US Congress Braces for Tough Week as COVID, Budget, Defense Dominate Agenda

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Top U.S. lawmakers scrambled Sunday to reach difficult agreements as quickly as possible on a new aid package for the coronavirus-battered economy, a funding bill to avoid a government shutdown and the defense budget.And time was running out.The current federal budget law expires on December 11. If Congress fails to agree on a new one by that date, American public finances will suddenly dry up.In order to avoid a shutdown, Congress could decide to pass a temporary law for a few days, to give itself time between now and Christmas to reach a broad annual agreement on the 2021 budget.Republicanmore

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Biden Taps California Attorney General to Be First Latino Health Secretary

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President-elect Joe Biden has picked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his health secretary, putting a defender of the Affordable Care Act in a leading role to oversee his administration’s coronavirus response.  If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra, 62, will be the first Latino to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1-trillion-plus agency with 80,000 employees and a portfolio that includes drugs and vaccines, leading-edge medical research and health insurance programs covering more than 130 million Americans.As California’s attorney general, Becerra has led the coalition of Democratic states defending Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act ismore

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Georgia Officials Reject Trump Vote Fraud Claims

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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 andmore

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Trump Campaigns in Georgia for Republican Senators

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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 candidatemore

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US Universities Ask for $120 Billion During Prolonged Pandemic

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Colleges and universities are asking congressional leaders to appropriate $120 billion toward higher education to offset “massive new expenses” because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.“The situation currently facing America’s colleges and universities is a crisis of almost unimaginable magnitude,” said a letter signed by Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, on behalf of dozens of higher education groups. “Colleges and universities have already pushed their financial capacities to the limits in addressing this crisis.”Mitchell described the efforts by colleges and universities to adapt to the crisis as Herculean “… so that we can educate our students safely,more

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Trump Campaign Files Another Election Lawsuit, Suffers More Legal Defeats

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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 havemore

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Biden Officially Secures Enough Electors to Become President

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California certified its presidential election Friday and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for Democrat Joe Biden, officially handing him the Electoral College majority needed to win the White House.Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s formal approval of Biden’s win in the state brought Biden’s tally of pledged electors so far to 279, according to a tally by The Associated Press. That’s just over the 270 threshold for victory.These steps in the election are often-ignored formalities. But the hidden mechanics of electing a U.S. president have drawn new scrutiny this year as President Donald Trump continues to deny Biden’s victory andmore

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Pentagon Installs 2 Trump Allies on Defense Advisory Board

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The Pentagon has appointed two close allies of President Donald Trump, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, to a defense advisory board, continuing a post-election purge in the final weeks of the administration.The acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, who was installed by Trump on Nov. 9 after Trump fired then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, said in a written statement Friday that nine members of the Defense Business Board had been replaced with the appointment of 11 new members.Lewandowski and Bossie are among Trump’s most vocal supporters. The nine other appointees are Henry Dreifus, Robert McMahon, Cory Mills, Bill Bruner, Christopher Shank,more

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Who’s in Georgia’s US Senate Election Runoffs?

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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.more

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Pence Visits Georgia as Calm Before Potential Trump Storm

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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 tomore

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Sweden Closes High Schools to Stem COVID-19

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Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced Thursday that high schools would switch to distance learning beginning Monday through early January to slow the rate of COVID-19 infections in the country. Lofven made the announcement at a Stockholm news conference alongside Swedish Education Minister Anna Ekstrom. He said he hoped the move would have a “breaking effect” on the rate of COVID-19 infections. He added it was not intended to extend the Christmas break for students and he said he was putting his trust in them that they would continue to study from home. The distance learning will be in effect until January 6.Peoplemore

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As Trump Faces End of His Presidency, Questions Abound

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Less than seven weeks before his four-year term ends, questions are swirling around U.S. President Donald Trump.Will he concede defeat to President-elect Joe Biden?So far, Trump has not yet offered a concession, nor is one required. A concession is simply a polite tradition of U.S. presidential elections in which the losing candidate admits the obvious and congratulates the winner.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can An undated portrait of Grover Cleveland, 22nd president of the United States.A question also remains about the inauguration: Will Trump attend?For more than a century, each outgoing president has adhered to custommore

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Among First Acts, Biden to Call for 100 Days of Mask-Wearing

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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 frequentlymore

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VP-Elect Harris Picks Tina Flournoy to Be Her Chief of Staff

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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 Democraticmore

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Fauci to Discuss Coronavirus Pandemic with Biden Transition Team

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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 tomore

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Ivanka Trump Questioned Under Oath in Inauguration Funds Lawsuit

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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 inmore

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US Republicans Balk as Trump Uses Defense Bill for Leverage on Big Tech

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President Donald Trump’s threat to veto a defense bill if it does not repeal legal protections for social media companies faced stiff bipartisan opposition Wednesday, setting the stage for a confrontation with lawmakers scrambling to pass the massive bill by year’s end. Unusually, members of his Republican Party broke from Trump to join Democrats in objecting to his threat to veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a $740 billion annual bill setting policy for the Pentagon, if it does not include a measure eliminating a federal law — known as Section 230 — protecting tech companies such asmore

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Bill Forcing Chinese Firms to Meet US Accounting Standards Passes Congress

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on Wednesday that could prevent Chinese companies from listing their shares on U.S. exchanges unless they adhere to U.S. auditing standards.The measure passed by unanimous voice vote, after passing the Senate earlier this year, sending it to the White House, which said President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law.”The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act” bars securities of foreign companies from being listed on any U.S. exchange if they have failed to comply with the U.S. Public Accounting Oversight Board’s audits for three years in a row.While it applies to companiesmore

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Former Astronaut Kelly Sworn In as US Senator

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Former astronaut Mark Kelly, who ousted incumbent Republican Martha McSally in last month’s election, was sworn in Wednesday as a U.S. senator from Arizona.Kelly, a Democrat, will serve the remaining two years in the seat once held by longtime Senator John McCain, a prisoner of war in the 1960s in Vietnam and the Republican presidential candidate in 2008. McCain died in 2018 after having served two years of a six-year term. McSally was appointed to replace him in 2018 but lost to Kelly in a special election.Kelly will be up for a full six-year term in the 2022 election. Hemore

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Georgia Republicans Show Party Is Not a Monolithic Group

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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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Even Trump-Appointed Judges Balk at President’s Efforts to Overturn 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 Appealsmore

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Trump Threatens to Veto Major Defense Bill Unless Law Protecting Tech Companies is Axed

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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 & Electionmore

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South Korea to Hold College Entrance Test Amid Pandemic ‘Third Wave’

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As nearly a half-million South Korean students prepare to take an all-important college entrance examination later this week, health and education officials are stepping up efforts to prevent test sites from becoming coronavirus hotspots.  On Thursday, much of South Korea will quiet down as students in their third and final year of high school complete a test that is widely seen as having an oversized impact on one’s academic, professional and even marital prospects. Officials say that roughly 490,000 people have applied for this year’s one and only College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), better known in Korean as the suneung.more

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