Presidential Transition Highlights: McConnell Congratulates Biden and Lobbies Senators to Oppose Effort to Overturn Results
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Breaking with President Trump’s drive to overturn his election loss, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Tuesday congratulated President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on his victory and began a campaign to keep fellow Republicans from joining a last-ditch effort to reverse the outcome when Congress tallies the results next month.
Although Mr. McConnell’s moves came weeks after Mr. Biden was declared the winner, they amounted to clear effort by the majority leader, who is the most powerful Republican in Congress, to put an end to his party’s attempts to sow doubt about the election. They were also a bid to avoid a messy partisan spectacle on the floor of the House that could divide Republicans at the start of the new Congress, pitting those loyal to Mr. Trump against institutionalists.
“Many of us hoped that the presidential election would yield a different result, but our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on Jan. 20,” Mr. McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor. “The Electoral College has spoken. So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
A short time later, on a private call with Senate Republicans, Mr. McConnell and his top deputies pleaded with their colleagues not to join members of the House in objecting to the election results on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to ratify the Electoral College’s decision, according to three people familiar with the remarks.
A small group of House members, led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, plan to use a constitutional process to object to the inclusion of five key battleground states that day. There is almost no chance they would succeed, but if they could convince at least one senator to join them, they could turn the counting session into a chaotic last stand for Mr. Trump.
So far, no senator has committed to joining them. And though Mr. McConnell could not stop one of them from doing so if they wished, he made clear that the challenge would be futile and embarrassing for the Senate.
His public remarks were a decisive shift for Mr. McConnell and came hours after members of his leadership team, and even the Senate chaplain, began softening the ground by congratulating Mr. Biden Monday evening and Tuesday morning.
The incoming president and the majority leader, who served alongside one another in the Senate for decades, spoke by phone short time later, apparently for the first time since the election.
“I called to thank him for the congratulations, told him although we disagree on a lot of things, there’s things we can work together on,” Mr. Biden said, adding that it was a “good conversation.”
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris echoed Mr. Biden’s comments in an ABC interview on Tuesday.
“I applaud Mitch McConnell for talking to Joe Biden today,” she said. “It would have been better if it were earlier, but it happened, and that’s what most important, and so let’s move forward.”
Though he never repeated them, Mr. McConnell had allowed Mr. Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud or fantastical claims that he had won the election by a wide margin to circulate unchecked for more than a month. Allies insisted privately that he would ultimately honor the election results but did not want to stoke a year-end conflict with the president that could hurt the party’s chances in two Georgia Senate runoffs and imperil must-pass legislation.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will nominate Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., to lead the Department of Transportation, adding a young-generation voice to his team, the transition team announced on Tuesday.
Mr. Buttigieg, 38, fought a fierce battle for the Democratic presidential nomination but bowed out and endorsed Mr. Biden. The two men bonded during the general election campaign and Mr. Biden made it clear that he wanted to find a place for Mr. Buttigieg in his administration.
If he is confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Buttigieg will be the first openly gay person to serve as a cabinet secretary, shattering a barrier and contributing to Mr. Biden’s promise to make his administration “look like America.” Under President Trump, Richard Grenell, who is also openly gay, served as acting director of National Intelligence, a cabinet-level post. But he did not face Senate confirmation as the acting leader.
“Mayor Pete Buttigieg was open and honest about his identity throughout his time on the national scene, giving a voice to our community, and a new vision of who and how our leaders can love,” said Alphonso David, the president of Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group.
A Navy veteran, Mr. Buttigieg could have led the Department of Veterans Affairs. But Mr. Biden decided instead to put him in charge of transportation, which is likely to become a key part of the administration’s efforts to combat climate change with aggressive actions on emissions. Reuters earlier reported Mr. Biden’s choice of Mr. Buttigieg.
In his presidential bid, Mr. Buttigieg proved himself to be among the Democratic Party’s most skilled communicators, transforming himself from a small-city mayor to a top-polling presidential candidate.
While Mr. Biden, like many others in the 2020 Democratic presidential field, was at first annoyed by Mr. Buttigieg’s presidential ambitions — and before the New Hampshire primary belittled his mayoral experience in revitalizing South Bend’s sidewalks — the two grew closer in their shared effort to hold back the party’s more liberal contenders.
