$900 billion coronavirus relief plan

Bipartisan Senate group introduces $900 billion coronavirus relief plan

The measure will include money for schools and health care.

By BURGESS EVERETT

A bipartisan group of senators will introduce a broad coronavirus aid framework on Tuesday, a significant breakthrough after months of failed negotiation. But it’s just the first step toward Congress finally approving a new round of aid.

The legislation would provide $908 billion in aid and also shield businesses from coronavirus lawsuits for a few months to allow states to develop their own liability reforms. The proposal includes $160 billion in state and local aid, $180 billion in additional unemployment insurance and $288 billion for small businesses. It also has $82 billion for schools as well as $45 billion for transportation, according to a draft reviewed by POLITICO. It also includes money for health care.

It will be introduced on Tuesday morning by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Angus King (I-Maine), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), as well as House members. Separately, some other senators have held bipartisan discussions about a solution.

Still, the newest measure is no lay-up, and several congressional aides said the likeliest route to a new round of aid is through Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Congress has not enacted a new significant round of aid since April.

McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have both called for more coronavirus relief, but GOP senators said if there is an aid package, it’s unlikely to be attached to the spending bill due by Dec. 11. That means it’s still uncertain whether Congress can actually clinch a new law before the end of the lame duck.

Vendée Globe race skipper Kevin Escoffier (PRB) has been rescued by fellow Vendée Globe competitor Jean Le Cam

Vendee Globe Breaking:

At 0118hrs UTC the PRB Team was informed that their Vendée Globe race skipper Kevin Escoffier (PRB) has been rescued by fellow Vendée Globe competitor Jean Le Cam (Yes We Cam!).

Escoffier had to abandon his IMOCA 60 PRB following damage yesterday afternoon around 1346hrs UTC and took to his liferaft some 840 nautical miles SW of Cape Town.

The rescue mission was coordinated from Les Sables d’Olonne by Vendée Globe Race Direction in collaboration with CROSS Griz Nez and MRCC South Africa. The President of PRB, Jean-Jacques Laurent was at the Race HQ with race director Jacques Caraës and the race direction team assisting through the entire process.

“He’s on board with Jean!” These short words came as a huge relief for the whole team, for Escoffier’s family and all those involved in and following the Vendée Globe

Kevin has so far only been seen aboard YesWeCam via live video as Jean Le Cam had his video system connected during all the search operations. No one has yet been able to talk with the PRB skipper who just appeared smiling, bundled up in his survival suit alongside Jean Le Cam.

Vendée Globe race director Jacques Caraës outlined, “We sent Jean back to a position received by the CROSS Gris Nez, the position sent by the onboard EPIRB distress beacon. Météo France’s drift simulation also delivered a trace. Jean set off at 00h15 UT (1h15 French time) on our request to reach this point at reduced speed. He found no one at the given location. He then resumed its journey southeast for three quarters for between 45 minutes and an hour – an hour. As he was making headway at 1.5 knots in a 20-25 knot wind under very reduced sail (3 reefs in the mainsail and no engine), he disappeared from the screen when suddenly we heard him talk. We no longer saw anyone. Then, a few minutes after 1:06 UT or 2:06 French time (time at which he had precisely to retrieve Kevin on board), Jean went back down to the chart table and then we saw Kevin arrive behind his back in a survival suit. They both appeared fit seconds before the video cut. He is fine. Everyone is well. They are recovering!”

On January 6, 2009, during the 2008-2009 Vendée Globe, Vincent Riou, the then the skipper of PRB, rescued Jean Le Cam from his upturned IMOCA 60 which capsized at Cape Horn.

This time 61 year old five times Vendée Globe racer Le Cam has reversed the roles delivering Escoffier, the 40 year old skipper from Saint Malo, from a potentially lethal situation.

The whole TEAM PRB and the Vendée Globe community sincerely thanks Jean Le Cam and the three other skippers, Boris Hermann, Yannick Bestaven and Sébastien Simon who have worked heroically and tirelessly to find Kevin, as well as the race director, the CROSS Gris Nez. and the MRCC Cape Town which coordinated the search

Anti-China alliance

EU seeks anti-China alliance on tech with Biden

While TTIP is out of reach, Brussels wants to resuscitate elements of it that dealt with standards and regulation.

BY JAKOB HANKE VELA AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Europe on Monday proposed teaming up with incoming U.S. President Joe Biden to squeeze China out of the global technology trade. 

