or more to receive a 2021 Trump calendar.
“Our incredible First Lady, Melania Trump, handpicked the beautiful photos for our BRAND NEW 2021 Trump Calendar. She said to me, ‘Darling, I want Betsy to have PRIORITY-ACCESS to get the calendar FIRST,’” an email said to be sent by the President said.
An email sent on Dec. 23 claimed that Trump had “sent the Covid Relief Bill BACK to Congress,” calling it a “disgrace.”
“In fact, this bill only provides American taxpayers with $600 each in relief payment and is nowhere near enough money for small businesses, like restaurants, that are in desperate need of our help,” that email said.
Ahead of his remarks later this afternoon in Delaware, President-elect Joe Biden tested negative for coronavirus.
“President-elect Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected,” according to Biden’s office.
Biden is expected to deliver remarks at 3:30 p.m. ET after receiving a briefing from members of his national security and foreign policy agency review teams.
Following President-elect Joe Biden’s remarks this afternoon on national security, the House is set to vote at 5 p.m. ET on two key items, one of which will test the loyalty of the Republican Party to President Trump.
The House will vote to override the President’s veto on the National Defense Authorization Act. It will require a two-thirds majority vote. Republicans in leadership haven’t whipped the bill. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said that he won’t vote to override Trump’s veto even though he voted for the underlying bill.
Members of the Freedom Caucus and a handful of other Republicans are expected to follow McCarthy’s lead.
However, Democrats are growing increasingly confident that they will have the votes they need to override the veto. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday night that he thought the votes would be there and even Republican aides are saying they believe there is a very good chance Trump’s veto is overridden Monday night in the House.
The House will also vote on increasing stimulus checks to $2,000. It will also require a two-thirds majority vote because it is occurring under a suspension of the rules.
Remember: Even if the process begins in the Senate on Tuesday to override the NDAA, any single senator can object, likely delaying the actual vote until Sunday when both the House and Senate reconvene for the first day of the 117th Congress.
Read more here.
President-elect Joe Biden will deliver brief remarks this afternoon in Wilmington, Delaware, following a briefing from members of his national security and foreign policy agency review teams.
A transition official says the briefing will focus in large part on the findings of the review teams since the delayed GSA ascertainment of Biden’s victory several weeks ago. Biden’s remarks will serve as a broad overview of some of those key points.
We can also expect that the briefing he receives from agency review teams will be less about specific headlines in the news, but more broadly about the country’s institutional health and wellness on the national security and foreign policy fronts.
Congress will count the Electoral College votes in a joint session of Congress on January 6, which represents President Trump’s final chance to try to overturn the election result he lost to Biden.
In reality, Trump’s Republican allies have virtually zero chance of changing the result, only to delay the inevitable affirmation of Biden as the Electoral College winner and the next president.
That hasn’t stopped Trump — who has spread baseless conspiracy theories to falsely claim he won the election — from pressing for Congress to dispute the result next month. Just before Christmas, Trump hosted House Republicans at the White House who have been spearheading the effort to object to the Electoral College results, led by GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.
“I believe we have multiple senators, and the question is not if, but how many,” Brooks said last week.
Brooks said the Republicans are preparing to object to Biden’s win in as many as six states, which would force a dozen hours of debate on the House and Senate floors, turning the counting of Biden’s victory into a political circus.
Some background: When Congress met to tally the results of the 2004 presidential election, then-Sen. Barbara Boxer stood alone on the Senate floor to object to President George W. Bush’s reelection victory in Ohio over Democrat John Kerry, forcing the House and Senate to vote for only the second time in a century on whether to reject a state’s Electoral College votes.
It’s the same scenario that could play out next week with President Trump publicly urging his supporters in Congress to object to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in battleground states that expanded mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.
A group of House Republicans is preparing to object, and they need at least one senator to join them to force the chambers to vote on the matter.
While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately urged Senate Republicans to steer clear, several senators have declined to rule out taking part, and incoming GOP Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has left open the possibility he will join the effort.
Democrats and even some Republicans are warning against a challenge, despite the precedent laid by Boxer. In an interview with CNN, Boxer said that the circumstances are totally different this year, when Trump and his allies are seeking to overturn a national election result, than when she joined with then-Ohio Democratic Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones to object to Kerry’s loss.
Read more here.
President-elect Joe Biden named a slate of digital operatives to his incoming White House staff on Monday, preparing for an administration that, at least at the outset, will conduct most of its public-facing business digitally amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The newly minted staffers named to the White House Office of Digital Strategy include a number of longtime Democratic operatives, many of whom worked for Biden’s presidential campaign.
The group will be asked to not only recreate the digital operation that helped defeat President Trump, but to build out an operation that follows a president who wielded more social media power than any of his predecessors.
Here’s a look at the team announced so far:
Some background: Biden’s cash-strapped Democratic primary campaign was not the most digitally savvy operation and many Democrats believed the former vice president won the nomination despite a lack of serious investment in digital organizing and communication.
But Biden’s campaign began to invest heavily in its digital operation as the Democratic primary ended and the general election began, just as almost all political campaigning moved online because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden conducted much of his campaign in the early days of the pandemic from his home in Delaware, putting increased importance and pressure on his digital organizing operation.
President-elect Joe Biden has yet to announce several key roles in his incoming administration, including attorney general, labor secretary and commerce secretary.