As a candidate, Mr. Buttigieg consistently argued for the government to take strong steps to fight global warming. And his tenure as the leader of a local community provides him experience with the infrastructure needs of cities and counties, another key priority for Mr. Biden.
At debates, it was Mr. Buttigieg who scraped with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, leaving Mr. Biden to largely stay above the fray.
And when Mr. Buttigieg ended his campaign after registering paltry support from Black voters in the South Carolina primary, the Biden campaign gave him his own endorsement event — a plum not afforded to fellow rivals like Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who threw their support to Mr. Biden at a campaign rally hours later.
Becoming part of Mr. Biden’s cabinet will give Mr. Buttigieg a national perch from which to advance his future political career in the Democratic Party.
It will also allow him to apply some of the experience with transit policy he gained during his mayorship to national challenges surrounding infrastructure that cause perennial bipartisan frustration.
Mr. Buttigieg, whose calling card as a presidential candidate was a claim to have revived a dying Midwestern city, made transportation corridors an early focus. Shortly after being elected mayor in 2012, he set about transforming the South Bend’s downtown through an initiative named Smart Streets aimed at reducing traffic, adding bike lanes, and making certain areas more pedestrian-friendly.
After years of political resistance, the investment in infrastructure ignited a revival of the downtown area. New hotels, retail and residential conversions of lofts followed.
“Pete’s nomination is a new milestone in a decades-long effort to ensure LGBTQ people are represented throughout our government — and its impact will reverberate well-beyond the department he will lead,” said Annise Parker, the president of L.G.B.T.Q. Victory Institute, in a statement. “Most important, however, is that Pete will bring his intellect and energy to the Department of Transportation and our nation will be better off because of it.”
Reid J. Epstein and Trip Gabriel contributed reporting.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident-elect Joseph R. Biden will nominate Jennifer M. Granholm, the former governor of Michigan and a longtime champion of renewable energy development, to be the next secretary of energy, according to four people close to the transition.
If confirmed Ms. Granholm, 61, will be the second woman, after Hazel R. O’Leary, who served under President Bill Clinton, to lead the vast department, which oversees the United States nuclear weapons complex as well as 17 national laboratories and a wide range of energy research and development initiatives.
Several people close to the transition said advisers had struggled over whether the Energy Department should be led by someone steeped in its core mission of ensuring the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal, or whether Mr. Biden should select someone with a vision for leading a clean-energy transformation.
Ms. Granholm is widely credited during her two terms as Michigan governor with steering her state through a recession and working with the Obama administration on a 2009 bailout of the automobile industry that included clean energy investments and incentives for carmakers to invest in technologies like battery storage.
After her term ended, in 2011, she became an advocate for renewable energy development, including giving a TED Talk on how investing in alternative energy resources can bolster state economies, something Mr. Biden has focused on in his coronavirus recovery plan.
“The economics are clear: The time for a low-carbon recovery is now,” Ms. Granholm wrote this year in The Detroit News, making the case for Michigan and other states to embrace low-carbon recovery measures to help rebuild from the economic hit of the coronavirus pandemic.
The decision to choose Ms. Granholm was seen as a nod to environmental groups, some of which had waged a campaign against Ernest J. Moniz, the former energy secretary, who had long been seen as the front-runner to take the helm of department a second time. Though he was a favorite candidate of labor groups and a close adviser to Mr. Biden, activists objected strongly to financial ties he had to the fossil fuel industry and positions he had taken in favor of continued development of natural gas.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to pick Gina McCarthy, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama and the architect of some of his most far-reaching regulations to limit planet-warming emissions, to serve as senior White House adviser on climate change, according to three people close to the Biden transition team.
As White House adviser, Ms. McCarthy will coordinate domestic climate policies across the United States government, playing a central role in helping Mr. Biden make good on his campaign promise of putting the United States on track to reach carbon neutrality before 2050.
Mr. Biden also intends to name Ali Zaidi, the deputy secretary for energy and environment of New York State, who helped write Mr. Biden’s climate plan, as Ms. McCarthy’s deputy.
Ms. McCarthy, who has served since January as president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, joins the ranks of high-profile former Obama administration officials given top positions in the Biden administration. Advocates for stronger action to fight climate change said her nomination would send a signal that the administration was prepared to bypass Congress and enact measures using executive authority to begin bringing down greenhouse gases.