Exhausted by four years of trade tensions on two fronts, fighting against both U.S. President Donald Trump on one flank and Beijing on the other, Europe is trying to seize an early initiative ahead of Biden’s inauguration on January 20 by rolling out geostrategic plans for closer transatlantic cooperation.

At a closed-door meeting to discuss Europe's strategy, Sabine Weyand, Brussels' top trade bureaucrat, told lawmakers from the European Parliament that the European Commission would propose a "Transatlantic Trade and Technology Council" to set joint standards on new technologies, according to two people in the room.

This would target one of the big objectives of both the Europeans and Americans: Preventing China from establishing economic dominance across a number of high-value sectors by developing its own widely used technological and industrial standards.

A Commission paper to EU countries mapping out a strategy for a transatlantic alliance against Beijing also mentioned that proposal.

"The EU is proposing to establish a new EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC)," the paper read.

"The aim will be to ... strengthen our technological and industrial leadership and expand bilateral trade and investment. It will focus on reducing trade barriers, developing compatible standards and regulatory approaches for new technologies ... As part of this, there should be ... closer cooperation on ... investment screening, Intellectual Property rights, forced transfers of technology and export controls."

Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU's super-commissioner for economy and trade, first floated the plan at a meeting with EU trade ministers this month, where he said the EU and U.S. should "cooperate on new technologies and digital services and be aligned on regulation and standards."

EU officials said the plan was to resuscitate those parts of the failed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations that focused on regulatory cooperation on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, where both Washington and Brussels fear that China stands to become the global standard setter.

One senior Commission official described the tech alliance as a "low-hanging fruit," since the EU and U.S. had already planned to establish a joint committee that would coordinate regulations on future technologies as part of their frozen negotiations on their earlier TTIP mega deal. "It's very hard to align rules on products that already exist, but it is fairly easy to do it on emerging technologies," the official said.

Both Weyand and the other senior official argued a resumption of TTIP negotiations was not back on the cards, both because of fierce public opposition to the deal and because negotiations had become stuck over things like EU protections for agriculture and U.S. public procurement discrimination with the Buy America Act, which Biden has said he wants to ramp up rather than dismantle.

But the thinking in Brussels now is that disagreements on chemical rinses for chicken and public infrastructure contracts should not hinder the EU and U.S. from working on joint rules for technologies like next-generation wireless networks.

As part of that new "positive agenda," Brussels would also seek to set common rules on industrial subsidies and investment screening, while working with Washington to reform the World Trade Organization, the senior Commission official said.

Much will depend, however, on the overarching political atmosphere between Brussels and Washington, which could well sour over what the U.S. sees as unfair regulatory action against its biggest digital champions, both in terms of competition cases and tax.

Diplomats from EU countries will on Tuesday discuss the Commission plan along with proposals to work more closely on coronavirus vaccine distribution, climate change, and foreign policy, including a proposed "Summit of Democracies" that the EU wants to organize with the U.S. next year, according to one of the diplomats.

Arizona, Wisconsin certify

Arizona, Wisconsin certify Biden’s victories

President Donald Trump has sought to undermine the results in both states.

By ZACH MONTELLARO

Officials in Arizona and Wisconsin certified their states’ 2020 election results on Monday, making President-elect Joe Biden’s narrow victories official.

The state are the latest to reject President Donald Trump’s efforts to delay election certification, as he and his legal team spin baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud.

“Despite the unprecedented challenges, Arizonans showed up for our democracy," Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said at the certification ceremony. “This election was conducted with transparency, accuracy and fairness in accordance with Arizona’s laws and election procedures, despite numerous unfounded claims to the contrary.”

Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court Robert Brutinel all affirmed the results, and Ducey praised the state’s election process. Ducey also signed documents certifying the state’s electoral college slate.

The certification in Arizona comes as two of Trump’s attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, participated in an unofficial hearing hosted by some Republican Arizona lawmakers. They urged the state to ignore certification and have the state legislature appoint its own slate of Electoral College electors, a legally dubious course of action that Trump has amplified since it became clear he lost the 2020 vote.

Trump and his allies failed in state court to block the process of finalizing the election results, after a judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Arizona Republican Party seeking to block certification in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county. The Trump campaign also dropped a lawsuit in the state that sought a hand review of certain ballots.

Similarly, some Republicans in the state have also rejected Trump’s conspiracy theories about widespread irregularities. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which is composed of four Republicans and one Democrat, unanimously voted to certify their county’s results earlier in the month, rejecting fraud claims.

