President Joe Biden will sign an executive order Monday giving priority to US companies and products in contracts with the federal government

Joe Biden to sign executive orders to promote 'Made in America' products

Here are the biggest news stories of the morning - From Australia's approval of Pfizer vaccine to Biden's plans to reinstate the travel ban on non-US citizens. Read the full story by clicking on the headline.

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Video:&nbsp;US Senate's Schumer says Trump impeachment trial will be fair but move quickly

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Here are the biggest news stories of the morning - From Australia's approval of Pfizer vaccine to Biden's plans to reinstate the travel ban on non-US citizens. Read the full story by clicking on the headline.

Here are the biggest news stories of the morning - From Australia's approval of Pfizer vaccine to Biden's plans to reinstate the travel ban on non-US citizens. Read the full story by clicking on the headline. Biden to reinstate coronavirus travel ban for most non-US citizens: Report Mexico's President Lopez Obrador tests positive for Covid-19, says symptoms are mild Vaccinated people may also spread COVID-19: England's deputy chief medical officer Six shot dead, including pregnant woman, in 'act of mass murder' in Indianapolis Australia approves Pfizer-BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine Dutch police clash with anti-lockdown rioters in two cities Video: US Senate's Schumer says Trump impeachment trial will be fair but move quickly

Morning news brief: Biden to reinstate travel ban, Australia approves Pfizer vaccine, and more

President Joe Biden will impose a ban on most non-U.S. citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19.

Biden administration to reinstate COVID travel rules, imposes ban on South Africa

Hours before President Joe Biden took the oath of office, he entered the front pew of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, the seat of Catholic Washington, and beheld the mosaics behind the altar.

An intimate group of family, friends and congressional leaders had gathered for Mass, in the place where Pope Francis spoke in 2015 and where the funeral for John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Roman Catholic president, was held.

When it was time for the homily, the Rev. Kevin O’Brien, president of Santa Clara University and friend of the Biden family, compared Biden’s upcoming inaugural message to the words of Jesus.

“Your public service is animated by the same conviction,” he said, “to help and protect people and to advance justice and reconciliation, especially for those who are too often looked over and left behind. This is your noble commission. This is the divine summons for all of us.”

There are myriad changes with the incoming Biden administration. One of the most significant: a president who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.

Biden, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in a half-century, regularly attends Mass and speaks of how his Catholic faith grounds his life and his policies.

And with Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant, less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.

His arrival comes after four years in which conservative Christianity has reigned in America’s highest halls of power, embodied in white evangelicals laser-focused on ending abortion and guarding against what they saw as encroachments on their freedoms. Their devotion to former President Donald Trump was so fervent that many showed up in Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the election results.

Biden’s leadership is a repudiation of the claim by many conservative leaders that Democrats are inherently anti-Christian.

His rise comes as fewer registered Democrats identify as Christian. Nearly half are religiously unaffiliated or believers of other faiths, a share that has grown significantly in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center; about 80% of registered Republicans are Christian.

Yet the current influence of liberal Christianity in the Democratic Party goes beyond Biden. Sen. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, won election with a campaign rooted in Black liberation theology. The Sunday after his election, Warnock preached about John the Baptist, the “truth-telling troublemaker,” he said, who was beheaded by King Herod for his prophetic witness.

Rep. Cori Bush, a pastor who led Kingdom Embassy International in St. Louis, has started her tenure in Congress advocating universal basic income. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez connects her Catholic faith with her push for reforming health care and environmental policy. She has said her favorite Bible story is one where Jesus, in anger, threw money changers out of the temple.

In his inaugural address, Biden rooted himself and the country in a Christian moral vision that makes room for a pluralistic society, unlike his predecessor who promised to make America a certain kind of Christian nation. Biden quoted Augustine, “a saint in my church,” he said, who wrote that “a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.”

Augustine, the fourth-century North African bishop, recognized that no political community was going to be the city of God on earth, explained Eric Gregory, professor of religion at Princeton University. This passage, from the saint’s “City of God,” has been used in the 20th century “to open up the space for a nontheocratic way for Christians to understand what it means to be citizens in a plural society,” he said.

For Biden, “it was a subtle and explicit effort to show a different vision of a way in which a Christian could imagine themselves as part of a diverse America, one that is defined by these common objects of love, rather than by hate and fear or exclusion,” he said.

While conservative Catholics have doubled down on abortion policy and religious freedom for the past four years, Biden’s policy priorities reflect those of Pope Francis, who has sought to turn the church’s attention from sexual politics to issues like environmental protection, poverty and migration.

On his first day in office, Biden recommitted the United States to the Paris climate agreement, the international accord designed to avert global warming; ended the ban on travel from predominantly Muslim and African countries; and stopped construction on the border wall.

Biden’s support for abortion rights is already causing tension in the Catholic church. Even before the inaugural ceremony had finished, Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued an extensive statement criticizing Biden for policies “that would advance moral evils,” especially “in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.” Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, who is known for his alignment with Francis’ social and economic priorities, pushed back on Twitter, calling the statement unprecedented and “ill-considered.”

Biden’s priorities reflect values that progressive faith leaders have pushed for and that motivated many to speak out for him during the campaign, said Derrick Harkins, who led interfaith outreach for the Democratic National Committee this past cycle. There is a sense of moral synergy on the left among not only progressive Christians but also humanists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and the spectrum of faith traditions, he said.

The work now “has a chance of really having traction,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about what can unfold.”

The grassroots progressive Christian movement is center stage in Biden’s Washington.

Unlike four years ago, when many of the participants in the post-inaugural prayer service were conservative evangelicals or prosperity gospel preachers, this year’s Thursday service included a broad array of religious progressives, including two transgender faith leaders. Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, a Jewish community in Los Angeles, prayed for the coming of a new America, one “built on love, rooted in justice and propelled by our moral imagination.”

The Rev. William Barber II, a chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, preached and directly challenged Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to pursue a Third Reconstruction, decades after the civil rights era. He urged them to address “interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation/denial of health care, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.”

Jesus taught that a nation is judged by how it treats the least of these, the poor, the hungry, the sick, the immigrant, he explained in an interview.

“Birth pangs require one thing: pushing,” he said. “That is what the movement has to do.”

For many believers, the shift in the Christianity of the presidency is already personal. On the eve of his inauguration, Biden led the nation in a memorial service on the mall for victims of the coronavirus pandemic.

He adopted the posture of a chaplain, noted Michelle Ami Reyes, vice president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, a group that started last year to combat anti-Asian racism rising from the pandemic.

“That is a deeply biblical posture,” she said, “mourning with those who mourn.”

Hours before President Joe Biden took the oath of office, he entered the front pew of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, the seat of Catholic Washington, and beheld the mosaics behind the altar.

