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Biden taps Neera Tanden to head OMB, picks all-female senior White House press team

WILMINGTON, Del. — U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will have an all-female senior communications team at his White House, reflecting his stated desire to build out a diverse White House team as well as what’s expected to be a return to a more traditional press operation.

Biden campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield will serve as Biden’s White House communications director. Jen Psaki, a longtime Democratic spokeswoman, will be his press secretary.

Four of the seven top communications roles at the White House will be filled by women of colour, and it’s the first time the entire senior White House communications team will be entirely female.

U.S. President Donald Trump upended the ways in which his administration communicated with the press. In contrast with administrations past, Trump’s communications team held few press briefings, and those that did occur were often combative affairs riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods.

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Trump himself sometimes served as his own press secretary, taking questions from the media, and he often bypassed the White House press corps entirely by dialing into his favourite Fox News shows.

In a different area of the White House operation, Biden plans to announce a number of his top economic advisers this week. He’ll name Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress, as director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to a person familiar with the transition process granted anonymity to speak freely about internal deliberations.

In a statement announcing the White House communications team, Biden said: “Communicating directly and truthfully to the American people is one of the most important duties of a President, and this team will be entrusted with the tremendous responsibility of connecting the American people to the White House.”

He added: “These qualified, experienced communicators bring diverse perspectives to their work and a shared commitment to building this country back better.”

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Bedingfield, Psaki and Tanden are all veterans of the Obama administration. Bedingfield served as communications director for Biden while he was vice-president; Psaki was a White House communications director and a spokesperson at the State Department; and Tanden served as a senior adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and helped craft the Affordable Care Act.

Others joining the White House communications staff are:

— Karine Jean Pierre, who was Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris’ chief of staff, will serve as a principal deputy press secretary for the president-elect. She’s another Obama administration alum, having served as a regional political director for the White House office of political affairs.

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— Pili Tobar, who was communications director for coalitions on Biden’s campaign, will be his deputy White House communications director. She most recently was deputy director for America’s Voice, an immigration reform advocacy group, and was a press staffer for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Three Biden campaign senior advisers are being appointed to top communications roles:

— Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will serve as Harris’ communications director.

— Symone Sanders, another senior adviser on the Biden campaign, will be Harris’ senior adviser and chief spokesperson.

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— Elizabeth Alexander, who served as the former vice-president’s press secretary and his communications director while he was a U.S. senator from Delaware, will serve as Jill Biden’s communications director.

After his campaign went virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden faced some criticism for not being accessible to reporters. But near the end of the campaign, he answered questions from the press more frequently, and his transition team has held weekly briefings since he was elected president.

The choice of a number of Obama administration veterans _ many with deep relationships with the Washington press corps _ also suggests a return to a more congenial relationship with the press.

Also joining the Biden administration as economic advisers, according to a person familiar with transition plans who was not authorized to speak on the matter:

— Brian Deese, a former Obama administration economic adviser, is expected to be named to head the National Economic Council.

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— Princeton University economist Cecilia Rouse, who served on the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, is expected to be named to head the Council of Economic advisers.

— Heather Boushey, the president and co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and Jared Bernstein, who served as an economic adviser to Biden during the Obama administration, are also expected to be named to the Council of Economic Advisers.

As head of the OMB, Tanden would be responsible for preparing Biden’s budget submission and would command several hundred budget analysts, economists and policy advisers with deep knowledge of the inner workings of the government.

Her choice may mollify progressives, who have been putting pressure on Biden to show his commitment to progressive priorities with his early staff appointments. She was chosen over more moderate voices with roots in the party’s anti-deficit wing such as Bruce Reed, who was staff director of President Barack Obama’s 2010 deficit commission, which proposed a set of politically painful recommendations that were never acted upon.

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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Monday tapped Obama-era officials for top national security and economic roles, signalling a stark shift from the Trump administration’s “America First” policies that disparaged international alliances and favoured deregulation and tax cuts.

The picks include former Secretary of State John Kerry to take the lead on combating climate change. Biden is also expected to choose Janet Yellen, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama to lead the Federal Reserve, as the first woman to become treasury secretary.

Biden’s emerging Cabinet marks a return to a more traditional approach to governing, relying on veteran policymakers with deep expertise and strong relationships in Washington and global capitals. And with a roster that includes multiple women and people of colour — some of whom are breaking historic barriers in their posts — Biden is fulfilling his campaign promise to lead a team that reflects the diversity of America.

