Who remembers Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Somehow, in proper 2020 fashion, many things have happened since the most historically bitter and controversial election our country has ever seen. National lockdowns and surges in Covid-19 cases have left the future president and vice president-elect background characters. While the pair is set to be sworn in on January 20, we can’t help but ponder the question: how does one simply prepare to lead the most powerful country in the world? Well, we aren’t going to get a reality television “Where are they now” reunion special, so this will have to do.
Kamala Harris has been largely out of sight since her acceptance speech in Wilmington Delaware, following the election. Due to social distancing, the crucial transition meetings leading up to the inauguration have been made quite difficult. According to aides with the Biden-Harris transition team, Harris is doing this virtually and is in regular touch with Joe Biden, by text message or telephone.
Kamala is currently still a senator and when she chooses to give up that position is up to her. Joe Biden hung on to his senator position until only a few days before he was sworn into his vice president position in 2008. Until she resigns, Harris will still get a salary as a senator. The vice-president-elect returned to the Senate floor on November 18th to vote “no” to President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
On Thursday, the vice-president-elect and her husband, lawyer Douglas Emhoff, took to Twitter to share a cheerful message on the first night of Hanukkah. Emhoff is the first Jewish spouse to serve in the white house. It was recently announced that he is set to teach classes at the Georgetown University Law Center. Emhoff will serve as a distinguished visitor from practice when he joins the faculty in January, school officials said in a statement.
The couple is currently residing in their two-bedroom condominium in Washington. For now, Harris has the task of building her own staff. She is expected to hire several familiar faces from her Senate office and her 2020 campaign.
As for President-Elect, Joe Biden, he is also in the midst of choosing his cabinet and other top administration picks. The Associated Press reports that this week “Biden announced Denis McDonough, President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, as his pick for secretary of Veterans Affairs; Tom Vilsack, a former agriculture secretary, as his nominee for agriculture secretary; and Marcia Fudge, an Ohio congresswoman, as his pick for secretary of housing and urban development.
The President-elect also named Susan Rice, former national security adviser during the Obama administration, as his director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Katherine Tai, who oversaw trade enforcement for China during the Obama administration, as his nominee for United States Trade Representative.” The cabinet is ever-changing and new members will continue to be chosen up until the inauguration.
Amid the nationwide lockdowns sweeping our nation, Joe Biden`s Covid-19 equity task force issued that the pandemic has exposed a “crisis of discrimination” and social inequities that the country should not remain complacent about. The office of the president-elect held an event on December 8th where Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of President-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 equity task force and a key member in Biden`s health team, addressed these concerns.
“Health care free of racism and discrimination is a right and not a privilege,” Nunez-Smith said Friday in a web briefing hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Morehouse School of Medicine’s Satcher Health Leadership Institute. “It is our societal obligation to ensure equitable access to high-quality health care during the pandemic and beyond.”
Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden is still under federal investigation for his “tax affair.” Federal prosecutors in Delaware are scrutinizing Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China as part of a tax probe that began in 2018.
On a more positive note for the President-elect, he and vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris was named Time’s 2020 people of the year. The pair was chosen over frontline health care workers and even the racial justice movement.
“Time has always had a special connection to the presidency,” said Edward Felsenthal, the editor in chief and chief executive officer of Time. “Person of the year is not just about the year that was but about where we’re headed,” he said. “The next four years are going to be an enormous test of them and all of us to see whether they can bring about the unity that they promised.”
While allegations of election fraud continue to accumulate, this transition of power is unlike any other. As of last week, The Supreme Court denied a Texas effort Friday that would have nullified the presidential elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin. But Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer, said the legal team intends to break up the lawsuit and continue in separate cases.
Because President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are refusing to acknowledge the election results on the grounds of fraudulent votes, an official transition process has yet to be authorized. To no surprise, this election remains unmatched.
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It is a big reversal of fortune for Kamala Harris, says Gil Duran, a communications director for Ms Harris in 2013 and who has critiqued her run for the presidential nomination. What she has demonstrated from the moment she took the national stage with her pitch for the presidency – is grit.