Hours before President Joe Biden took the oath of office, he entered the front pew of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, the seat of Catholic Washington, and beheld the mosaics behind the altar. An intimate group of family, friends and congressional leaders had gathered for Mass, in the place where Pope Francis spoke in 2015 and where the funeral for John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Roman Catholic president, was held. When it was time for the homily, the Rev. Kevin O’Brien, president of Santa Clara University and friend of the Biden family, compared Biden’s upcoming inaugural message to the words of Jesus. “Your public service is animated by the same conviction,” he said, “to help and protect people and to advance justice and reconciliation, especially for those who are too often looked over and left behind. This is your noble commission. This is the divine summons for all of us.” There are myriad changes with the incoming Biden administration. One of the most significant: a president who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices. Biden, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in a half-century, regularly attends Mass and speaks of how his Catholic faith grounds his life and his policies. And with Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant, less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality. His arrival comes after four years in which conservative Christianity has reigned in America’s highest halls of power, embodied in white evangelicals laser-focused on ending abortion and guarding against what they saw as encroachments on their freedoms. Their devotion to former President Donald Trump was so fervent that many showed up in Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the election results. Biden’s leadership is a repudiation of the claim by many conservative leaders that Democrats are inherently anti-Christian. His rise comes as fewer registered Democrats identify as Christian. Nearly half are religiously unaffiliated or believers of other faiths, a share that has grown significantly in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center; about 80% of registered Republicans are Christian. Yet the current influence of liberal Christianity in the Democratic Party goes beyond Biden. Sen. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, won election with a campaign rooted in Black liberation theology. The Sunday after his election, Warnock preached about John the Baptist, the “truth-telling troublemaker,” he said, who was beheaded by King Herod for his prophetic witness. Rep. Cori Bush, a pastor who led Kingdom Embassy International in St. Louis, has started her tenure in Congress advocating universal basic income. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez connects her Catholic faith with her push for reforming health care and environmental policy. She has said her favorite Bible story is one where Jesus, in anger, threw money changers out of the temple. In his inaugural address, Biden rooted himself and the country in a Christian moral vision that makes room for a pluralistic society, unlike his predecessor who promised to make America a certain kind of Christian nation. Biden quoted Augustine, “a saint in my church,” he said, who wrote that “a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.” Augustine, the fourth-century North African bishop, recognized that no political community was going to be the city of God on earth, explained Eric Gregory, professor of religion at Princeton University. This passage, from the saint’s “City of God,” has been used in the 20th century “to open up the space for a nontheocratic way for Christians to understand what it means to be citizens in a plural society,” he said. For Biden, “it was a subtle and explicit effort to show a different vision of a way in which a Christian could imagine themselves as part of a diverse America, one that is defined by these common objects of love, rather than by hate and fear or exclusion,” he said. While conservative Catholics have doubled down on abortion policy and religious freedom for the past four years, Biden’s policy priorities reflect those of Pope Francis, who has sought to turn the church’s attention from sexual politics to issues like environmental protection, poverty and migration. On his first day in office, Biden recommitted the United States to the Paris climate agreement, the international accord designed to avert global warming; ended the ban on travel from predominantly Muslim and African countries; and stopped construction on the border wall. Biden’s support for abortion rights is already causing tension in the Catholic church. Even before the inaugural ceremony had finished, Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued an extensive statement criticizing Biden for policies “that would advance moral evils,” especially “in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.” Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, who is known for his alignment with Francis’ social and economic priorities, pushed back on Twitter, calling the statement unprecedented and “ill-considered.” Biden’s priorities reflect values that progressive faith leaders have pushed for and that motivated many to speak out for him during the campaign, said Derrick Harkins, who led interfaith outreach for the Democratic National Committee this past cycle. There is a sense of moral synergy on the left among not only progressive Christians but also humanists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and the spectrum of faith traditions, he said. The work now “has a chance of really having traction,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about what can unfold.” The grassroots progressive Christian movement is center stage in Biden’s Washington. Unlike four years ago, when many of the participants in the post-inaugural prayer service were conservative evangelicals or prosperity gospel preachers, this year’s Thursday service included a broad array of religious progressives, including two transgender faith leaders. Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, a Jewish community in Los Angeles, prayed for the coming of a new America, one “built on love, rooted in justice and propelled by our moral imagination.” The Rev. William Barber II, a chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, preached and directly challenged Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to pursue a Third Reconstruction, decades after the civil rights era. He urged them to address “interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation/denial of health care, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.” Jesus taught that a nation is judged by how it treats the least of these, the poor, the hungry, the sick, the immigrant, he explained in an interview. “Birth pangs require one thing: pushing,” he said. “That is what the movement has to do.” For many believers, the shift in the Christianity of the presidency is already personal. On the eve of his inauguration, Biden led the nation in a memorial service on the mall for victims of the coronavirus pandemic. He adopted the posture of a chaplain, noted Michelle Ami Reyes, vice president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, a group that started last year to combat anti-Asian racism rising from the pandemic. “That is a deeply biblical posture,” she said, “mourning with those who mourn.”

In Biden’s Catholic faith, an Ascendant liberal Christianity

TikTok is about to outlast President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>. Now, the company could become an early test of President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden’s</a> stance toward Chinese tech companies.

Trump demanded last year that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the viral video app. He said TikTok raised urgent national security concerns, on the grounds that the Chinese government could get access to users’ data. The dispute disrupted the app’s stratospheric rise.

ByteDance and the Trump administration are still talking, people familiar with the matter said. But it looks increasingly likely that the fate of the app will not be decided by Trump, who announced his demands with great fanfare over the summer, backed away from a deal he approved a month later and then turned his attention elsewhere.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/germany-orders-coronavirus-drugs-that-cured-donald-trump-358977" hreflang="en">Germany orders coronavirus drugs that cured Donald Trump</a>

Instead, TikTok’s future will fall into the hands of Biden, who has said little about the company or the broader, bipartisan concerns about the growing influence of Chinese technology companies.

On Tuesday, the U.S. government agreed to extend a deadline in a court battle over restrictions targeting TikTok. The new deadline is Feb. 18 — almost a month after Biden takes office.

“My gut is that they’re hoping to ride this out and hope that this is on the back burner, and they can kind of skirt by under the radar,” Samm Sacks, a fellow at think tank New America, said about ByteDance’s approach to the final days of the Trump administration.

Biden has said America must be tougher toward Beijing, calling China’s president, Xi Jinping, a “thug.” But he has offered few details about how that approach would play out. He has said only that he will try to have a more consistent policy toward the country — in contrast to Trump’s patchwork aggression — while pressuring it on issues like its theft of American intellectual property.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/jim-carrey-bids-farewell-to-worst-first-lady-melania-trump-with-a-cartoon-thx-for-nothing-358980" hreflang="en">Jim Carrey bids farewell to 'Worst First Lady’ Melania Trump with a cartoon: ‘Thx For Nothing’</a>

A spokesman for Biden’s transition team declined to comment on the president-elect’s plans. TikTok declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department said in a statement that the risks associated with the app “have not changed, and the order requiring the divestiture stands.”

The government has been working with ByteDance and others to resolve the concerns, the spokeswoman said, adding, “That work continues, and the attorney general is authorized to take any steps necessary to enforce the order.”

TikTok is far from the only company with a stake in Biden’s approach to Chinese technology giants, which have increasingly tried to reach customers around the world. Trump’s administration spent years pressing U.S. carriers and its allies abroad to drop Chinese telecom equipment from 5G wireless networks. It tried to keep crucial equipment from Chinese semiconductor makers. Then it turned its gaze to consumer apps, trying to ban TikTok and WeChat and forcing the sale of dating app Grindr.

This month, Trump banned Alipay, owned by a branch of Chinese giant Alibaba, and a collection of other apps. The bans don’t take effect for 45 days, meaning designing and putting them in place will fall to Biden’s administration.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/jim-carrey-bids-farewell-to-worst-first-lady-melania-trump-with-a-cartoon-thx-for-nothing-358980" hreflang="en">Jim Carrey bids farewell to 'Worst First Lady’ Melania Trump with a cartoon: ‘Thx For Nothing’</a>

TikTok has soared in popularity in the last year, particularly among younger users, who record lip-sync videos, comedy bits and riffs on other videos. TikTok says the national security concerns are unfounded, noting that its data is stored in the United States, with a backup in Singapore.

Trump’s efforts to pry the service from its Chinese parent company began this summer when he issued two executive orders targeting the app. One barred American firms from working with the app, effectively banning it. A second order demanded that ByteDance sell the app. The approach gave the government leverage: If the company made the sale, the administration would nix the other restrictions.

In September, ByteDance announced that it had reached a deal it hoped would satisfy the U.S. government. Software giant Oracle and Walmart would take their own stakes in TikTok, Oracle would manage the data that flows over the app, and leaders at the service would be American citizens.

Trump said Sept. 19 that he approved of the deal. But then he backtracked, expressing concerns that it would not put enough of the app’s ownership in American hands. The talks to complete the deal have continued ever since.

TikTok received multiple extensions from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a group of federal officials who vet deals involving international companies. The Trump administration decided it would not extend the deadline beyond Dec. 4 but has declined to act on the time limit. Under Trump’s executive order, the Justice Department has the authority to enforce his demands.

Federal judges have also put the administration’s ban on hold, eliminating some of its leverage over the app. The government has appealed the rulings.

Walmart declined to comment. Oracle did not respond to a request for comment.

Some people on ByteDance’s side of the negotiating table believe there are advantages to getting a deal done before Trump leaves. It would give the company more certainty about the app’s future, rather than waiting to see what Biden would do.

At the moment, if ByteDance wants to delay a deal beyond the Trump administration, “they don’t have to do anything, and they can outlast him,” said James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said that if the administration launched a legal effort to force the sale of the app, ByteDance would “just stall it in court.”

But TikTok’s fate under Biden is far from certain.