Her international counterpart is former Secretary of State John Kerry, whom Mr. Biden has tapped to galvanize other nations to take more ambitious action as the United States prepares, after four years of disregarding climate change under President Trump, to restart its own efforts.
“A new era of climate accountability is upon us,” former Vice President Al Gore said in a statement. “The U.S. is back on task.”
He called Ms. McCarthy “uniquely suited for the job” and said her appointment, along with Mr. Kerry’s, “affirms that Joe Biden is serious about America leading by example and driving deep reductions in pollution and climate emissions.”
As E.P.A. administrator, Ms. McCarthy developed the Clean Power Plan, which set the first-ever national limits on carbon emissions from power plants. She also pushed forward rules to cut mercury emissions from power plants, increase fuel efficiency in automobiles and limit methane leaks from oil and gas wells.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTCongressional leaders scrambled on Tuesday to reach agreement on a stimulus bill and a catchall omnibus funding package to keep government funding flowing, meeting to try to hammer out critical spending deals ahead of a Friday deadline.
Their talks broke up about 10 p.m. Tuesday, with lawmakers voicing some optimism as they left the Capitol. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said, “We’re making significant progress.”
He added that he was encouraged that they were “going to be able to complete an understanding sometime soon.”
As he left the Capitol, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, echoed Mr. McConnell’s optimism and said that “hopefully we can come to an agreement soon.” Discussions and staff work were expected to continue on Wednesday.
The Tuesday meetings of the top two Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate were the first in-person spending talks in months for the leaders, with a final deal still elusive on both the dozen must-pass spending bills and hundreds of billions of dollars in economic aid for individuals and businesses struggling amid the pandemic, and to fund the distribution of a vaccine.
They took place in the Capitol office suite of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, who hosted Mr. Schumer and the Republican leaders Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.
The group first met for a little under an hour to discuss how to resolve its differences before government funding is scheduled to lapse at week’s end, and reconvened later in the evening for a second session.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, joined the first session by phone, after speaking separately with Ms. Pelosi for more than an hour.
Mr. McCarthy, headed back to his office after the evening meeting, said that “we’re exchanging our papers.” He also offered a note of optimism for the chances of a deal.
“We’re making significant progress,” Mr. McConnell said, “and I’m optimistic that we’re going to be able to complete an understanding sometime soon.”
The four leaders have agreed that any additional pandemic aid should be wrapped into the year-end spending measure, and that Congress should not adjourn without approving some pandemic relief as Covid-19 cases continue to rise across the country and the government works to distribute the vaccine to essential workers and others. “We’re going to get an agreement as soon as we can agree,” Mr. McConnell told reporters after the first meeting.
Aides involved in the discussion said they were nearing agreement on a catchall spending package, and the text could be released as early as Wednesday. But it remained unclear what congressional leaders would agree to for pandemic relief, as well as what additional legislative items may be merged with the broader spending package.
Even if Congress were to pass a bill this week, it may not be in time to prevent millions of Americans from going weeks with no source of income, given that many state unemployment offices have already programmed their systems to cut off benefits after next week, when the current pandemic programs expire.
Reinstating the benefits in those states will take time, especially because the plan being considered by Congress would make several technical changes to the programs, which the Labor Department must then incorporate into formal regulations, said Elizabeth Pancotti, a policy adviser for Employ America, an advocacy group. The Christmas and New Year’s holidays, when state offices are shut, will add further delays, she warned, though workers would eventually receive back pay for the weeks where their benefits lapsed.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday urged Georgia voters to cast ballots for Democratic Senate candidates in two critical runoffs early next month, seeking victories that would give his party full control of Congress and help Democrats advance the agenda he promised on the campaign trail.
“You all did something extraordinary in November,” Mr. Biden said to cheers and honks at a drive-in campaign rally intended to minimize spread of the coronavirus. “You voted in record numbers in order to improve the lives of every Georgian. And you voted as if your life depended on it.”
“Well, guess what?” he added. “Now you’re going to have to do it again.”
A small group of President Trump’s supporters had also come to the rally, waving large banners. One of Mr. Biden’s supporters, Nicole Gordon, brought a small speaker and sang along as she played “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones — a not-so-subtle jab.
Still, the gathering had an easygoing vibe, with a multiracial, multigenerational crowd of Atlanta natives and some of the transplants who have flooded into the city in recent years.