The incoming president will nominate longtime adviser Antony Blinken to be secretary of state, lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas to be homeland security secretary and Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be ambassador to the United Nations. Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, will be nominated as director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold that post.

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Thomas-Greenfield is Black, and Mayorkas is Cuban American.

They “are experienced, crisis-tested leaders who are ready to hit the ground running on day one,” the transition said in a statement. “These officials will start working immediately to rebuild our institutions, renew and reimagine American leadership to keep Americans safe at home and abroad, and address the defining challenges of our time — from infectious disease, to terrorism, nuclear proliferation, cyber threats, and climate change.”

In the weeks ahead, Biden could also name Michele Flournoy as the first woman to lead the Defence Department. Pete Buttigieg, the former Indiana mayor and onetime presidential candidate, has also been mentioned as a contender for several Cabinet agencies.

In making the announcements on Monday, Biden moved forward with plans to fill out his administration even as President Donald Trump refuses to concede defeat in the Nov. 3 election, has pursued baseless legal challenges in several key states and has worked to stymie the transition process.

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Trump said Monday that he was directing his team to co-operate on the transition but vowed to keep up the fight. His comment came after the General Services Administration ascertained that Biden was the apparent winner of the election, clearing the way for the start of the transition from Trump’s administration and allowing Biden to co-ordinate with federal agencies on plans for taking over on Jan. 20.

The nominations were generally met with silence on Capitol Hill, where the Senate’s balance of power hinges on two runoff races that will be decided in January.

The best known of the bunch is Kerry, who made climate change one of his top priorities while serving as Obama’s secretary of state, during which he also negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord. Trump withdrew from both agreements, which he said represented a failure of American diplomacy in a direct shot at Kerry, whom he called the worst secretary of state in U.S. history.

“America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is,” Kerry said. “I’m proud to partner with the president-elect, our allies, and the young leaders of the climate movement to take on this crisis as the president’s climate envoy.”

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Biden will appoint Jake Sullivan as national security adviser. At 43, he will be one of the youngest national security advisers in history.

Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and has close ties with Biden. If confirmed as secretary of state, he would be a leading force in the incoming administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which Trump questioned longtime alliances.

Blinken recently participated in a national security briefing with Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris and weighed in publicly just last week on notable foreign policy issues in Egypt and Ethiopia.

He will inherit a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Trump’s two secretaries of state, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, offered weak resistance to the administration’s attempts to gut the agency, which were thwarted only by congressional intervention.

Although the department escaped massive proposed cuts of more than 30% in its budget for three consecutive years, it has seen a significant number of departures from its senior and rising mid-level ranks, from which many diplomats have opted to retire or leave the foreign service given limited prospects for advancements under an administration they believed did not value their expertise.

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Blinken served on the National Security Council during President Bill Clinton’s administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel. In the early years of the Obama administration, Blinken returned to the NSC and was then-Vice-President Biden’s national security adviser before he moved to the State Department to serve as deputy to Kerry.

A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, Blinken has aligned himself with numerous former senior national security officials who have called for a major reinvestment in American diplomacy and renewed emphasis on global engagement.

“Democracy is in retreat around the world, and unfortunately it’s also in retreat at home because of the president taking a two-by-four to its institutions, its values and its people every day,” Blinken told The Associated Press in September. “Our friends know that Joe Biden knows who they are. So do our adversaries. That difference would be felt on day one.”

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generalpaperstranger · 3 years

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A natural disaster … in all 50 states’ is unfolding just as travelers disperse nationwide after Thanksgiving

As millions of Americans head home after Thanksgiving, the coronavirus could be hitching a ride — threatening to plant seeds of infection across the country as the US on Sunday topped more than 100,000 new cases for the 27th consecutive day.

So far Sunday, the United States has reported 109,671 new cases and 731 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

A surge of new travel-related infections could overwhelm hospitals already stretched to capacity. Hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients reached a record high of 93,238 on Sunday, trumping Saturday’s record-breaking 91,635 figure, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

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It is the third time there have been over 90,000 Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 — the first being Thursday with 90,481 before a drop to 89,834 Friday that could be attributed to inconsistencies in reporting over Thanksgiving.

“There’s no way that the hospitals can be fully prepared for what we’re currently facing,” emergency medicine physician Dr. Megan Ranney said.

