[ad_1]
Joe Biden has asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, to maintain his central role in fighting the coronavirus pandemic once Biden takes office, he said yesterday during an interview on CNN.
“I asked him to stay in exactly the same position that he had during the past presidents, and I asked him to also be my chief medical adviser and to be part of the Covid team,” Biden told Jake Tapper.
Upon taking office, Biden plans to ask all Americans to wear masks for 100 days, he said. The race to distribute vaccines against the virus has heated up significantly, with Britain this week approving a Pfizer vaccine for public use, and the Food and Drug Administration is expected to consider it for approval this month.
Biden said he would be willing to publicly receive the vaccine if Fauci said it was safe. “What you have to do is make it clear to the American people that the vaccine is safe,” said the president-elect.
Kamala Harris team unveiled more executive staff picks yesterday, announcing that he would recruit Tina Flournoy, a former senior aide to President Bill Clinton with decades of political experience, to serve as the vice president-elect’s chief of staff. Flournoy will lead a staff whose main aides are primarily women of color.
Harris’ transition office also announced yesterday that Rohini Kosoglu, who served as her Senate chief of staff and played a central role in her presidential campaign, would be the vice president’s internal policy adviser, and that Nancy McEldowney, a former diplomat and an official Clinton administration, he would be Harris’ national security adviser.
President Trump to head to Georgia this weekend for one of his favorite activities: a campaign rally. He will appear on behalf of Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are campaigning ahead of the state’s second-round elections next month.
The president’s visit comes as he perpetuates a public dispute with leading Georgia Republicans over the election results, which he has refused to accept. Some prominent Republican officials worry that it could turn the rally into a stage for its latest conspiracy theories and attacks.
Saxby Chambliss, a retired Republican senator from Georgia, told CNN he couldn’t be sure what Trump would do. “And that’s part of the concern I have,” he said.
Facebook announced that it would Start removing posts containing discredited claims about Covid-19 vaccines, part of the social network’s efforts to more aggressively combat misinformation.
The company’s previous policy had made it difficult to get misinformation about the vaccine if it was not related to the coronavirus by “downgrading” it in user news. Facebook has long been more reluctant than other social media companies to adjudicate misinformation, be it about health or politics.
But he moved early to create tools to inform the public about the virus. And there is international precedent for their new decision to remove fake posts: In the past, Facebook removed misinformation about the polio vaccine in Pakistan and about the measles vaccine in Samoa.
If 2020 was an unexpectedly difficult election year for Democrats in Congress, they have no illusions about what 2022 will bring. As with any midterm election after the election of a new president, the races that year are expected to be tough for the ruling party.
So Representative Sean Patrick Maloney has a lot of work ahead of him, after his Democratic colleagues elected him yesterday to lead the party’s campaign arm in the House through 2022.
Maloney, who represents a New York district that Trump won in 2016, emerged victorious in a close race for the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. His success was seen as a boost to the party’s moderates, who have expressed alarm after last month’s elections, when Republican candidates swapped several Democratic seats in part by fueling attacks on the party’s left wing.
Maloney will be responsible for leading fundraising efforts and recruiting Democratic candidates to run in an election year in which the party will defend a narrow majority in the House and when the mostly Republican state legislatures finish drawing a new map of Congress. . .
In a time of great national testWhat is the greatest sin: secrecy or hypocrisy? Let’s talk secrecy first: The New York Young Republican Club held its 108th annual gala last night, but didn’t say where.
Covid-19 regulations in New York prohibit in-person gatherings of more than 50 people, but a Facebook event page for the gala showed more than that number that he plans to attend. Gavin Wax, the club’s 26-year-old president, said the event would comply with New York regulations, but declined to be interviewed by phone or reveal where it was taking place, citing concerns “about the safety of our guests since violent attacks from the left “.
Sarah Palin was hired as a speaker, but canceled over concerns about traveling from Alaska amid a growing pandemic. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a close Trump ally, was chosen to replace her.
Now to the hypocrisy: Prominent California Democrats have come under fire this week for meeting in ways that contradict their own public health advice. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday that Mayor London Breed had recently attended a private birthday party at Napa Valley’s upscale French Laundry restaurant. The day before, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, had been to another party at the same restaurant.
Those events may not have directly violated any state law, but California’s pandemic guidelines “strongly discourage” social gatherings and do not allow them to include more than three households.
A local NBC News investigative team revealed this week that San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo had disobeyed health protocols for a Thanksgiving holiday family reunion; He later acknowledged that five households had been present, but said they had eaten outside.