Mr. Biden arrived in Atlanta a day after the Electoral College affirmed his victory, as in-person early voting began in Georgia for the elections that will determine whether Republicans lose their majority in the Senate. Hours before Mr. Biden’s arrival, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, acknowledged the president-elect’s victory for the first time, saying, “the Electoral College has spoken.”
To win Senate control, Democrats need to defeat both of Georgia’s Republican incumbents, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, in contests that have drawn intense national attention and money. Mr. Perdue is facing Jon Ossoff, while Ms. Loeffler is being challenged by the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
The runoffs on Jan. 5 will have an outsize effect on the start of Mr. Biden’s presidency. If Republicans retain their Senate majority, the president-elect will face steeper challenges in securing confirmation for his cabinet and is likely to have to pare back ambitions on climate change, immigration, infrastructure spending and other priorities.
Mr. Biden narrowly won Georgia last month, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992.
“Our message and his message is going to continue to reflect what he’s been saying all along,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, said of his visit to the state. “In particular, really talking about early voting and the importance of voting, talking about the importance of Georgia in his victory.”
Runoff elections typically see a substantial drop-off in voter interest, especially in comparison to a presidential campaign, but the first day of early voting suggested these high-stakes races were bucking that trend.
About 168,000 Georgia voters showed up to polling places on Monday, exceeding by tens of thousands the number of votes cast on the first day of in-person early voting for the general election in November. Fantara Houston, 42, an elementary school assistant principal involved in the Urban League in Atlanta, has been volunteering as part of the organization’s efforts to mobilize voters.
“We still have so much work left to do,” said Ms. Houston, who attended the rally with her mother. “It’s not just about the election. This is how we transform back into something that we want.”
President Trump held a rally in southern Georgia this month. Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for his campaign, issued a statement on Tuesday saying that Mr. Ossoff and Mr. Warnock “represent the left-most fringe of the Democrat Party.”
“That Joe Biden would campaign for them is further proof that he is utterly in the grip of the extreme left,” he added, “which is the driving force in today’s Democrat Party.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident Vladimir V. Putin of Russia’s tepid and tardy congratulation to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. came on Tuesday, as Washington grappled with an extensive hack of federal domestic and national security agencies that U.S. officials attributed to Moscow.
The two developments this week — the discovery of a major cyberattack followed by Mr. Putin’s perfunctory jab at the reset button — defined the expected trajectory of U.S.-Russia relations under Mr. Biden, a longtime Putin skeptic far less warm and welcoming than Mr. Trump.
Mr. Putin, who has kibitzed frequently with President Trump by phone, waited nearly six weeks to offer his well wishes — by telegram. He had been one of the last major holdouts among world leaders in sending Mr. Biden the sort of congratulatory message that is routine in international diplomacy, even among adversaries. China congratulated Mr. Biden on Nov. 13, 10 days after Election Day.
Several other world leaders offered belated congratulations to Mr. Biden. President Andrzej Duda of Poland similarly waited until this week to congratulate the president-elect.
Mr. Biden also received statements of congratulations on Tuesday from two Latin American leaders; one came from the political left, the other from the right.
“Greetings to the President Joe Biden,” began a tweet from Brazil’s leader, President Jair Bolsonaro.
Mr. Bolsonaro, an unabashed admirer of Mr. Trump, went on to say, “I will be ready to work with you and continue to build a Brazil-USA alliance in defense of sovereignty, democracy and freedom around the world, as well as in trade integration.”
Mexico’s leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also decided the moment was finally right to reach out to Mr. Biden. He sent a letter congratulating the president-elect on his victory and broaching the idea of working together on economic development to reduce the incentive for migrants to leave home.
Both Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. López Obrador had been criticized for failing to congratulate Mr. Biden, even as many Latin American leaders stepped forward to do so.
Mr. Bolsonaro had echoed the baseless claims of voter fraud that Mr. Trump and his supporters promoted. Mr. López Obrador said he had wanted to see the U.S. legal process run its course.
The committee charged with planning the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is asking the public to stay home on Jan. 20 and participate in virtual activities instead.
On Tuesday, the committee announced that it had hired production experts to plan “a new and innovative program” for Americans to safely participate in inaugural events, including a “reimagined” inaugural parade.