"No matter how you voted, this election was administered with integrity, transparency, and most importantly in accordance with Arizona state laws," Clint Hickman, the Republican chair of the board, said at the time.

In Wisconsin, the state election commission completed the statewide canvass following a partial recount. The recount, which was requested and paid for by the Trump campaign, slightly increased Biden’s margin in Wisconsin. Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, completed the state-level canvass this afternoon, determining Biden as the victor.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, certified the results in the state later Monday.

“I carried out my duty to certify the November 3rd election, and as required by state and federal law, I‘ve signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris,” Evers said in a statement. “I want to thank our clerks, election administrators, and poll workers across our state for working tirelessly to ensure we had a safe, fair, and efficient election. Thank you for all your good work.”

However, the Trump campaign can now "exercise the five-day recount appeal rights afforded to it under [state law] if the campaign believes the determination inaccurately reflects the election outcome," according to the state board. Trump has already promised a lawsuit in the state.

Considers stay-home order

Newsom considers stay-home order for California counties

By VICTORIA COLLIVER

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday said he’s considering imposing stay-at-home orders on California counties to curb an explosion in coronavirus cases that threaten to overwhelm hospitals by Christmas.

Newsom said he could impose the additional restrictions within the next couple of weeks. He suggested that the state could target the orders in areas where hospitals are most at risk of being overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients.

"We are trying to be much more specific, more surgical ... and more prescriptive in terms of looking at the efficacy and looking at where the data leads us to making those determinations sector by sector," Newsom explained.

The background: California has controlled Covid-19 spread better than most states — ranking 39th out of 50 in per capita case rates — but Newsom on Monday sounded the alarm over the unprecedented pace of new infection spread.

The state this weekend moved six more counties into the state's most restrictive purple tier, now affecting 99 percent of residents.

California currently prohibits indoor dining, gyms and church services in 51 of 58 counties, among other restrictions. If Newsom reimposes limits comparable to the spring, most outdoor business activities would be prohibited and people would have to stay home except for essential services.

Los Angeles County has already imposed a stay-home order this week.

The data: California’s seven-day average of new daily cases has reached 14,600 — higher than the peak of the summer surge. Newsom stressed the potential strain on hospitals around the state and that additional restrictions may be necessary to ensure enough beds are available.

State health officials predict that absent any additional interventions or behaviors, hospitalizations could double or triple in just one month and ICUs could exceed capacity. Statewide, ICU admissions could reach 112 percent of capacity by Dec. 24.

“What we worry about at this time is specifically the ICUs,” Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Mark Ghaly said, referring to ICU capacity as the “primary trigger” for further restrictions and a stay-at-home order.

About 12 percent of all Covid-19 cases require hospitalization, and about 10 percent to 30 percent of those hospitalizations become ICU admissions.

“That is the lay of the land in terms of the red flags that are flying. Not yellow flags,” Newsom said.

Business relief: The governor on Monday highlighted what the state was doing to support its small businesses as he signaled the possibility of a stay-at-home order in the coming weeks — and acknowledged the inevitable economic toll of such measures.

“We have to be more mindful than ever about the economic impact, the consequences of these further restrictions,” he said.

Newsom said he would direct the Department of Tax and Fee Administration to make automatic a three-month sales tax extension that he first unveiled in April for businesses with less than $1 million in sales on their tax returns and to expand interest-free payment options for larger businesses suffering from public health restrictions.

The governor also announced a $500 million COVID Relief Grant run by the California Office of the Small Business Advocate at GO-Biz, which he said will distribute grants of up to $25,000 to small businesses and nonprofit organizations by early next year.

On vaccines: Newsom noted that California anticipates getting 327,000 vaccine doses in mid-December, with second doses likely to follow within another three weeks.

Because that initial tranche falls far short of covering enough of the frontline health care workers at the front of the queue, the group drafting the guidelines for how to equitably distribute the virus is expected to release its report this week for the first phase of distribution.

The outlook: Newsom and Ghaly said they are in constant contact with health officials and expect to make the decision on additional restrictions in the coming days. Ghaly suggested that the state could limit the duration of a stay-at-home order based on what conditions they're seeing on the ground.

$1M in Bridgegate debt

Christie campaign still owes $1M in Bridgegate debt

By MATT FRIEDMAN

Seven years after his 2013 reelection, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s gubernatorial campaign still owes $1 million in debt stemming from the Bridgegate scandal.