Biden’s goal was to have all —or most — of his remaining Cabinet selections announced by Christmas, a transition official previously told CNN.
His self-imposed deadline of Christmas slipped away, but aides said he is expected to announce these remaining positions by early January.
Here are the positions that haven’t yet been announced:
Here’s a look at who Biden has selected so far for his Cabinet and other top roles:
In a memo released to supporters today, campaign managers for Democratic Senate candidates on Jon Ossoff’s and Rev. Raphael Warnock’s campaigns made an impassioned plea for donations, warning “We are sounding the alarm,” over ad spending in Georgia’s Senate Runoff Elections.
The memo, first obtained by CNN, was signed by Jerid Kurtz, Warnock’s campaign manager, and Ellen Foster, Ossoff’s campaign manager, and acknowledged, “We’re being outspent by $80 million on TV alone as Mitch McConnell and his special interest allies try to keep two of their most reliable votes in the U.S. Senate.”
New filings show Warnock and Ossoff each brought in more than $100 million in the last two months in a record-setting fundraising blitz with both candidates garnering significant national attention in races that could determine the sway of the United States Senate.
Both are embroiled in contentious Senate runoffs, since neither incumbent Senator netted the 50% necessary to prevent a Senate runoff in the November election.
Still, Republican outside groups, including groups led by Karl Rove and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, have helped make up ground, while three super PACs associated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – American Crossroads, the Senate Leadership Fund and the newly launched Peachtree PAC – have bought more than $137 million in advertising to sway the contests.
CNN’s Fredreka Schouten contributed reporting to this post.
Voters voted. States counted the votes. Challenges were heard and rejected. The Electoral College made President-elect Joe Biden’s victory completely official.
The time for President Trump’s repeated baseless allegations of fraud is over, but that doesn’t mean the drama has ended. Lawmakers follow an archaic timeline set out the Constitution and US law to make Biden president.
Just as then-Vice President Biden oversaw the counting of electoral votes that gave Trump the White House in 2017, now it will be Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s loyal soldier these last four years, who will announce the vote tally that officially makes Biden the winner. Read more about that here.
And Republicans will have to choose how deeply they want to follow Trump into his rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.
Lawmakers will have the ability to raise objections about the vote — just like some Democrats did in 2017. But while those objections were dismissed easily in 2017, Republican senators could, if they choose, drag the process out this year, and force the House and Senate to vote on individual points.
Here’s a breakdown of what will take place on Jan. 6:
Amid all the other news Sunday night, an announcement was released that President Trump will travel to Georgia on Jan. 4, the eve of the crucial Senate runoff elections that will determine which party will control the chamber.
This event, billed as a “Victory Rally,” will be in Dalton at 7 p.m. ET.
As CNN’s Ryan Nobles reported, the President’s initial refusal to sign the coronavirus relief package put Georgia Republicans running for reelection, Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, in an awkward spot.
After Trump signed the bill, the GOP candidates put out a statement praising the decision.
More on the election: Democrats need to win both seats to force a 50-50 Senate and gain control with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris eventually casting the tie breaking vote.
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday expressed concern that the worst may still come in America’s battle against Covid-19, agreeing with President-elect Joe Biden’s recent assessment that the “darkest days” in fighting the virus lie ahead.
“We are really at a very critical point. … So I share the concern of President-elect Biden that as we get into the next few weeks, it might actually get worse.”
The comments from the nation’s top infectious disease expert come as the US records its deadliest month since the coronavirus pandemic’s start .
Last week, Biden warned the “darkest days” in the battle against the virus “are ahead of us, not behind us,” and urged Americans to prepare themselves for the struggle while criticizing President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
“One thing I promise you about my leadership during this crisis: I’m going to tell it to you straight. I’m going to tell you the truth. And here’s the simple truth: Our darkest days in the battle against Covid are ahead of us, not behind us,” Biden, who has received a coronavirus vaccine, said in remarks at the time.
“So we need to prepare ourselves, to steel our spines. As frustrating as it is to hear, it’s going to take patience, persistence and determination to beat this virus. There will be no time to waste in taking the steps we need to turn this crisis around,” he said.
As of Monday morning, over 2.1 million ballots have been cast in the Georgia Senate runoffs, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office tells CNN.
The breakdown of types of votes cast so far is below:
The key Jan. 5 runoff election is set to determine which party controls the Senate chamber.
President-elect Joe Biden will deliver remarks today at 3:30 p.m. ET after being briefed by members of his national security and foreign policy agency review teams about challenges his administration will inherit.
He is set to speak from Wilmington, Delaware.
Upon taking office next month, Biden’s greatest hurdle could be convincing the rest of the world and even the US’ closest allies that once again, America really can be trusted.
He will also face the usual slate of foreign policy challenges — from the near-peer competitor China to a nuclear-armed and unpredictable Kim Jong Un.
Biden has said he will make significant changes to US foreign policy. People familiar with the former vice president’s plans say he would immediately reverse Trump policies on Iran, climate change and the World Health Organization.
Biden’s goals share a common theme that breaks sharply with President Trump’s isolationist approach: rebuilding alliances, a strategy meant to repair frayed US international ties and reflect his belief that America’s toughest challenges, including the climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, require international cooperation and coordination.