While the plan includes a swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol, the committee said it would be a significantly scaled-down event because of the pandemic. Previous inaugurations have drawn thousands of people to Washington for a week of celebration.
“President-elect Biden’s unwavering commitment to the safety of the American people is our North Star as we plan an inauguration that protects public health while honoring inaugural traditions and engaging Americans across the country,” the committee’s executive director, Maju Varghese, said in a statement on Tuesday. He said additional details about health precautions and virtual participation would be coming soon.
The committee also announced on Tuesday that David A. Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and an adviser on the Biden transition, would also serve as an adviser to the planners.
The plans for a scaled-back inauguration are in keeping with Mr. Biden’s focus on demonstrating responsible behavior to minimize transmission of the coronavirus. He has said he would call on Americans to wear facial coverings for his first 100 days in office, a period in which he has vowed to get “at least 100 million Covid vaccine shots into the arms of the American people.” Vaccinations began this week as the nation’s death toll passed 300,000.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTA day after Michigan’s 16 electoral votes formally went to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., a voting machine manufacturer told state senators that he stood by his company’s work, and shot down unfounded allegations that the results may have been manipulated.
Dominion Voting Systems is the victim of “a dangerous and reckless disinformation campaign aimed at sowing doubt and confusion over the 2020 presidential election,” John Poulos, the company’s chief executive, told the State Senate Oversight Committee.
The company has come under fire from supporters and lawyers for President Trump, who have claimed without evidence that the company’s voting machines switched votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.
Mr. Poulos assured the committee that his company had no connections to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, or George Soros, the billionaire financier who is a subject of conspiracy theories on the right.
“The comments about our company being started in Venezuela with Cuban money with the intent to steal elections are beyond bizarre and are complete lies,” Mr. Poulos added. “My company started in my basement, which happened to be in Toronto.”
State Senators, who are conducting an investigation into alleged reports of irregularities in the 2020 election, continually returned to tiny Antrim County in northern Michigan, where human error in the local clerk’s office related to updating the software in some vote tabulators caused votes for Mr. Trump to be inadvertently counted for Mr. Biden. The mistake was caught and corrected before the results of the vote were certified. Supporters of Mr. Trump have pointed to the error as proof of widespread fraud in the election.
“If all of the tabulators had been updated per our procedure, there wouldn’t have been any error in the unofficial report,” Mr. Poulos said. “Human mistakes happen, especially in busy election years when election officials work tirelessly through weekends and holidays for months on end.”
He dismissed as seriously flawed a report from a self-proclaimed election fraud expert on the Antrim County situation that has been cited by Trump allies.
Lawmakers also repeatedly asked about various other unfounded allegations, including that Dominion tabulators were connected to the internet, and consequently susceptible to hacking; and that the machines employed ranked-choice voting in Michigan.
“Would it be impossible for anything to be manipulated,” asked State Senator Michael MacDonald, a Republican.
“I don’t think so, but if it was possible, it would certainly be detectable,” Mr. Poulos responded, pointing to Michigan’s use of paper ballots. “If there was any manipulation of the system, those paper ballots would not match the machine totals.”
Although there is nothing the committee can do to alter the results, it plans to continue to investigate the election, with plans to subpoena the city clerks of Detroit and Livonia, two cities in Wayne County that drew national attention last month after Republicans on the county’s board of canvassers initially opposed certifying the election results because of minor irregularities.
As the mass vaccination campaign entered its second day in the United States, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said it was his “strong recommendation” that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris receive a Covid-19 vaccine quickly.
“For security reasons, I really feel strongly that we should get them vaccinated as soon as we possibly can,” he said on “Good Morning America” Tuesday. “You want him fully protected as he enters into the presidency in January.”
Mr. Biden told reporters in Delaware on Tuesday that Dr. Fauci, who will be his chief medical adviser, “recommends I get the vaccine sooner than later.”
“I want to just make sure we do it by the numbers,” Mr. Biden said. “When I do it, you’ll have notice and we’ll do it publicly.”
A vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was given emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, and a second vaccine, made by Moderna, is expected to be authorized later this week. The first shots have generally gone to frontline health care workers.
Dr. Fauci said he would also recommend that President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence get the vaccine, even though the president has already had Covid-19.