If he wanted to offer TikTok some immediate relief from the pressure, Biden could rescind the executive order that was designed to cut it off from U.S. companies. He could also rescind the order commanding ByteDance to sell the app.

Biden’s administration could also consider a wider range of measures, short of an outright sale, to mitigate the federal panel’s concerns about TikTok, experts said.

That may take time. The new administration is still staffing important positions that would tackle the issue, meaning it could be months before ByteDance is able to resolve the government’s divestiture order. And without rescinding the policies aimed at TikTok, the Biden administration might find it hard to back down from the government’s defense of those policies in court.

Biden could also decide to pursue a harder line against the app as he looks to balance a desire for a coherent China policy with pressure from lawmakers from both parties who worry about the risks associated with Chinese tech companies.

While the talks between ByteDance and the government continue in private, TikTok has maintained its lobbying effort to convince government officials they have nothing to fear from the app, which uses the cheery slogan “Make Your Day.”

On Dec. 18, the company sent an edition of its email newsletter for policymakers in Washington. It reported that small businesses in Austin, Texas, were using the app to reach customers, that the company was donating $10 million to academic institutions that have public health programs, and that the service had updated its terms of service to better police bullying.

The footer of the newsletter ended with the same message it always does: “We hope this made your day.”

TikTok is about to outlast President Donald Trump. Now, the company could become an early test of President-elect Joe Biden’s stance toward Chinese tech companies.

TikTok is about to outlast President Donald Trump. Now, the company could become an early test of President-elect Joe Biden’s stance toward Chinese tech companies. Trump demanded last year that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the viral video app. He said TikTok raised urgent national security concerns, on the grounds that the Chinese government could get access to users’ data. The dispute disrupted the app’s stratospheric rise. ByteDance and the Trump administration are still talking, people familiar with the matter said. But it looks increasingly likely that the fate of the app will not be decided by Trump, who announced his demands with great fanfare over the summer, backed away from a deal he approved a month later and then turned his attention elsewhere. Also read| Germany orders coronavirus drugs that cured Donald Trump Instead, TikTok’s future will fall into the hands of Biden, who has said little about the company or the broader, bipartisan concerns about the growing influence of Chinese technology companies. On Tuesday, the U.S. government agreed to extend a deadline in a court battle over restrictions targeting TikTok. The new deadline is Feb. 18 — almost a month after Biden takes office. “My gut is that they’re hoping to ride this out and hope that this is on the back burner, and they can kind of skirt by under the radar,” Samm Sacks, a fellow at think tank New America, said about ByteDance’s approach to the final days of the Trump administration. Biden has said America must be tougher toward Beijing, calling China’s president, Xi Jinping, a “thug.” But he has offered few details about how that approach would play out. He has said only that he will try to have a more consistent policy toward the country — in contrast to Trump’s patchwork aggression — while pressuring it on issues like its theft of American intellectual property. Also read| Jim Carrey bids farewell to 'Worst First Lady’ Melania Trump with a cartoon: ‘Thx For Nothing’ A spokesman for Biden’s transition team declined to comment on the president-elect’s plans. TikTok declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department said in a statement that the risks associated with the app “have not changed, and the order requiring the divestiture stands.” The government has been working with ByteDance and others to resolve the concerns, the spokeswoman said, adding, “That work continues, and the attorney general is authorized to take any steps necessary to enforce the order.” TikTok is far from the only company with a stake in Biden’s approach to Chinese technology giants, which have increasingly tried to reach customers around the world. Trump’s administration spent years pressing U.S. carriers and its allies abroad to drop Chinese telecom equipment from 5G wireless networks. It tried to keep crucial equipment from Chinese semiconductor makers. Then it turned its gaze to consumer apps, trying to ban TikTok and WeChat and forcing the sale of dating app Grindr. This month, Trump banned Alipay, owned by a branch of Chinese giant Alibaba, and a collection of other apps. The bans don’t take effect for 45 days, meaning designing and putting them in place will fall to Biden’s administration. Also read| Jim Carrey bids farewell to 'Worst First Lady’ Melania Trump with a cartoon: ‘Thx For Nothing’ TikTok has soared in popularity in the last year, particularly among younger users, who record lip-sync videos, comedy bits and riffs on other videos. TikTok says the national security concerns are unfounded, noting that its data is stored in the United States, with a backup in Singapore. Trump’s efforts to pry the service from its Chinese parent company began this summer when he issued two executive orders targeting the app. One barred American firms from working with the app, effectively banning it. A second order demanded that ByteDance sell the app. The approach gave the government leverage: If the company made the sale, the administration would nix the other restrictions. In September, ByteDance announced that it had reached a deal it hoped would satisfy the U.S. government. Software giant Oracle and Walmart would take their own stakes in TikTok, Oracle would manage the data that flows over the app, and leaders at the service would be American citizens. Trump said Sept. 19 that he approved of the deal. But then he backtracked, expressing concerns that it would not put enough of the app’s ownership in American hands. The talks to complete the deal have continued ever since. TikTok received multiple extensions from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a group of federal officials who vet deals involving international companies. The Trump administration decided it would not extend the deadline beyond Dec. 4 but has declined to act on the time limit. Under Trump’s executive order, the Justice Department has the authority to enforce his demands. Federal judges have also put the administration’s ban on hold, eliminating some of its leverage over the app. The government has appealed the rulings. Walmart declined to comment. Oracle did not respond to a request for comment. Some people on ByteDance’s side of the negotiating table believe there are advantages to getting a deal done before Trump leaves. It would give the company more certainty about the app’s future, rather than waiting to see what Biden would do. At the moment, if ByteDance wants to delay a deal beyond the Trump administration, “they don’t have to do anything, and they can outlast him,” said James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said that if the administration launched a legal effort to force the sale of the app, ByteDance would “just stall it in court.” But TikTok’s fate under Biden is far from certain. If he wanted to offer TikTok some immediate relief from the pressure, Biden could rescind the executive order that was designed to cut it off from U.S. companies. He could also rescind the order commanding ByteDance to sell the app. Biden’s administration could also consider a wider range of measures, short of an outright sale, to mitigate the federal panel’s concerns about TikTok, experts said. That may take time. The new administration is still staffing important positions that would tackle the issue, meaning it could be months before ByteDance is able to resolve the government’s divestiture order. And without rescinding the policies aimed at TikTok, the Biden administration might find it hard to back down from the government’s defense of those policies in court. Biden could also decide to pursue a harder line against the app as he looks to balance a desire for a coherent China policy with pressure from lawmakers from both parties who worry about the risks associated with Chinese tech companies. While the talks between ByteDance and the government continue in private, TikTok has maintained its lobbying effort to convince government officials they have nothing to fear from the app, which uses the cheery slogan “Make Your Day.” On Dec. 18, the company sent an edition of its email newsletter for policymakers in Washington. It reported that small businesses in Austin, Texas, were using the app to reach customers, that the company was donating $10 million to academic institutions that have public health programs, and that the service had updated its terms of service to better police bullying. The footer of the newsletter ended with the same message it always does: “We hope this made your day.”

Tiktok is poised to outlast Trump and to test Biden

Morning news brief: Biggest stories of the morning - From Johnson and Biden's exchange, to a strong earthquake in Antarctica. To read the full story, click on the headline.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/boris-johnson-and-joe-biden-vow-to-deepen-ties-and-cooperate-on-tackling-climate-change-358893" hreflang="en">Johnson and Biden vow to deepen ties and cooperate on tackling climate change</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/09/17/160322-untitled-design-96.jpg?itok=85E7FoU3" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/70-magnitude-earthquake-rocks-coast-of-antarctica-358892" hreflang="en">7.0-magnitude earthquake rocks coast of Antarctica</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2018/09/12/47045-antarctica-iceberg-reuters.jpg?itok=AczwORP4" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-eu-express-deep-concerns-over-widespread-detentions-in-russia-protests-358895" hreflang="en">US, EU express 'deep concerns' over 'widespread detentions' in Russia protests</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2021/01/24/179787-untitled-design.jpg?itok=UxkSEujK" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trafficking-operation-busted-in-california-33-children-recovered-358897" hreflang="en">Trafficking operation busted in California, 33 children recovered</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2021/01/24/179788-untitled-design.jpg?itok=Q-ZFvn7T" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tse-chi-lop-alleged-asia-drug-syndicate-kingpin-arrested-by-dutch-police-358899" hreflang="en">Tse Chi Lop: Alleged Asia drug syndicate kingpin arrested by Dutch police</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2021/01/24/179789-untitled-design-1.jpg?itok=5gqzVuty" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/polls-reveal-support-for-bolsonaro-fell-sharply-but-majority-reject-impeachment-358900" hreflang="en">Polls reveal support for Bolsonaro fell sharply, but majority reject impeachment</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/11/11/169307-untitled-design-4.jpg?itok=4oSFbnTt" />

Video: Australia wants Google to pay for news; Google threatens to turn off search

<iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-australia-wants-google-to-pay-for-news-google-threatens-to-turn-off-search-358676/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe>

&nbsp;

Morning news brief: Biggest stories of the morning - From Johnson and Biden's exchange, to a strong earthquake in Antarctica. To read the full story, click on the headline.