But the moribund campaign may be allowed to stop filing campaign finance reports this year. And there’s no sign that the campaign has sought to pay back its debts, or that either of the companies that are owed the money — a prominent law firm and a cybersecurity firm that billed large monthly amounts to taxpayers during the Christie administration — have made an effort to collect.

According to its latest filing from last month, Christie’s 2013 campaign owes $651,305 to the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs and $364,103 to the digital forensics firm Stroz Friedberg, which has since changed its name to Aon’s Cyber Solutions.

The state Election Law Enforcement Commission allows publicly financed gubernatorial campaigns to apply to stop filing reports with the state — essentially canceling the public record of its debt — seven years after the election. That means the Christie campaign is eligible to do so this month.

The Christie campaign took on both firms in early 2014, shortly after Christie’s landslide reelection victory, to respond to federal subpoenas related to the Bridgegate investigation, which looked into the suspicious closing of entrance lanes to the George Washington Bridge in September 2013. The campaign asked ELEC's permission in February 2014 to resume raising money to pay for the legal work.

In 2009, as it considered the regulation about stopping the filing of reports, ELEC said that “a campaign must be required to demonstrate some degree of good faith in an effort to retire liabilities, rather than simply wait for the proposed seven-year period to lapse.”

But records filed with the commission indicate that Christie, who has proven to be a prolific fundraiser for other campaigns and causes, barely raised any money to retire the debt. After it was granted permission to begin raising money again, Christie’s gubernatorial campaign raised just $4,439 from several donors — even though Christie began an unsuccessful campaign for president the following year in which he raised millions. A few months after Christie dropped out, then-candidate Donald Trump held a fundraiser to pay off Christie’s presidential campaign debts.

Christie — who is earning money in private law practice, through lobbying and as an ABC on-air contributor — is co-chairing a group raising money to help two Republican senators in Georgia who face a runoff in January.

“The [Christie] campaign had a $3,800 contribution limit for any individual or corporation, so anyone who had made a maximum contribution could not contribute one penny more,” said Christie confidant Bill Palatucci, a prominent attorney and a fixture in New Jersey Republican circles. “In addition, New Jersey pay-to-play rules governing any gubernatorial campaign made it near impossible to fundraise for Christie-Guadagno more than a year after the race was over.” (Kim Guadagno served as Christie's lieutenant governor.)

Meanwhile, the two firms continued to do work for the campaign, incurring more and more debt over several years.

Records show that the Christie gubernatorial campaign paid $140,000 to Patton Boggs from 2014 to 2016 and made one payment of $4,814 to Stroz Friedberg in 2014. Around the same time, Stroz Friedberg was hired by the Christie administration for taxpayer-funded document retention. After Gov. Phil Murphy took office in 2018, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said he was "stunned” to learn that the state was paying Stroz Friedberg $64,000 a month and instead went with a firm that charged a small fraction of that. Squire Patton Boggs also had state contracts under the Christie administration, before and after the Bridgegate scandal. It’s not clear how much it earned, but an attorney for the firm served as special counsel to the state during the Atlantic City takeover, which began in 2016.

Christie is not the first gubernatorial candidate to carry debt long after Election Day. Former GOP candidates Bret Schundler and the late W. Cary Edwards both had campaign debts for years.

ELEC Executive Director Jeff Brindle said that even though seven years have passed since Christie’s reelection, the campaign has not yet applied to stop filing reports.

“If they do apply to terminate, I think the commission would have to make a determination based on the guidelines in the regulation,” Brindle said. (Palatucci did not say if Christie would seek to end filing campaign finance reports with ELEC.)

That regulation required the campaign to outline “the efforts made by the campaign to retire the outstanding obligations, including, without limitation, efforts to compromise or resolve the debt with the vendor or service provider.”

Brindle said that candidates who take public financing, as Christie did, can’t pay off the campaign debt themselves — even if the contributions they’re taking after the campaign are no longer matched by public funds.

“It would still be subject to the $25,000 that a publicly funded candidate can spend on his own money,” Brindle said.

Receives coronavirus vaccine applications

EU regulator receives coronavirus vaccine applications from BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna

The two companies submitted conditional marketing authorization applications to the European Medicines Agency.

BY JILLIAN DEUTSCH

European regulators could approve two coronavirus vaccines “within weeks,” the European Medicines Agency wrote Tuesday.

Both BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna submitted conditional marketing authorization (CMA) applications to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) this week.

The agency has already examined some of the data from both companies via a “rolling review,” allowing the agency to speed up the authorization of the vaccines, the EMA wrote.