“You still want to protect people who are very important to our country right now,” Dr. Fauci said. “Even though the president himself was infected and he has, likely, antibodies that likely would be protective, we’re not sure how long that protection lasts.
“So to be doubly sure, I would recommend that he get vaccinated as well as the vice president.”
At a briefing on Tuesday, Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said that the president would “receive the vaccine as soon as his medical team determines it’s best,” but that he was not yet scheduled to do so. She added that “some senior administration officials” would take the vaccine publicly in the coming days in order to “instill that confidence” in it, but she did not say who would do so.
During a round-table discussion at a Catalent Biologics facility in Bloomington, Ind., on Tuesday, Mr. Pence said he planned to get a vaccine “in the days ahead” and would “do so without hesitation.” The company is working with Johnson & Johnson and Moderna to produce vaccines.
Ms. McEnany said that the number of White House staffers receiving the vaccine would be “a very limited group of people,” a shift that came after The New York Times reported on Sunday that there was a plan in place to try and vaccinate everyone who worked in the West Wing.
Mr. Trump said on Sunday night that he would delay the plan for senior White House staff members to quickly receive the vaccine.
“People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time.”
The acting secretary of the defense, Christopher C. Miller, received the vaccine at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday. The Defense Department is one of the agencies coordinating Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to distribute the vaccine as quickly as possible.
For some elected officials and public figures, getting vaccinated may be a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t proposition. On the one hand, doing so publicly could be useful as a show of confidence to members of the public, and particularly to minority groups who can be especially wary of vaccination and of government-sponsored programs.
Dr. Fauci, who is 79, has said that he will be vaccinated publicly for those reasons. In an interview with NPR on Tuesday, he said that he had not yet scheduled his shot, but would do it “as soon as I possibly can, because I’ve always said I want people to understand that I am very confident in this vaccine.”
But there is a flip side to that argument, particularly for lawmakers on Capitol Hill. With the vaccine in scarce supply, some in positions of power do not want to be accused of jumping the line.
The issue came up on Capitol Hill last week when Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Health Committee, acknowledged to The Wall Street Journal that he had sought advice from Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about how lawmakers should handle vaccination.
“If they want public figures to take the vaccine early in order to reassure Americans that it’s safe, I’m sure many of us will do that,” Mr. Alexander said he told Dr. Redfield. But he added, “I’m not going to do that on my own. I’m going to do it when the public health officials tell me it’s my turn.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTFacebook said on Tuesday that it would allow some advertisers to run political issue and candidacy ads in Georgia, a change from its recent ban on political ads in the United States and just weeks before a major runoff election in the state could decide the future of the Senate.
Beginning Wednesday morning, Facebook said it would allow authorized advertisers to buy and run political ads targeted to people within Georgia. Only those previously authorized to run such ads on the platform will be permitted, a process that involves identity verification and other safety measures. Facebook’s ban on political ads will otherwise remain in effect for the remaining 49 states.
Georgia is the home to two consequential Senate runoff elections. Two Democratic candidates, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, are fighting two Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. The results will determine which party will control the Senate when President-elect Joseph R. Biden takes office next year.
“In recent weeks we’ve heard feedback from experts and advertisers across the political spectrum about the importance of expressing voice and using our tools to reach voters ahead of Georgia’s runoff elections,” Sarah Schiff, a Facebook product manager in charge of political advertising, said in a company blog post about the change. “We agree that our ad tools are an important way for people to get information about these elections.”
The move follows months of contentiousness around political advertising on Facebook, which critics have said helps misinformation spread. For the past few years, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has said he wishes to maintain a largely hands-off stance toward speech on the site unless it poses an immediate harm to the public or individuals, saying that he “does not want to be the arbiter of truth.”
But before the Nov. 3 presidential election, Facebook took some steps to rein in misinformation. That included halting new ad purchases in the week before Election Day, and pausing all political advertising in the United States after the polls closed. The company has said the political ads ban is temporary, but it has not said when such ads will be allowed to resume.
Facebook said it planned to ramp up the ads program slowly in Georgia, beginning with those running political campaigns in the state, as well as state and local elections officials and state and national political parties. The company added that it would reject political advertising that is targeted outside Georgia or that does not concern the coming runoff election.
Google, which paused more than five million ads that referred to the presidential election after the polls closed, said last week that it was changing that policy and would permit advertisers to begin running election-related ads again “as long as they comply with our global advertising policies.”
