| | |  | BY RENUKA RAYASAM | Presented by Ford Motor Company | MCCONNELL IN THE MIDDLE — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did today what President Donald Trump has not: He congratulated Joe Biden on winning the presidential election in November. McConnell’s recognition of Biden, along with his plea to Senate Republicans not to challenge the election results, was calculated. McConnell was careful not to alienate Trump — he waited an entire month after the election, until the Electoral College cast its votes — but he also surely wanted to protect his majority from voting to confirm the election results on Jan. 6. As Marianne LeVine and Melanie Zanona write, if the Senate were forced to deliberate the election results, most GOP senators would be going on the record against a president who values fealty above all else. The Senate majority leader even transmitted a message to the White House ahead of time that he would be congratulating Biden on his win over Trump, according to a source familiar with the matter, writes Burgess Everett. McConnell will have to work closely with Biden over the next two years, particularly if he leads a slim GOP majority. But he also has to work with Trump over the next few weeks: to pass coronavirus relief and a government funding bill and to win the two Georgia Senate runoff races. Nightly caught up with Senate reporter Marianne over Slack today to talk about the relationship between McConnell and Biden. This conversation has been edited. How well do McConnell and Biden know each other? Both men have referred to each other as “friends.” And McConnell was the only Senate Republican to attend Beau Biden’s funeral. Have they spoken since Election Day? Biden told reporters that he spoke to McConnell today and thanked him for this floor speech. It’s not completely clear if they’d spoken before that. Biden at a recent press conference declined to say whether he’d spoken to the majority leader, prompting some speculation in Twitterverse.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitol after the Senate Republican Policy luncheon. | Getty Images | Do you think this will translate to the pair hashing out deals? Their long-standing relationship is likely to help in the sense that they seem to understand each other. Both men worked closely together while Biden was vice president. For example, in 2012 Biden and McConnell reached a bipartisan compromise on the fiscal cliff. But the Senate has only become a more partisan institution and while bipartisanship was a big part of Biden’s campaign pitch, it’s hard to know how much appetite for that there will be. McConnell’s moves will be guided by a desire to protect his majority in 2022. What does this mean for Biden’s agenda? The first test will be how McConnell handles Biden’s Cabinet appointments. McConnell and Biden are likely going to have to work together on spending deals and coronavirus relief, but outside of that it’s hard to say. Infrastructure is another area where Republicans and Democrats could potentially find common ground. But all of that may be the extent to which we’ll see collaboration. Democrats, for example, are wary of how McConnell will handle any judicial nominees Biden puts forward. Other predictions? I’ve learned with McConnell not to try to predict beyond what he says. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Very excited for the El Paso Chihuahuas to play again. Reach out at rrayasam@politico.com , or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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A message from Ford Motor Company: Embrace Change. You don’t become a 117-year-old automaker in this country by refusing to change. The Ford Motor Company does not resist, deny or ignore change. We pledge to make our most iconic vehicles electric. To use 100 percent renewable energy across all global manufacturing plants by 2035. To stand for lower greenhouse gas emissions. To stand with Americans and for the planet. | | | | | LET’S MAKE A DEAL — Biden named Louise Terrell director of his White House Office of Legislative Affairs late last month — making her the president’s chief ambassador to Congress at a moment when Washington seems all but ungovernable. By even the most charitable analysis, he’s handed Terrell a brutal job. Though little known even in Washington, running the Office of Legislative Affairs is a tough, political, often fraught job. It’s about drafting bills big enough to matter and narrow enough to pass, nudging legislation to friendly committees of jurisdiction, judging which chairs work best with a long leash and which need constant wrangling, knowing which members need which amendment, and which ones just want an invitation to a White House movie screening, writes Nancy Scola for POLITICO Magazine. If Terrell does make it work, she’ll have two assets: One is that her boss, who spent 36 years in the Senate, treasures the relationships he built there, and is far more of a dealmaker than Barack Obama, as senator or president, ever was. Terrell first worked for Biden as a Senate staffer back in 2001, when he was a member of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. Washington insiders who’ve worked with both of them see her as very much in his mold. The other is her own web of connections. Though she hasn’t worked in official Washington since the start of 2017 — most recently, she was the founding executive director of the charitable Biden Foundation, and is coming off a year-long stint at the consulting giant McKinsey — she has long relationships with a number of the key players in 2021, from Democratic senators to women’s rights advocates to a healthy helping of Republican lobbyists. But in 2021 that may not be enough: The president’s own party is riven by infighting, with a hair-width House majority that gives huge leverage to a handful of restive members on the left. The Republicans, meanwhile, have learned that saying “no” to Democrats gives them far more traction than saying “yes” to anything.