Morning news brief: Biggest stories of the morning - From Johnson and Biden's exchange, to a strong earthquake in Antarctica. To read the full story, click on the headline. Johnson and Biden vow to deepen ties and cooperate on tackling climate change 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocks coast of Antarctica US, EU express 'deep concerns' over 'widespread detentions' in Russia protests Trafficking operation busted in California, 33 children recovered Tse Chi Lop: Alleged Asia drug syndicate kingpin arrested by Dutch police Polls reveal support for Bolsonaro fell sharply, but majority reject impeachment Video: Australia wants Google to pay for news; Google threatens to turn off search

Morning news brief: Biden-Johnson to deepen ties, earthquake in Antarctica, and more

There was no distribution plan for the coronavirus vaccine set up by the Trump administration as the virus raged in the their last months in office, new President Joe Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, has said.

"The process to distribute the vaccine, particularly outside of nursing homes and hospitals out into the community as a whole, did not really exist when we came into the White House," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning.

Joe Biden, a Democrat who took over from Republican President Donald Trump on Wednesday, has promised a fierce fight against the pandemic that killed 400,000 people in the United States under Trump’s watch.&nbsp;

Biden launched a comprehensive federal plan to rein in the raging pandemic, and signed ten wide-ranging executive orders, ordering federal agencies, private industry, and US residents to act to slow the spread of the disease.

According to his detailed plans, Biden will partner with state and local governments to establish vaccination spots in conference centres, stadiums and gymnasiums. The new administration will also deploy thousands of clinical staff from federal agencies, military medical personnel and pharmacy chains to increase vaccinations, and make teachers and grocery clerks eligible.

Vaccination programmes lagged far behind the Trump administration's target of 20 million Americans inoculated by the end of 2020.

"We've seen this factor all over the country where millions of doses have been distributed, but only about half have been given out," Klain said.

"So the process of getting that vaccine into arms - that's the hard process. That's where we're behind as a country. That's where we're focussed in the Biden administration - on getting that ramped up."

The United States will also back a global plan to combat COVID-19 and get vaccines to poorer countries as part of a national strategy.

Under the said strategy, Biden has directed his secretary of state and secretary of health and human services to notify the WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance of Washington’s intent to support the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and join its COVAX facility.

(with inputs from agencies)

There was no distribution plan for the coronavirus vaccine set up by the Trump administration as the virus raged in the their last months in office, new President Joe Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, has said.

There was no distribution plan for the coronavirus vaccine set up by the Trump administration as the virus raged in the their last months in office, new President Joe Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, has said. "The process to distribute the vaccine, particularly outside of nursing homes and hospitals out into the community as a whole, did not really exist when we came into the White House," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning. Joe Biden, a Democrat who took over from Republican President Donald Trump on Wednesday, has promised a fierce fight against the pandemic that killed 400,000 people in the United States under Trump’s watch. Biden launched a comprehensive federal plan to rein in the raging pandemic, and signed ten wide-ranging executive orders, ordering federal agencies, private industry, and US residents to act to slow the spread of the disease. According to his detailed plans, Biden will partner with state and local governments to establish vaccination spots in conference centres, stadiums and gymnasiums. The new administration will also deploy thousands of clinical staff from federal agencies, military medical personnel and pharmacy chains to increase vaccinations, and make teachers and grocery clerks eligible. Vaccination programmes lagged far behind the Trump administration's target of 20 million Americans inoculated by the end of 2020. "We've seen this factor all over the country where millions of doses have been distributed, but only about half have been given out," Klain said. "So the process of getting that vaccine into arms - that's the hard process. That's where we're behind as a country. That's where we're focussed in the Biden administration - on getting that ramped up." The United States will also back a global plan to combat COVID-19 and get vaccines to poorer countries as part of a national strategy. Under the said strategy, Biden has directed his secretary of state and secretary of health and human services to notify the WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance of Washington’s intent to support the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator and join its COVAX facility. (with inputs from agencies)

Trump administration had no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan, White House says

Boris Johnson and Joe Biden on Saturday vowed to deepen ties and cooperate on tackling climate change in their first conversation since the US president's inauguration, the British prime minister's office said.

Johnson used his first phone call with the US&nbsp;president to welcome&nbsp;Biden's announcements that the United States would rejoin the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate and the World Health Organization, and they discussed the prospects of a free trade deal.

Biden on Friday spoke to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his first call to a foreign leader.

The White House in a readout of the call said that Biden "conveyed his intention to strengthen the special relationship between our countries and also "noted the importance of cooperation, including through multilateral organizations, on shared challenges".

"Great to speak to President Joe&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;this evening," Johnson said on Twitter. "I look forward to deepening the longstanding alliance between our two countries as we drive a green and sustainable recovery from COVID-19."

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Great to speak to President <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoeBiden</a> this evening. I look forward to deepening the longstanding alliance between our two countries as we drive a green and sustainable recovery from COVID-19. <a href="https://t.co/Y4P3G74PPz">pic.twitter.com/Y4P3G74PPz</a>
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) <a href="https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1353080620491165699?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 23, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The White House said&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;and Johnson talked about cooperation, including through multilateral organizations, on curbing climate change and fighting COVID-19.

Biden&nbsp;also conveyed his intention to "strengthen the special relationship between our countries and revitalize transatlantic ties, underscoring the critical role of NATO to our collective defence and shared values," the White House said in a release.

A spokeswoman for Johnson said the leaders "also discussed the benefits of a potential free trade deal between our two countries." Britain left the European Union last year.&nbsp;Biden's call with Johnson was his first with a European leader since taking office.

The conversation appeared aimed at warming frosty relations after Biden in 2019 described Johnson as a "physical and emotional clone" of Donald Trump, his predecessor as US president.

Biden has also been critical of Johnson's Brexit policy, but the Downing Street statement said the leaders "discussed the benefits of a potential free trade deal between our two countries".

Johnson said he intended to resolve current trade issues "as soon as possible".

Biden, who has Irish roots, had warned ahead of his election that if Brexit damaged the 1998 Good Friday Agreement he would not consent to a trade deal. That agreement ended 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

Johnson praised Biden for swiftly reversing policy decisions made by his predecessor.&nbsp;

He "warmly welcomed" Biden's decision to put the United States back into the Paris climate accord and rejoin the World Health Organization. The prime minister also praised Biden's commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Boris Johnson and Joe Biden on Saturday vowed to deepen ties and cooperate on tackling climate change in their first conversation since the US president's inauguration, the British prime minister's office said.