In affirming Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the president-elect on Monday, members of the Electoral College firmly denied President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of a free and fair election by using legal challenges and political pressure on his Republican allies.
The process took place smoothly. But the president’s unrelenting efforts to discredit the election that he lost by more than seven million popular votes and more than 70 electoral votes have left the Republican Party fractured.
While Mr. Trump spent Monday tweeting about a “Rigged Election!” and “massive fraud,” — allegations that were quickly flagged by Twitter as “disputed” — Mr. Biden, speaking from Wilmington, Del., just hours after the Electoral College formally cast its votes, forcefully condemned Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the election results.
“‘We the people’ voted,” Mr. Biden said. “Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And so, now it is time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout our history. To unite. To heal.”
In another positive development for Mr. Biden, who has pushed repeatedly for a bipartisan compromise on another economic stimulus to address the fallout from the coronavirus, a group of centrist members of Congress on Monday presented a pair of compromise measures totaling $908 billion intended to break the stalemate in negotiations.
The rare news of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill came as some Republicans separated themselves on Monday from Mr. Trump’s charged complaints about the election. A Michigan congressman who voted for President Trump this year announced that he was severing ties with his party over its refusal to accept the president’s election defeat, while a Georgia elections official angrily denounced violent threats and harassment directed at elections workers and urged the president to “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”
The president has increased his pressure campaign on members of his party in recent weeks, many of whom have fallen in line behind him out of fear for their political careers. On Monday, Attorney General William P. Barr, who had affirmed Mr. Biden’s victory, became a casualty as Mr. Trump announced that he would depart the Justice Department next week.
Despite a tenure where Mr. Barr had displayed a willingness to advance the president’s political agenda, he fell out of favor with the president in recent weeks after acknowledging that the Department of Justice had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
The president’s closest allies in the House of Representatives are still eyeing a challenge to the Electoral College’s votes when Congress officially tallies them in a joint session on Jan. 6. The members of Congress, led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, have their sights set on challenging five states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin — where they claim that widespread voting fraud occurred, despite the fact that all five states have certified that the results are valid and that there is no evidence of any widespread impropriety.
Constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could force Vice President Mike Pence into having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. declared that it was “time to turn the page” on the 2020 election in a speech Monday evening, just hours after the Electoral College formally cast its votes for him to replace President Trump on Jan. 20.
Just over a month before he will be inaugurated as the 46th president, Mr. Biden hailed the record-breaking turnout in the presidential campaign, calling it “one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty we’ve ever seen in our country” and saying that it “should be celebrated, not attacked.”
Mr. Trump has sought for weeks to reverse the outcome of the election, offering baseless and unproven accusations of voter fraud in the swing states that delivered the victory to Mr. Biden. The president has refused to concede while he and his allies have undermined faith in the country’s democratic system of governance.
Mr. Biden denounced the attacks on voting by the president and his allies, calling them “unconscionable” and saying that no election officials should ever face the kind of pressure they received from Mr. Trump in recent weeks to falsely proclaim the election to be fraudulent.
Anticipating potential complaints from Republicans, the president-elect noted that Mr. Trump and his legal team were “denied no course of action” as they challenged the legitimacy of the election before Republican-appointed judges, with Republican legislatures, and in desperate conversations with Republican officials at the state and local levels.
None wavered in their determination that the election was fairly conducted, Mr. Biden said.
In his speech, he expressed confidence that the defining feature of American democracy — its electoral process — would survive Mr. Trump’s assault.
“What beats deep in the hearts of the American people is this: Democracy,” Mr. Biden said. “The right to be heard. To have your vote counted. To choose leaders of this nation. To govern ourselves. In America, politicians don’t take power — people grant power to them.”
As he has for weeks, Mr. Biden kept his focus on the raging coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 300,000 people in the United States. Though emergency medical workers and others have begun receiving the first doses of a vaccine, Mr. Biden warned that the months ahead will be difficult.
“There is urgent work in front of us,” he said. “Getting this pandemic under control and getting the nation vaccinated against this virus. Delivering immediate economic help so badly needed by so many Americans who are hurting today — and then building our economy back better than it ever was.”
He also called for unity on a day in which electors in many states performed their duties under threat of violence.
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation, a long time ago,” Mr. Biden added. “And we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power, can extinguish that flame.”