“This is like a natural disaster occurring in all 50 states at the same time. There are not adequate beds. There are not adequate staff. And because of the lack of national preparation, there are still not adequate supplies,” said Ranney, a CNN medical analyst and director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health at Brown University.

“Here in Rhode Island, we are currently planning to open our field hospital on Tuesday because our hospitals are so full of sick Covid-19 patients. But not every state has that option,” she said.

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“And even if you open a field hospital, if you have hundreds of staff who are sick — which is what many states across the country are currently facing — if you don’t have nurses and doctors and respiratory techs, even a field hospital isn’t going to save you. Our health care system is literally at the breaking point right now, thanks to Covid-19.”

New cases now mean new hospitalizations by Christmas

Sunday is expected to be the busiest air travel day of the entire pandemic even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans not travel for Thanksgiving.

Roughly 6 million travelers passed through security at US airports after the CDC’s travel warning in the week leading up to Thanksgiving.

But it will be weeks before anyone knows how much of a role Thanksgiving gatherings and travel play in new hospitalizations and deaths.

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“When you look at people who are hospitalized today, they were infected two weeks ago, maybe more,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University. “And then it takes usually another week for folks to succumb to the illness.”

So infections picked up on Thanksgiving “are going to show up in three weeks and are going to show up in deaths over Christmas and New Year’s and are going to spread in every state,” Ranney said.

Statistics reported in the days after the holiday might show a relative dip in Covid-19 cases, followed by a surge due to a lag in government agencies’ reporting over the long weekend.

And given coronavirus’ lengthy incubation time and how long it takes an infected person to test positive, cases related to Thanksgiving are unlikely to show in public data until the first full week of December at the earliest.

Even before then, Covid-19 is killing Americans at a staggering rate. At least 1,189 new deaths were reported on Saturday alone, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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More than 266,000 people in the US have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began.

Birx: ‘If you’re young and you gathered,’ get tested

Health experts say anyone who gathered with people outside their household should take serious precautions in the coming days, especially young people who might be carrying and spreading coronavirus without any symptoms.

“If you’re young and you gathered, you need to be tested about five to 10 days later,” said Dr. Deborah Birx on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “You need to assume that you’re infected and not go near your grandparents and aunts and others without a mask.”

Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, recommended those over age 65 get tested immediately if they develop any symptoms.

“If you’re over 65 or you have comorbidities and you gathered at Thanksgiving — if you develop any symptoms, you need to be tested immediately,” she said.

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ER doctor wants people to follow stay-at-home orders

Many hospitals are on the brink of exceeding capacity, threatening reduced care for everyone — even those without coronavirus. So officials around the country have reinstated or rolled back on restrictions. In Los Angeles County, a three-week stay-at-home order goes into effect on Monday.

What I wish is that people would follow those stay-at-home orders,” said Ranney, the emergency medicine physician in Rhode Island.

“I can’t tell you how many patients I take care of who tell me, ‘Well, I just went to an indoor restaurant.’ Or, ‘I just went to a party with a few friends. I didn’t actually think I was going to catch Covid.’ So those stay-at-home orders are critical.”

The Los Angeles County stay-at-home order prohibits all public and private gatherings with people outside a single household.

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“Residents are advised to stay home as much as possible and always wear a face covering over their nose and mouth when they are outside their household and around others,” the county’s public health department said.

The order is in effect through December 20. It does not apply to “faith based services and protests, which are constitutionally protected rights,” the health department said.

Essential retail businesses will be limited to 35% occupancy, while the occupancy limit for nonessential retail operations, personal care services and libraries will be 20%, the county said.

“Even if you’re not feeling sick, the simple act of gathering with people outside your household puts everyone at risk,” county health director Barbara Ferrer said.

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Ranney said it’s possible some schools and workplaces can operate safely if precautions are met.

“I think it’s really important that you keep safe workplaces and safe schools open,” she said. “We know that in those structured settings, where people are masked, keeping a distance, having adequate ventilation, the spread of the virus is pretty low in those settings,” she said.

“I am hopeful that that type of order will be effective. And we’ve seen in France that it works,” Ranney said. “I sure hope it will be (effective) in L.A., and I hope the rest of the country can follow suit. Because we need to do something, or — again — this virus is just going to just continue to grow out of control.”

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California set a new pandemic record on Sunday with 7,415 Covid patients in its hospitals, according to data provided by the California Department of Health.

That eclipses the previous California hospitalization record of 7,170 people on July 21.

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#news #covid_19

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