“If EMA concludes that the benefits of the vaccine candidate outweigh its risks in protecting against COVID‑19, it will recommend granting a CMA that could potentially enable use of [the vaccine] in Europe before the end of 2020,” BioNTech wrote in a press release.

In November, both developers announced their vaccines were highly effective based on preliminary results of large-scale trials: The German-American partnership said their vaccine is 95 percent effective, and Moderna announced theirs is 94 percent effective.

The Commission has secured up to 300 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, and 160 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. The U.K. has secured 40 million from BioNTech/Pfizer, and another 7 million from Moderna.

Still, Moderna has said its initial 20 million vaccine doses will be made and used for the U.S., and the company hopes to supply globally in 2021.

Seethes

Bernieworld seethes over Tanden as OMB nominee

To former Sanders staffers and allies, Tanden is one of the Democratic elites who helped sink his 2016 campaign behind the scenes.

By HOLLY OTTERBEIN

Progressives have been able to live with most of Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks.

But to many of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ staunchest supporters, Biden’s decision to tap Hillary Clinton loyalist Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget is just too much — the equivalent of rubbing salt in the wound.

To former Sanders staffers and allies, Tanden is one of the Democratic elites who helped sink his 2016 campaign behind the scenes, not to mention a union-buster, a threat to Social Security, a hippie-puncher who constantly picks fights with the left, and much more.

“I don’t know anyone personally in Bernie world who is happy about this choice,” said Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders’ former national press secretary. “We’re talking about a woman who’s notorious for assaulting Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager.”

Another 2020 senior Sanders aide, who declined to speak on the record, called the addition of Tanden, a former Clinton staffer and longtime adviser, to the president-elect’s economic team “a big slap in the face of Bernie people.”

There is a long backstory to the bitterness between Sanders’ orbit and Tanden: During the presidential primary campaign in 2019, Sanders penned a fiery letter to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, which Tanden leads, accusing her of “maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas.”

Sanders also ripped into a video by ThinkProgress, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which charged him with changing his rhetoric about millionaires after reaping royalties from a best-selling book. Tanden said then that ThinkProgress was “editorially independent” from both CAP and the Action Fund, an explanation that progressives saw as unpersuasive.

Around the same time, the New York Times reported that Tanden had years earlier punched Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ 2020 campaign manager, “in the chest” when he worked as ThinkProgress’ editor, citing an anonymous source. She disputed that characterization, saying she “didn’t slug him,” but pushed him. Before then, WikiLeaks emails revealed her calling ThinkProgress staffers “crazy leftists” and advising against supporting a $15 minimum wage, one of Sanders’ top policy priorities.

“It’s like putting Chelsea Clinton in the office,” said Kurt Ehrenberg, Sanders’ former longtime political strategist in New Hampshire. “She’s clearly not a friend of the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.”

Sanders supporters also knocked her past proposal “to reform the beneficiary structure of Social Security” and the fact that ThinkProgress’ unionized newsroom was laid off during her tenure.

A person close to Tanden said that she made those remarks about Social Security when President Barack Obama was doing much of the same and is now in close alignment with Biden, who has advocated for expanding the program. The Center for American Progress remained neutral during ThinkProgress' unionization drive, the person said, and the site shut down because of declining ad revenue and social media algorithm changes, not due to the union.

A Biden transition official defended her as experienced and a historic choice. Tanden is Indian American.

“This is the first time I can recall that an OMB director who’s charged with setting a federal budget will be someone who actually grew up in Section 8 housing, grew up on food stamps,” the official added.

Paco Fabián, campaigns and communications director for the Sanders-founded Our Revolution, said Tanden is “certainly not a unity pick” and “it’s not a secret that progressives and Neera Tanden haven’t gotten along over the last few years on several issues.” He added that she tends to “punch left, instead of focusing on the real adversary here, which is the Republican Party and money in politics.”

While his ex-staffers have spent the last two days blasting away at Tanden online and in private forums, Sanders and his current aides have remained silent on her nomination — a reflection of the fact that the Vermont senator and his diehard supporters often employ different political strategies. Mike Casca, a spokesman for Sanders, declined to comment for this story. Sanders has not echoed other liberal senators, such as Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in praising Tanden this week on social media, nor has he joined his fans criticizing her.

Tanden is also facing fire from the right, which is expected to be more of an obstacle for her unless Democrats win the two upcoming Senate races in Georgia. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) described her as “radioactive.”

“It's pretty crazy to me to think that she can go back and … eliminate all the tweets that she's sent out over the last, whatever, months, years. And I think it's really a misstep by the administration,” he said.