Boris Johnson and Joe Biden on Saturday vowed to deepen ties and cooperate on tackling climate change in their first conversation since the US president's inauguration, the British prime minister's office said. Johnson used his first phone call with the US president to welcome Biden's announcements that the United States would rejoin the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate and the World Health Organization, and they discussed the prospects of a free trade deal. Biden on Friday spoke to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his first call to a foreign leader. The White House in a readout of the call said that Biden "conveyed his intention to strengthen the special relationship between our countries and also "noted the importance of cooperation, including through multilateral organizations, on shared challenges". "Great to speak to President Joe Biden this evening," Johnson said on Twitter. "I look forward to deepening the longstanding alliance between our two countries as we drive a green and sustainable recovery from COVID-19." Great to speak to President @JoeBiden this evening. I look forward to deepening the longstanding alliance between our two countries as we drive a green and sustainable recovery from COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/Y4P3G74PPz — Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) January 23, 2021 × The White House said Biden and Johnson talked about cooperation, including through multilateral organizations, on curbing climate change and fighting COVID-19. Biden also conveyed his intention to "strengthen the special relationship between our countries and revitalize transatlantic ties, underscoring the critical role of NATO to our collective defence and shared values," the White House said in a release. A spokeswoman for Johnson said the leaders "also discussed the benefits of a potential free trade deal between our two countries." Britain left the European Union last year. Biden's call with Johnson was his first with a European leader since taking office. The conversation appeared aimed at warming frosty relations after Biden in 2019 described Johnson as a "physical and emotional clone" of Donald Trump, his predecessor as US president. Biden has also been critical of Johnson's Brexit policy, but the Downing Street statement said the leaders "discussed the benefits of a potential free trade deal between our two countries". Johnson said he intended to resolve current trade issues "as soon as possible". Biden, who has Irish roots, had warned ahead of his election that if Brexit damaged the 1998 Good Friday Agreement he would not consent to a trade deal. That agreement ended 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Johnson praised Biden for swiftly reversing policy decisions made by his predecessor. He "warmly welcomed" Biden's decision to put the United States back into the Paris climate accord and rejoin the World Health Organization. The prime minister also praised Biden's commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Boris Johnson and Joe Biden vow to deepen ties and cooperate on tackling climate change

As Joe Biden took office as the 46th President of the United States, all eyes are now on West Asia. On this week's West Asia Post, Ghadi Francis tells you what a Biden White House could mean for the region. For more such stories, keep watching the West Asia post with Ghadi Francis every Friday at 8:30 PM IST, only on WION.

The West Asia Post | What will a Biden White House mean for West Asia?

The United States is planning to reverse former President Donald Trump's immigration policies that have time and again been described as 'Draconian'. According to the White House, the US President Joe Biden told his Mexican counterpart that his administration is undoing the 'Draconian' approach.

US to reverse Trump's 'Draconian' immigration approach

In the race to the bottom for the title of worst American president, the same few sorry names appear at the end of almost every list, jockeying for last place. There’s Andrew Johnson, whose abysmal behavior during Reconstruction led to the first presidential impeachment. There’s Warren G. Harding, responsible for the Teapot Dome scandal. There’s hapless, hated Franklin Pierce; doomed, dead-after-32-days William Henry Harrison; and inevitably, James Buchanan, often considered worst of all because of how badly he bungled the lead-up to the Civil War.

But as historians consider the legacy of <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>, it appears that even the woefully inadequate Buchanan has some serious competition for the spot at the bottom.

“Trump was the first president to be impeached twice and the first to stir up a mob to try to attack the Capitol and disrupt his successor from becoming president,” said Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California, Davis. “These will definitely go down in history books, and they are not good.”

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/watch-melania-trump-refuses-to-pose-with-donald-trump-after-he-leaves-white-house-twitter-laughs-358514">Watch: Melania Trump refuses to pose with Donald Trump after he leaves White House; Twitter laughs</a>

“I already feel that he is the worst,” said Ted Widmer, professor of history at the City University of New York, noting that as bad as Buchanan was — and he was very bad indeed — he was “not as aggressively bad as Trump.”

“Andrew Johnson and Nixon would be the two others in the worst category, and I think Trump has them beat pretty handily, too,” he added. “He has invented a whole new category, a subbasement that no one knew existed.”

Presidential ranking may be a water cooler exercise for historians, but it is also an official institutional pursuit. The Siena College Research Institute regularly compiles ranked lists of all the American presidents, based on the composite views of scholars. So does C-SPAN.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-impeachment-trial-put-off-until-early-february-358797" hreflang="en">Trump impeachment trial put off until early February</a>

Various polls periodically ask regular citizens to weigh in. And on Twitter last week, Chris Hayes of MSNBC took the presidential-ranking parlor game to his followers, asking them to list the “five worst presidents of all time.” (He put Trump as the second worst, just after Johnson.)

Trump was a highly divisive president, of course, and one of the confounding things about him was how two people could look at his behavior and make completely different assessments.

But not so much anymore.

“I would say that before the election it depended on one’s political outlook,” with conservatives applauding his tax cuts, deregulation policies and judicial appointments, said William Cooper Jr., professor emeritus of history at Louisiana State University. “But from the election forward, I don’t see how anyone could feel that Trump’s behavior was anything but reprehensible or that he hasn’t completely destroyed any legacy he would have left.”

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-tried-replacing-attorney-general-for-personal-needs-reports-358769" hreflang="en">Donald Trump tried replacing attorney general for personal needs: Reports</a>

He cited Trump’s refusal to concede the election; his promotion of baseless conspiracy theories attacking voting integrity; his intemperate, self-promoting behavior during the Georgia Senate runoffs, which helped ensure victory for the two Democratic candidates; and his encouragement of the crowd that rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Even conservatives from Atlanta, where Cooper lives, have had it with Trump, he said. “He has tarred and feathered himself, and I think it will blemish him for a long, long, long time.”

Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University and a member of the advisory panel for C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey, said that Trump “was a bad president in just about every regard.”

“I find him to be the worst president in U.S. history, personally,” Brinkley said, “even worse than William Henry Harrison, who was president for only one month. You don’t want to be ranked below him.”

Brinkley brought up Richard Nixon, the only president to resign in disgrace.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/the-end-of-trump-can-be-the-beginning-of-america-358889" hreflang="en">The end of Trump can be the beginning of America</a>

“At least when Nixon left, he put the country ahead of himself at the last minute,” Brinkley said. “Now he looks like a statesman compared to Trump.”

These are all hot takes, of course — the sound of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” the song playing Wednesday as Trump flew out of Washington, has barely faded from our ears — and it is too soon to know how history will judge him. But things do not augur well, said Don Levy, director of Siena’s research institute.

In the most recent Siena survey, a year into the Trump administration, Trump was rated 42nd out of 44 presidents, less terrible than only Buchanan and Johnson. In almost every category — integrity, intelligence and relationship with Congress, for instance — he was rated at or nearly rock bottom. (The exceptions: He was 25th in “willing to take risks” and 10th in “luck.”)

“Speaking in terms of this survey, it would be surprising if Trump was meaningfully rehabilitated,” Levy said. “If the opening paragraph of any discussion starts about being impeached twice, and the second sentence is about the coronavirus, and the third is about partisanship, that’s going to be very hard to overcome.”

Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, said that Trump was the worst president in history, hands down.

“He’s in a whole other category in terms of the damage he’s done to the Republic,” said Wilentz, citing the radicalization of the Republican Party, the inept response to the pandemic and what he called “the brazen, almost psychedelic mendacity of the man.”

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose most recent book, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” looks at how four presidents confronted tough moments in history, said that it normally takes a generation to evaluate a leader. But to the extent that a president’s legacy is determined by his ability to rise to a crisis, Trump will be remembered for his failures: how poorly he handled COVID-19 and how disgracefully he behaved after the election.

“History will look with grave disfavor on President Trump for the crisis he created,” she said.

For his part, Rauchway said he believed that Trump would “crash the bottom five” on the presidential rankings but that the bottom spot itself was uncertain. “I think he has some stiff competition” in Johnson, whom Rauchway personally regards as the worst president of all.

“If I had to predict where historiography would go, I think people would have to recognize that Trumpism — nativism and white supremacy — has deep roots in American history,” Rauchway said. “But Trump himself put it to new and malignant purpose.”

Robert Strauss, a journalist and the author of “Worst. President. Ever.,” a popular history of Buchanan, seemed reluctant to allow the subject of his book to relinquish his title.

“I can go through a litany of things that Buchanan did,” he said. “In the time period between Lincoln’s election and the inauguration” — that is, during the lame-duck period of Buchanan’s presidency — “he let seven states secede and said, ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ He also influenced the Dred Scott decision, the worst decision in Supreme Court history.”

Of course, “the difference was that Buchanan was a nice guy,” Strauss said. “He was the greatest party-giver of the 19th century. He was kind to his nieces and nephews. What he was, was not a very good president.”

As they considered Trump’s record in comparison to that of other presidents, some historians said that he could have done things to salvage his reputation.

“If he had presided over a competent response to COVID, he would have won reelection easily,” Widmer of the City University of New York said. “And if he had responded with grace to his loss, a lot of people would have given him some grudging respect.”

And yes, he added, Trump was worse than Buchanan.

“Trump is a worse failure because he really wanted to be reelected, and he was rejected,” Widmer said. “Buchanan colossally failed, but at least he had the dignity not to run again.”

