‘No More Room for Delay’: Biden Wants Emergency COVID-19 Aid

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President-elect Joe Biden is calling on Congress to enact billions of dollars in emergency COVID-19 assistance before the year’s end, according to a senior adviser who warned Friday that “there’s no more room for delay.”Biden transition aide Jen Psaki delivered the remarks before Biden’s first in-person meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer since he was projected the winner of the presidential election. Biden hosted the pair Friday afternoon at his makeshift transition headquarters in a downtown Wilmington, Delaware, theater.Biden sat with Schumer, Pelosi and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, all wearing masks and spaced outmore

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Birthday Time: Biden Turns 78, Will Be Oldest US President

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President-elect Joe Biden turned 78 on Friday. In two months, he’ll take the reins of a politically fractured nation facing the worst public health crisis in a century, high unemployment and a reckoning on racial injustice.     As he wrestles with those issues, Biden will be attempting to accomplish another feat: demonstrate to Americans that age is but a number and he’s up to the job. Biden will be sworn in as the oldest president in the nation’s history, displacing Ronald Reagan, who left the White House in 1989 when he was 77 years and 349 days old.  more

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Biden Adds Obama Administration Veterans to Top Staff

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President-elect Joe Biden is adding four Obama-Biden administration veterans to his top ranks as he continues to build out his White House team.Cathy Russell, who was Jill Biden’s chief of staff during the Obama administration, will serve as director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, evaluating applicants for administration roles. Louisa Terrell, who served as a legislative adviser to the president in the Obama administration and worked as deputy chief of staff for Biden in the Senate, will be director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. Terrell has already been engaged in Capitol Hill outreach asmore

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Mnuchin Denies Trying to Hinder Incoming Administration

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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin denied Friday that by ending several emergency loan programs being run by the Federal Reserve, he was trying to limit the choices President-elect Joe Biden will have to promote an economic recovery.Mnuchin said his decision was based on the fact the programs were not being heavily utilized. He said Congress could make better use of the money by reallocating it to support grants to small businesses and extended unemployment assistance.”We’re not trying to hinder anything,” Mnuchin said in a CNBC interview. “We don’t need this money to buy corporate bonds. We need this money to gomore

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Trump, Allies Take Frantic Steps to Overturn Biden’s Victory

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President Donald Trump and his allies are taking increasingly frantic steps to subvert the results of the 2020 election, including summoning state legislators to the White House as part of a longshot bid to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.   Among other last-ditch tactics: personally calling local election officials who are trying to rescind their certification votes in Michigan, suggesting in a legal challenge that Pennsylvania set aside the popular vote there and pressuring county officials in Arizona to delay certifying vote tallies.     Election law experts see it as the last, dying gasps of the Trump campaign and saymore

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Venezuelan President Blames Rival for Trump’s Apparent Election Defeat

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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is blaming his rival, opposition leader Juan Guaido, for U.S. President Donald Trump’s apparent reelection defeat.Maduro said Thursday, he received a message from someone in the United States he refused to identify, that if Trump had trusted Maduro instead of Guaido, the election result would have been different.Maduro seemed to mock Trump for recognizing Guaido as Venezuela’s self-proclaimed interim president saying, “You preferred to bet on an imbecile and that imbecile led you to defeat.”Maduro’s comments might also be a public rebuke of Trump and his administration, which has long favored Guaido, who was also backedmore

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Joe Biden Wins Georgia, Flipping State for Democrats

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Joe Biden has won Georgia, scoring a rare win in a Southern state that hadn’t backed a Democrat for president in nearly 30 years.The Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of Georgia and its 16 Electoral College votes Thursday, after state election officials there said a hand tally of ballots cast in the presidential race confirmed the former vice president led President Donald Trump by roughly 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million counted.The AP declared Biden president-elect after he clinched the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Georgia raised the Democrat’s electoral vote total to 306.The AP didmore

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