One former top Sanders aide said it is possible that he will vote against Tanden’s confirmation or perhaps use it as leverage to extract progressive appointments from the Biden administration. But several other ex-Sanders staffers and advisers said it is unlikely he would oppose her confirmation, pointing to the fact that he has worked harmoniously with Biden over the last few months. Sanders is currently vying to be Biden’s Labor secretary.

“The real problem here is Republicans, not Bernie,” said a person close to Sanders, referring to the confirmation process of Tanden.

It is unclear whether Tanden has attempted to offer an olive branch to Sanders or his aides since being tapped by Biden. The Biden transition team did not respond to a question about potential outreach. But after the primary ended, she publicly signaled appreciation for Sanders, saying that he “has been a tremendous force in helping unify the party” while campaigning for Biden.

Other activists in the progressive movement had a different take on Tanden, saying that there was a worse alternative who had been floated to lead the Office of Management and Budget: “deficit hawk” Bruce Reed, chief domestic policy adviser during the Clinton administration. Progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) signed a petition last week opposing Reed’s appointment. (Reed supporters have argued that he would not put deficits ahead of working families.)

“Neera Tanden is not a pick progressives would have chosen, but she’s better than Bruce Reed,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, in a statement. “Tanden’s on the record over the past several years pushing back against nonsensical worries about the deficit. Reed has been more of an ideological deficit hawk throughout his career.”

Robert Hockett, a former Sanders adviser and Cornell Law School professor, said progressives’ disappointment about Tanden is overshadowing the fact that some of Biden’s other picks for his economic team, such as Heather Boushey, Cecilia Rouse and Jared Bernstein, are positive developments for the left.

“I’m as troubled as anybody by the announcement of Neera,” he said. But other nods are “significant improvements over what we might have expected not only of course during the Trump administration, but even during the Obama administration.”

Take one last shot

How Trump's Hill allies could take one last shot to overturn the election

It's deeply unlikely to succeed, but some House Republicans are weighing an effort to challenge the Electoral College count.

By KYLE CHENEY and MELANIE ZANONA

President Donald Trump's arsenal for overturning the election will soon be down to one final, desperate maneuver: pressing his Republican allies on Capitol Hill to step in and derail Joe Biden’s presidency.

Although the Electoral College casts the official vote for president on Dec. 14, it’s up to Congress to certify the results a few weeks later. And federal law gives individual members of the House and Senate the power to challenge the results from the floor — a rarely used mechanism meant to be the last of all last resorts to safeguard an election.

But several House Republican lawmakers and aides now tell POLITICO they’re considering this option to aid Trump’s quest.

“Nothing is off the table,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

Gaetz pointed out that in January 2017, a handful of House Democrats took this precise procedural step before their efforts flamed out during a joint session of Congress presided over by none other than Biden, then the outgoing vice president.

“It is over,” Biden said at the time, gaveling down Democrats as Republicans cheered.

This time, Vice President Mike Pence will be in the chair for any potential challenges — a potentially awkward scenario as his boss continues to deny the reality of the election he lost.

Indeed, Trump lost the election. His legal battles have failed to stop states from certifying his defeat. And his bid to pressure state legislators to overturn Biden’s victory appears to be going nowhere. Congress — where Republicans are still largely in lockstep with Trump — is the last institution that could be a factor.

Here’s how Trump’s defenders in Congress may take a final shot at subverting the election, who might carry Trump’s mantle and why it’s almost certain to be more of a spectacle than a solution for Trump.

How congressional challenges work

The framers declared that the presidential election isn’t official until lawmakers certify the winner. The voters, on Nov. 3, picked 306 electors for Biden and 232 for Trump. Those electors will cast their formal votes for president on Dec. 14.

An obscure 1887 law called the Electoral Count Act, and several subsequent updates, spell out the process, setting Jan. 6 after a presidential election as the official certification date and outlining vague, complicated procedures.

On that day, the House and Senate meet in a joint session at 1 p.m. — just three days after a newly constituted Congress is sworn in. One of their first orders of business is to pass judgment on the Electoral College vote.

That same federal law also gives a tiny number of lawmakers enormous power to challenge the results.

If a single House member and a single senator join forces, they can object to entire slates of presidential electors. They must do so in writing and provide an explanation, though there are no guidelines on how detailed it must be.

If they do, the House and Senate must retreat to their chambers and debate the outcome for up to two hours before voting on the matter. Each state’s electors are certified separately, meaning lawmakers bent on challenging the results have multiple chances to force lengthy delays.