In the race to the bottom for the title of worst American president, the same few sorry names appear at the end of almost every list, jockeying for last place. There’s Andrew Johnson, whose abysmal behavior during Reconstruction led to the first presidential impeachment.

In the race to the bottom for the title of worst American president, the same few sorry names appear at the end of almost every list, jockeying for last place. There’s Andrew Johnson, whose abysmal behavior during Reconstruction led to the first presidential impeachment. There’s Warren G. Harding, responsible for the Teapot Dome scandal. There’s hapless, hated Franklin Pierce; doomed, dead-after-32-days William Henry Harrison; and inevitably, James Buchanan, often considered worst of all because of how badly he bungled the lead-up to the Civil War. But as historians consider the legacy of Donald Trump, it appears that even the woefully inadequate Buchanan has some serious competition for the spot at the bottom. “Trump was the first president to be impeached twice and the first to stir up a mob to try to attack the Capitol and disrupt his successor from becoming president,” said Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California, Davis. “These will definitely go down in history books, and they are not good.” Also read| Watch: Melania Trump refuses to pose with Donald Trump after he leaves White House; Twitter laughs “I already feel that he is the worst,” said Ted Widmer, professor of history at the City University of New York, noting that as bad as Buchanan was — and he was very bad indeed — he was “not as aggressively bad as Trump.” “Andrew Johnson and Nixon would be the two others in the worst category, and I think Trump has them beat pretty handily, too,” he added. “He has invented a whole new category, a subbasement that no one knew existed.” Presidential ranking may be a water cooler exercise for historians, but it is also an official institutional pursuit. The Siena College Research Institute regularly compiles ranked lists of all the American presidents, based on the composite views of scholars. So does C-SPAN. Also read| Trump impeachment trial put off until early February Various polls periodically ask regular citizens to weigh in. And on Twitter last week, Chris Hayes of MSNBC took the presidential-ranking parlor game to his followers, asking them to list the “five worst presidents of all time.” (He put Trump as the second worst, just after Johnson.) Trump was a highly divisive president, of course, and one of the confounding things about him was how two people could look at his behavior and make completely different assessments. But not so much anymore. “I would say that before the election it depended on one’s political outlook,” with conservatives applauding his tax cuts, deregulation policies and judicial appointments, said William Cooper Jr., professor emeritus of history at Louisiana State University. “But from the election forward, I don’t see how anyone could feel that Trump’s behavior was anything but reprehensible or that he hasn’t completely destroyed any legacy he would have left.” Also read| Donald Trump tried replacing attorney general for personal needs: Reports He cited Trump’s refusal to concede the election; his promotion of baseless conspiracy theories attacking voting integrity; his intemperate, self-promoting behavior during the Georgia Senate runoffs, which helped ensure victory for the two Democratic candidates; and his encouragement of the crowd that rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Even conservatives from Atlanta, where Cooper lives, have had it with Trump, he said. “He has tarred and feathered himself, and I think it will blemish him for a long, long, long time.” Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University and a member of the advisory panel for C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey, said that Trump “was a bad president in just about every regard.” “I find him to be the worst president in U.S. history, personally,” Brinkley said, “even worse than William Henry Harrison, who was president for only one month. You don’t want to be ranked below him.” Brinkley brought up Richard Nixon, the only president to resign in disgrace. Also read| The end of Trump can be the beginning of America “At least when Nixon left, he put the country ahead of himself at the last minute,” Brinkley said. “Now he looks like a statesman compared to Trump.” These are all hot takes, of course — the sound of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” the song playing Wednesday as Trump flew out of Washington, has barely faded from our ears — and it is too soon to know how history will judge him. But things do not augur well, said Don Levy, director of Siena’s research institute. In the most recent Siena survey, a year into the Trump administration, Trump was rated 42nd out of 44 presidents, less terrible than only Buchanan and Johnson. In almost every category — integrity, intelligence and relationship with Congress, for instance — he was rated at or nearly rock bottom. (The exceptions: He was 25th in “willing to take risks” and 10th in “luck.”) “Speaking in terms of this survey, it would be surprising if Trump was meaningfully rehabilitated,” Levy said. “If the opening paragraph of any discussion starts about being impeached twice, and the second sentence is about the coronavirus, and the third is about partisanship, that’s going to be very hard to overcome.” Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, said that Trump was the worst president in history, hands down. “He’s in a whole other category in terms of the damage he’s done to the Republic,” said Wilentz, citing the radicalization of the Republican Party, the inept response to the pandemic and what he called “the brazen, almost psychedelic mendacity of the man.” Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose most recent book, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” looks at how four presidents confronted tough moments in history, said that it normally takes a generation to evaluate a leader. But to the extent that a president’s legacy is determined by his ability to rise to a crisis, Trump will be remembered for his failures: how poorly he handled COVID-19 and how disgracefully he behaved after the election. “History will look with grave disfavor on President Trump for the crisis he created,” she said. For his part, Rauchway said he believed that Trump would “crash the bottom five” on the presidential rankings but that the bottom spot itself was uncertain. “I think he has some stiff competition” in Johnson, whom Rauchway personally regards as the worst president of all. “If I had to predict where historiography would go, I think people would have to recognize that Trumpism — nativism and white supremacy — has deep roots in American history,” Rauchway said. “But Trump himself put it to new and malignant purpose.” Robert Strauss, a journalist and the author of “Worst. President. Ever.,” a popular history of Buchanan, seemed reluctant to allow the subject of his book to relinquish his title. “I can go through a litany of things that Buchanan did,” he said. “In the time period between Lincoln’s election and the inauguration” — that is, during the lame-duck period of Buchanan’s presidency — “he let seven states secede and said, ‘I can’t do anything about it.’ He also influenced the Dred Scott decision, the worst decision in Supreme Court history.” Of course, “the difference was that Buchanan was a nice guy,” Strauss said. “He was the greatest party-giver of the 19th century. He was kind to his nieces and nephews. What he was, was not a very good president.” As they considered Trump’s record in comparison to that of other presidents, some historians said that he could have done things to salvage his reputation. “If he had presided over a competent response to COVID, he would have won reelection easily,” Widmer of the City University of New York said. “And if he had responded with grace to his loss, a lot of people would have given him some grudging respect.” And yes, he added, Trump was worse than Buchanan. “Trump is a worse failure because he really wanted to be reelected, and he was rejected,” Widmer said. “Buchanan colossally failed, but at least he had the dignity not to run again.”

The Trump presidency is now history. So how will it rank?

As Joe Biden misses out, here's how other US presidents shook a leg at inaugural ball

This is a text I received from a prominent conservative Christian minutes after President Biden’s Inaugural Address: “I broke down sobbing. It’s been a long five-and-a-half years.”

Shortly after that, Scott Dudley, senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., emailed me a note that said, “I never thought I would be moved to tears watching a Democratic president get sworn in, but I was. It just felt so good to hear someone who understands and loves this country and constitution, and is an honorable person, take the oath. I’m praying for healing.”

I’ve had conversations with others who tell similar stories.

Joe Biden is an admirable human being, empathetic and generous in spirit, and his speech was elegant and uplifting. But the tears had to do with something else: We had just emerged from a national trauma. It was only two weeks earlier that the Capitol, on whose steps Mr. Biden took the oath of office, was under assault from a mob that had been incited by his predecessor, Donald Trump, in order to undo an election Mr. Trump lost.

Several people died, including a police officer beaten with a fire extinguisher, and many more easily could have, including the former vice president, Mike Pence. And President Biden’s inauguration came only one day after we crossed an almost unimaginably gruesome milestone: 400,000 deaths from Covid-19, a significant number of which would have been prevented had any of Mr. Trump’s most immediate predecessors, Republican or Democratic, been president instead.

But Mr. Trump’s wounding of America doesn’t end there.

Our economy is crippled, with Mr. Trump ending his presidency with the worst jobs record in modern U.S. history. Americans are angrier, more fearful, less trusting of one another and more polarized than at any time in generations and perhaps since the 1850s. Families, friendships, churches and communities are being ripped apart by the savagery of our politics.

The United States is in the grips of an epistemic crisis, with much of the nation having detached itself from reality. In the eyes of the world, among allies and adversaries, America under Mr. Trump became a joke. So it made sense that once Mr. Trump left the White House, powerful emotions would be unleashed.