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| | TOMORROW - TALKING TRANSITION WITH SENATOR CASEY: From Janet Yellen to Antony Blinken to Lloyd Austin, President-elect Joe Biden is building his Cabinet. What can we infer from Biden’s nominations so far? Which of his nominees will face the toughest confirmation obstacles in the Senate? Are progressives satisfied with his choices? Join POLITICO for our first Transition Playbook: Live edition featuring Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who will break it all down. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | FIRST ON POLITICO: GRANHOLM TO ENERGY — Biden will pick former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to run the Energy Department , the agency that would play a key role in helping develop the technologies needed to fulfill his pledge to move the country off fossil fuels, people with knowledge of the decision tell Tyler Pager and Zack Colman. Granholm, who served two terms as Michigan’s governor, is experienced in dealing with the auto industry — a potentially big advantage as the new president seeks to speed the rollout of electric vehicles and the network of charging stations needed to power them. THE CLIMATE CHIEF — Biden will name former EPA head Gina McCarthy as his domestic climate policy chief , placing one of the architects of Obama’s climate regulatory efforts at the helm of his strategy to put the country on a path to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, people familiar with the decision said.
| | MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO GEORGIA — In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, campaigns reporter James Arkin gives an on-the-ground look at what Georgia voters are thinking as early Senate runoff voting gets underway — and how visits from the president and president-elect are putting national politics front and center in the state.
| | | | Welcome to Bidenology, Nightly’s look at the president-elect and what to expect in his administration. Tonight, with news of Pete Buttigieg’s nomination to become Transportation secretary, we look at what the new administration has in store for DOT policy, and what’s in store for the former South Bend, Ind., mayor: Despite wanting to serve as U.N. ambassador, the 38-year old Buttigieg has landed at the Department of Transportation, a somewhat surprising choice for the 55,000 employee, $87 billion agency that oversees airspace, highways, pipelines and more. As Tyler Pager and Sam Mintz wrote today, South Bend is a city of just more than 100,000 residents, with a relatively small transportation footprint: “ South Bend Transpo, the local transit agency, has a fleet of 60 buses and has seen sinking ridership in the last few years. There’s an international airport near South Bend, but it’s run by the county.” Buttigieg did have big plans for the policy area during the presidential campaign: He was one of the first candidates with a detailed infrastructure plan. After the election, POLITICO’s Morning Transportation team reported on the initiatives the Biden team will now entrust Buttigieg to implement at DOT. First on the list: “The new administration is widely expected to implement a mask mandate for transportation, including airlines and public transit, Stephanie Beasley reports, although how he’ll do it remains unclear. ‘Biden could issue an executive order on the matter, or CDC could be empowered to exercise its broad authority.’”
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| | | | | THE BLUEST CHECK — For years, Trump’s Twitter account has taken up an inordinate amount of our collective brain space. It’s where he’s made policy changes, made his feelings very known about every part of his presidency and even fired people. In the latest 2020 Check-In, Eugene Daniels talks with Nancy on how the president has used the social media platform, and what his future on Twitter looks like.
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| | | EUROPE’S STOCKING STUFFERS — EU citizens may be in for an extra special Christmas gift — their first coronavirus vaccine . The committee that’s expected to recommend a conditional marketing authorization for the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine will meet on Dec. 21, the European Medicines Agency announced today — which means official authorization could come a few days later. That meeting is eight days earlier than the previously floated Dec. 29 date, the latest day this year that the EMA said it would meet to decide on the authorization recommendation. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the news today, tweeting that it was “likely that the first Europeans will be vaccinated before end 2020.” Still, this approval would still come several weeks after the U.K.’s green light, and more than a week after the U.S. granted approval.
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| | JOIN THURSDAY - CLOSING THE HEALTH CARE GAP: Another Covid-19 outbreak is taking a significant toll on the health of the Latino community. As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to assume office, how will his administration address the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of color, particularly Latinos? Join POLITICO for a virtual conversation on the policy, economic and cultural barriers Latinos confront in accessing quality health care and how the pandemic can create an opportunity to identify solutions. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | |
16,000 The number of progressive group Our Revolution supporters the organization says they have ready for “phone-banking, texting and door-to-door canvassing” for Nina Turner’s Ohio congressional campaign, according to executive director Joseph Geevarghese. Top progressive elected officials, groups and entertainers are throwing their weight behind Turner’s congressional campaign, setting up a clash between left-wing and establishment-oriented Democrats over a House seat in Ohio just as Biden is about to take office. |
| | | HEAD COUNT — The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that between 330.7 million to 335.5 million people live in the country. The estimate is the first preview of a 2020 census count that has been plagued by the pandemic and by lawsuits. Yes, the count is important because it guides how $1.5 trillion in federal dollars gets doled out and which states could gain or lose congressional seats. But it’s also a look at how the country has changed over the past 10 years. Here are some things the census is expected show us: — If the population estimate is closer to the low end, it would be the smallest decade-long population growth since the first census in 1790, said William Frey, a senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Even if population growth is at the high end of today’s estimate, it would be the lowest decade-long growth since the 1930s, when the country was in a depression. The country is rapidly aging, fewer people are having fewer babies and immigration has tightened — especially during the Trump administration, Frey said. — For the first time the census asked people living together to define their relationship as “same-sex” or “opposite-sex,” which will provide the most comprehensive count yet of same-sex couples and where they live in the country. Expect the count to show that same-sex couples aren’t just clustered in big cities, Frey said. Still it could be another 10 years before the country has a better count of the country’s LGBTQ population. The Census didn’t ask about people’s sexual orientation or their gender identity, a proposal supported by the Biden Administration. — This year’s Census also allowed people who identify as white or Black to add more detail about their origins in a separate line so a person can fill in Irish underneath white or Ethopian under Black. For the first time the Census will likely show an absolute decline in the number of white people in the U.S. over a decade, Frey said. But the census approach to race and ethnicity has been criticized for a lack of nuance. Some want to do away with the race question, but it is more likely that the census will refine its approach to race with more subcategories. The Biden administration supports adding a new Middle East North African category to the count.
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