If the Democrat-run House and GOP-controlled Senate disagree? That outcome has never been tested before, though it would likely give governors in key states — including the Democrats who lead Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — a larger role.

A few House Democrats have previously tried and failed to challenge GOP presidencies in 2001 and 2017 — after Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote but lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush and Trump, respectively. And congressional Democrats went even further in 2005, when John Kerry lost to Bush, forcing a full-fledged debate on Ohio’s electoral votes before both the House and Senate voted to reject the challenge.

Who might act for Trump?

Some of Trump’s allies are already pressuring GOP lawmakers to take this step.

“Ask your senators and congressman if they will object to any Electoral College certification of Joe Biden on January 6,” Tom Fitton, the pro-Trump head of Judicial Watch, said last week.

Fitton may not have much trouble convincing House members to agree. In addition to Gaetz, several incoming GOP lawmakers, like Georgia congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, have adopted the president’s harshest and falsest rhetoric about the prevalence of fraud in the 2020 contest. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) was a plaintiff on a lawsuit — recently tossed by the state’s high court — arguing that Pennsylvania’s entire mail-in voting system was unconstitutional.

On Friday, a group of Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania filed a resolution declaring the results of their state’s election results “in dispute” and urging Congress to consider Biden’s electors in Pennsylvania to be considered disputed as well. Kelly has not indicated whether he might carry their fight into the Capitol.

Other Trump allies have explicitly left the door open to challenging the results. GOP Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, a top member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said it’s seriously being considered by some members and they’re “studying” up on it.

The chief of staff to a second Republican lawmaker aligned with Trump also indicated that his boss is strongly considering a challenge to the electoral votes, depending on the status of Trump-backed litigation.

Other GOP lawmakers who might be friendly to the idea include Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and David Schweikert, who all belong to the Freedom Caucus. The trio signed a letter urging the state’s largest county, Maricopa, to delay certification of the presidential election results until an audit is conducted. The Maricopa County board of supervisors rejected their request and certified the results on Nov. 20.

“There have been some issues raised about the integrity of some of our election systems within the state,” Biggs said in a statement. “Let’s leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of accountability and transparency.”

Biggs and Gosar sat behind Trump’s legal team Monday at a hearing of GOP state legislatures meant to amplify the campaign’s allegations of voter fraud.

It’s unclear if such House Republicans would have the blessing of leadership. Aides to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did not return a request for comment.

But the California Republican is a top Trump ally and has backed up Trump’s effort to contest the election results. McCarthy also falsely proclaimed on Fox News that Trump had won the election, before walking the comments back.

Getting a senator

There’s a reason Democrats fell short of more robust challenges to their 2000 and 2016 losses: the Senate.

In both years, a clutch of progressive lawmakers lodged challenges to the Electoral College count and pleaded with their Senate allies to join them. But both times, no senator would sign on.

“Is there one United States senator who will join me?” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) pleaded just before Trump’s win was certified. She got no response. Afterward, Republicans chastised these House Democrats and called the effort disrespectful to voters.

The Senate has historically been more reluctant to engage challenges raised by House members on these issues. But there are reasons to believe 2021 could be different.

Though Trump’s power in Washington is waning as his presidency winds down, he will clearly continue to be a force in GOP politics, exerting outsize influence on the fate of Republicans on the ballot in 2022. Trump still has a stranglehold on the GOP base — which has eagerly embraced his false claims of widespread voter fraud — and has made clear he considers fealty his top priority.

Trump has forged deep ties with some Republican senators and may lean on them for this final stand. Over the weekend, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) echoed some of Trump’s unfounded suspicions about vote counting in key states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

Still, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — who has been silent on Biden’s victory thus far — may not welcome the idea, since it would force Republicans to take a politically toxic vote on the challenge, particularly ahead of the Senate GOP’s tough 2022 map. McConnell’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on potential challenges.

If Trump does convince any senators to join the increasingly likely House challenges, it would look similar to 2005, when then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) joined then-Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), citing “irregularities” to challenge Bush’s victory.

The move forced the House and Senate to retreat to their chambers and deliberate. But both Republican-controlled bodies rejected the challenge, cementing Bush’s win after a two-hour delay.

The only other similar challenge occurred in 1969 and dealt with a single electoral vote cast by a Republican elector expected to vote for Richard Nixon, but who backed George Wallace instead. After debate, both the House and Senate rejected the challenge and allowed the vote for Wallace to stand.