I wasn’t immune. In the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol, I found myself angry, which is a rare state of mind for me — angry, not just at Mr. Trump but at his Republican enablers, weak and complicit, some of whom broke with Mr. Trump only when his power was rapidly slipping away. Some had to have seen what was coming; others should have seen what was coming and yet they went along for the ride. So the moment Mr. Biden became president I felt like one door shut and another opened. I wanted to be done with Mr. Trump. But I was convinced that before doing so, I needed to struggle one last time with understanding how things went so terribly wrong.

It’s a complicated story, one we don’t fully understand yet and probably won’t for years. But several factors converged to create this American carnage. The first and most obvious is the radicalized base of the Republican Party. The party has long been a mix of conservatism and populism, but over the years it has became less traditionally conservative, at least in the way Edmund Burke, James Madison and Michael Oakeshott have understood conservatism. The base became increasingly reactionary and populist, anti-elite and anti-establishment, disdainful of science and reason, consumed by grievances and fear.

Among the things that characterized Republican primary voters — not all of them, but large swaths of them — was rage at politicians. This was combined with the belief that the system was rigged against them and that America, to become great again, needed someone in office who would operate outside the usual boundaries. The prevailing attitude was that you had to destroy the village in order to save it. Governing experience was viewed with suspicion, evidence that one had been enlisted in the “deep state.” Civility and compromise were seen as weakness; “owning the libs” was the name of the game. These feelings were amplified in a right-wing ecosystem that thrived off creating conflict and creating enemies. Politics had become too boring; things needed to be livened up.

Enter Donald J. Trump — demagogue, con man, reality television star. A man without any governing experience, Mr. Trump was almost proudly ignorant on policy matters. But what he did know how to do, with frightening success, was inflame the passions of the Republican base, to play to their fears and resentments, especially their racial and ethnic resentments, to turn them against our institutions and constitutional order, and to feed them lies and conspiracy theories.

It began in 2011, when Mr. Trump peddled the racist lie that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore an illegitimate president, and he just kept going. To his supporters, Mr. Trump was able to turn his vices into virtues, his corruptions into selling points, his cruelty into a synonym for strength. He was willing to bring a gun to a political and cultural knife fight. And while Mr. Trump did many things poorly, he did one thing superbly: conduct an “information-warfare campaign” that spread misinformation and disinformation on a mass scale, which not only promulgated lies but disoriented the public.

All of this is well-known and yet as Mr. Trump retreats in defeat to Florida, a lawless president who was impeached for a second time, it bears repeating: A party that once stood for order, tradition and morality embraced as its leader a man who was transgressive, who embodied disorder, indecency and a “might makes right” ethic. But the most dangerous and unsettling thing about President Donald Trump was his sociopathic tendencies. It should have been obvious to everyone that Mr. Trump was unstable, impulsive, compulsively dishonest and staggeringly narcissistic. The idea that such a person could be controlled and contained, tamed and calmed, was always a pipe dream. No one was going to change Mr. Trump; if anything, it was he who would change them — and that’s exactly what happened.

Add to all that a third, decisive factor that created this American carnage: Republican lawmakers and the political machinery of the Republican Party that empowered Mr. Trump from the opening minutes to the final hours of his presidency. It’s notable that a lot of Republicans in Congress, particularly the Senate, were never comfortable with Mr. Trump. They hoped he would lose the primary in 2016. The attitude was ABT — Anyone But Trump. Republican primary voters had a different opinion, however, and their will prevailed. The size and ease of Mr. Trump’s victory — by the fall of 2015 he was leading the other candidates in the polls and he never looked back — should have been a bigger warning sign than it was at the time.

This led to a growing accommodation between the Republican political establishment and Mr. Trump. It went through various phases, starting with wishful thinking, the hope that Mr. Trump would become more responsible once he won the nomination (nope) — or that once he won the presidency, he would “grow in office.”

When that didn’t happen either, Plan B (or was it Plan C?) was to surround Mr. Trump with responsible people within his administration and in Congress to act as a check on his worst impulses. In some cases, that undoubtedly worked, but not nearly as well as those who hoped to keep Mr. Trump in line had hoped. One prominent Republican who has served in Congress told me recently, “Trump sunk much lower than I thought he would.”

But Mr. Trump, psychologically damaged and morally corrupt, was always going to lead Republicans down darker and darker alleyways. It would only get worse. Yet those who instinctively recoiled at what Mr. Trump was doing decided to go along. For some, it was fear of being criticized by Mr. Trump and his army. They were afraid that speaking out against Mr. Trump would lead to a primary challenge. (The concern was a valid one; they saw what happened to Jeff Flake, Bob Corker and Mark Sanford.)

Some Republicans rationalized their accommodation on the totally unreasonable hope that Mr. Trump — in his 70s, surrounded by sycophants and in possession of unmatched power — would change the habits of a lifetime. Still others convinced themselves they would tolerate what Mr. Trump did just one more time but never again. And yet as Mr. Trump transgressed one ethical line and then another and then another, Republicans continued to justify their silence, their support, or both.

Others believed that since Mr. Trump was president they might as well work with him to get things done in what they perceived as the public interest: judicial appointments, tax cuts, deregulation and the like. In pushing for this, a few individuals, to their credit, never defended Mr. Trump’s indefensible behavior. But far too many did. White evangelicals like Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Eric Metaxas were among the worst offenders.

For other Republicans, vaulting political ambition and cynical calculation were at play. Lawmakers like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, whose wife and father were viciously targeted by Mr. Trump during the 2016 primary campaign, became lap dogs, hoping to receive Mr. Trump’s blessing and win the loyalty of his supporters. Senator Josh Hawley acted so disgracefully in objecting to approval of the Electoral College votes and feeding baseless conspiracy theories that his mentor, John Danforth, said that “trying so hard” to get Mr. Hawley elected to the Senate “was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.” Lindsey Graham proved to be one of T.S. Eliot’s “hollow men,” empty of heart, a person without a moral compass. House Republicans like Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks showed themselves to be both carnival barkers and cultlike in their devotion to Mr. Trump.

President Donald Trump leaves office with a crimson-stained legacy; a similar stain attaches to those in the party who supported and sustained him, many of them still in positions of power. Both will move on — Mr. Trump to Mar-a-Lago, disgraced, isolated and politically radioactive, more likely to split his party than ever to lead it again; and the Republican Party facing deep internal division, a massive rebuilding and rebranding effort and a very uncertain future.

President Biden inherits a nation sicker, weaker, angrier, more divided and more violent than it has been in living memory. But if we’re fortunate and wise, we will allow the traumatizing effects of the Trump years to catalyze a rededication to ideals we once cherished in public life but cast aside during the Trump era: honor and integrity, compassion and decency, and old-fashioned competence. America is fragmented but also chastened, perhaps ready to rise again. If it does, when it does, it will be after too many tears have been shed and too many hearts have been broken.

(Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations, is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”)

This is a text I received from a prominent conservative Christian minutes after President Biden’s Inaugural Address: “I broke down sobbing. It’s been a long five-and-a-half years.