Why a challenge likely won't work in a GOP-led Senate

It’s simple: the math. Arizona Sen.-elect Mark Kelly, a Democrat, will take his seat later this week, leaving Senate Republicans with a 52-48 majority. But on Jan. 3, when the new Senate convenes, it’s likely Republicans will be down another member because Sen. David Perdue’s reelection fight — the subject of a Jan. 5 runoff — will still be pending. Perdue’s current term will expire, and his seat will become vacant until a runoff winner is sworn in.

Perdue’s absence would leave Republicans with virtually no margin to sustain election challenges, which require a simple majority. And that’s before factoring in the small but growing number of sitting Republicans who have acknowledged Biden’s win, called him president-elect and urged Trump to move on.

GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana have described Biden as the winner or the “president-elect.” That’s more than enough to sink any challenges brought in the Senate.

What if the chambers disagree?

If every hypothetical scenario tips Trump’s way and the Senate upholds a challenge to certain slates of presidential electors, it would almost certainly put the chamber at odds with the Democrat-run House, where there will be little drama about certifying Biden’s victory.

In that case, lawmakers would step into a void of untested constitutional theories. At first blush federal law grants the power to resolve such disputes to the governor of the state in question. But legal scholars and the Congressional Research Service have pointed to some ambiguities.

The Electoral Count Act says that in this scenario, it’s up to the state’s governor to decide which electors should be counted — a boon for Biden in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where Democratic governors would surely support his victory.

The Constitution, as written, expressly grants state legislatures the authority to determine the process for appointing presidential electors. The Trump campaign has leaned on that provision to encourage Republican-led legislatures to intervene and deliver electors for Trump despite the vote of their constituents.

For the Trump campaign’s interpretation to work, Trump would need a legal victory akin to a miracle. A court, perhaps the Supreme Court, would have to embrace this effort and scrap subsequent federal statutes that handed governors this power instead.

It’s a path that some Trump allies are publicly promoting.

“At any time, you can take back that power,” Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis told Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers at a hearing last week. On Monday, she encouraged Arizona lawmakers to do the same after the state certified Biden's 10,000-vote victory.

But Pennsylvania’s response to that argument, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday, made clear why the Trump campaign’s position is such a long shot.

The framers of the Constitution never envisioned a legislature unilaterally deciding which electors to appoint; they wanted lawmakers to adopt a process through the normal course of passing laws, which includes a role for the governor, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar emphasized in a brief submitted to the high court.

“It would have been passing strange,” Boockvar argued, “for the Framers, who created a system of checks and balances … to allow, in this one area, for state legislatures to regulate federal elections unchecked by any other branch of state government.”

Need to go to jail for a long time....

Former cybersecurity chief hints at legal action against Trump attorney who said he should be ‘shot’

“The way I look at it is that we’re a nation of laws, and I plan to take advantage of those laws,” said Christopher Krebs.

By QUINT FORGEY

Former federal cybersecurity chief Christopher Krebs, who was fired last month for contradicting President Donald Trump’s election-related conspiracy theories, suggested Tuesday that he may pursue legal action against a Trump campaign attorney who said he should be “shot.”

“It’s certainly more dangerous language, more dangerous behavior,” Krebs told NBC’s “Today” show, referring to the incendiary remarks from Joe DiGenova — one of the lawyers pursuing the president’s effort to overturn the results of the election.

“The way I look at it is that we’re a nation of laws, and I plan to take advantage of those laws,” Krebs said. “I’ve got an exceptional team of lawyers that win in court, and I think they’re probably going to be busy.”

Pressed on whether comments such as DiGenova’s could be met with legal action, Krebs replied: “We’re taking a look at all our available opportunities.”

DiGenova’s attack against Krebs came on a Monday episode of the “The Howie Carr Show,” during which he criticized the former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for concluding that the election was conducted securely.

“Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity,” DiGenova said, “that guy is a class-A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”

Trump ousted Krebs last month after his agency, CISA, shared a statement issued by a group of federal officials, election supervisors and voting technology vendors — including a CISA representative — deeming the 2020 election to be the “most secure” in U.S. history.

In the days before his dismissal, Krebs had privately expressed that he expected to be fired by the White House because of his bid to debunk disinformation being spread, in large part, by Trump and other Republicans.

Asked Tuesday whether he worried about his own safety in the wake of DiGenova’s attack and others, Krebs said he was “not going to give them the benefit of knowing how I’m reacting to this. They can know that there are things coming, though.”