This is a text I received from a prominent conservative Christian minutes after President Biden’s Inaugural Address: “I broke down sobbing. It’s been a long five-and-a-half years.” Shortly after that, Scott Dudley, senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., emailed me a note that said, “I never thought I would be moved to tears watching a Democratic president get sworn in, but I was. It just felt so good to hear someone who understands and loves this country and constitution, and is an honorable person, take the oath. I’m praying for healing.” I’ve had conversations with others who tell similar stories. Joe Biden is an admirable human being, empathetic and generous in spirit, and his speech was elegant and uplifting. But the tears had to do with something else: We had just emerged from a national trauma. It was only two weeks earlier that the Capitol, on whose steps Mr. Biden took the oath of office, was under assault from a mob that had been incited by his predecessor, Donald Trump, in order to undo an election Mr. Trump lost. Several people died, including a police officer beaten with a fire extinguisher, and many more easily could have, including the former vice president, Mike Pence. And President Biden’s inauguration came only one day after we crossed an almost unimaginably gruesome milestone: 400,000 deaths from Covid-19, a significant number of which would have been prevented had any of Mr. Trump’s most immediate predecessors, Republican or Democratic, been president instead. But Mr. Trump’s wounding of America doesn’t end there. Our economy is crippled, with Mr. Trump ending his presidency with the worst jobs record in modern U.S. history. Americans are angrier, more fearful, less trusting of one another and more polarized than at any time in generations and perhaps since the 1850s. Families, friendships, churches and communities are being ripped apart by the savagery of our politics. The United States is in the grips of an epistemic crisis, with much of the nation having detached itself from reality. In the eyes of the world, among allies and adversaries, America under Mr. Trump became a joke. So it made sense that once Mr. Trump left the White House, powerful emotions would be unleashed. I wasn’t immune. In the aftermath of the siege of the Capitol, I found myself angry, which is a rare state of mind for me — angry, not just at Mr. Trump but at his Republican enablers, weak and complicit, some of whom broke with Mr. Trump only when his power was rapidly slipping away. Some had to have seen what was coming; others should have seen what was coming and yet they went along for the ride. So the moment Mr. Biden became president I felt like one door shut and another opened. I wanted to be done with Mr. Trump. But I was convinced that before doing so, I needed to struggle one last time with understanding how things went so terribly wrong. It’s a complicated story, one we don’t fully understand yet and probably won’t for years. But several factors converged to create this American carnage. The first and most obvious is the radicalized base of the Republican Party. The party has long been a mix of conservatism and populism, but over the years it has became less traditionally conservative, at least in the way Edmund Burke, James Madison and Michael Oakeshott have understood conservatism. The base became increasingly reactionary and populist, anti-elite and anti-establishment, disdainful of science and reason, consumed by grievances and fear. Among the things that characterized Republican primary voters — not all of them, but large swaths of them — was rage at politicians. This was combined with the belief that the system was rigged against them and that America, to become great again, needed someone in office who would operate outside the usual boundaries. The prevailing attitude was that you had to destroy the village in order to save it. Governing experience was viewed with suspicion, evidence that one had been enlisted in the “deep state.” Civility and compromise were seen as weakness; “owning the libs” was the name of the game. These feelings were amplified in a right-wing ecosystem that thrived off creating conflict and creating enemies. Politics had become too boring; things needed to be livened up. Enter Donald J. Trump — demagogue, con man, reality television star. A man without any governing experience, Mr. Trump was almost proudly ignorant on policy matters. But what he did know how to do, with frightening success, was inflame the passions of the Republican base, to play to their fears and resentments, especially their racial and ethnic resentments, to turn them against our institutions and constitutional order, and to feed them lies and conspiracy theories. It began in 2011, when Mr. Trump peddled the racist lie that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore an illegitimate president, and he just kept going. To his supporters, Mr. Trump was able to turn his vices into virtues, his corruptions into selling points, his cruelty into a synonym for strength. He was willing to bring a gun to a political and cultural knife fight. And while Mr. Trump did many things poorly, he did one thing superbly: conduct an “information-warfare campaign” that spread misinformation and disinformation on a mass scale, which not only promulgated lies but disoriented the public. All of this is well-known and yet as Mr. Trump retreats in defeat to Florida, a lawless president who was impeached for a second time, it bears repeating: A party that once stood for order, tradition and morality embraced as its leader a man who was transgressive, who embodied disorder, indecency and a “might makes right” ethic. But the most dangerous and unsettling thing about President Donald Trump was his sociopathic tendencies. It should have been obvious to everyone that Mr. Trump was unstable, impulsive, compulsively dishonest and staggeringly narcissistic. The idea that such a person could be controlled and contained, tamed and calmed, was always a pipe dream. No one was going to change Mr. Trump; if anything, it was he who would change them — and that’s exactly what happened. Add to all that a third, decisive factor that created this American carnage: Republican lawmakers and the political machinery of the Republican Party that empowered Mr. Trump from the opening minutes to the final hours of his presidency. It’s notable that a lot of Republicans in Congress, particularly the Senate, were never comfortable with Mr. Trump. They hoped he would lose the primary in 2016. The attitude was ABT — Anyone But Trump. Republican primary voters had a different opinion, however, and their will prevailed. The size and ease of Mr. Trump’s victory — by the fall of 2015 he was leading the other candidates in the polls and he never looked back — should have been a bigger warning sign than it was at the time. This led to a growing accommodation between the Republican political establishment and Mr. Trump. It went through various phases, starting with wishful thinking, the hope that Mr. Trump would become more responsible once he won the nomination (nope) — or that once he won the presidency, he would “grow in office.” When that didn’t happen either, Plan B (or was it Plan C?) was to surround Mr. Trump with responsible people within his administration and in Congress to act as a check on his worst impulses. In some cases, that undoubtedly worked, but not nearly as well as those who hoped to keep Mr. Trump in line had hoped. One prominent Republican who has served in Congress told me recently, “Trump sunk much lower than I thought he would.” But Mr. Trump, psychologically damaged and morally corrupt, was always going to lead Republicans down darker and darker alleyways. It would only get worse. Yet those who instinctively recoiled at what Mr. Trump was doing decided to go along. For some, it was fear of being criticized by Mr. Trump and his army. They were afraid that speaking out against Mr. Trump would lead to a primary challenge. (The concern was a valid one; they saw what happened to Jeff Flake, Bob Corker and Mark Sanford.) Some Republicans rationalized their accommodation on the totally unreasonable hope that Mr. Trump — in his 70s, surrounded by sycophants and in possession of unmatched power — would change the habits of a lifetime. Still others convinced themselves they would tolerate what Mr. Trump did just one more time but never again. And yet as Mr. Trump transgressed one ethical line and then another and then another, Republicans continued to justify their silence, their support, or both. Others believed that since Mr. Trump was president they might as well work with him to get things done in what they perceived as the public interest: judicial appointments, tax cuts, deregulation and the like. In pushing for this, a few individuals, to their credit, never defended Mr. Trump’s indefensible behavior. But far too many did. White evangelicals like Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Eric Metaxas were among the worst offenders. For other Republicans, vaulting political ambition and cynical calculation were at play. Lawmakers like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, whose wife and father were viciously targeted by Mr. Trump during the 2016 primary campaign, became lap dogs, hoping to receive Mr. Trump’s blessing and win the loyalty of his supporters. Senator Josh Hawley acted so disgracefully in objecting to approval of the Electoral College votes and feeding baseless conspiracy theories that his mentor, John Danforth, said that “trying so hard” to get Mr. Hawley elected to the Senate “was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.” Lindsey Graham proved to be one of T.S. Eliot’s “hollow men,” empty of heart, a person without a moral compass. House Republicans like Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar and Mo Brooks showed themselves to be both carnival barkers and cultlike in their devotion to Mr. Trump. President Donald Trump leaves office with a crimson-stained legacy; a similar stain attaches to those in the party who supported and sustained him, many of them still in positions of power. Both will move on — Mr. Trump to Mar-a-Lago, disgraced, isolated and politically radioactive, more likely to split his party than ever to lead it again; and the Republican Party facing deep internal division, a massive rebuilding and rebranding effort and a very uncertain future. President Biden inherits a nation sicker, weaker, angrier, more divided and more violent than it has been in living memory. But if we’re fortunate and wise, we will allow the traumatizing effects of the Trump years to catalyze a rededication to ideals we once cherished in public life but cast aside during the Trump era: honor and integrity, compassion and decency, and old-fashioned competence. America is fragmented but also chastened, perhaps ready to rise again. If it does, when it does, it will be after too many tears have been shed and too many hearts have been broken. (Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations, is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”)

The end of Trump can be the beginning of America

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump boarded the plane to Florida on Wednesday, he cast his achievements as sweeping, ambitious and, above all, enduring — a few hours before his successor began demolishing that legacy at breakneck speed.

“We’ve accomplished so much together,” Trump told a crowd of his supporters, ticking off what he believed to be his top policy successes on immigration, deregulation, veterans affairs and taxes — adding, “We were not a regular administration.”

The passage of Trump’s 2017 tax bill and his appointment of three justices to the Supreme Court are clearly his most enduring accomplishments. But many of Trump’s other signature actions were enacted via executive fiat, making them especially vulnerable to rapid reversal the same way — by an executive order.

President Joe Biden, a more experienced Washington operator, is not using the process to build his legacy, as Trump tried to do, but as a means of erasing Trump’s.

In his first 48 hours in office, Biden cranked out about 30 executive orders, of which 14 target a broad range of Trump executive mandates, with the remainder aimed at implementing emergency measures intended to deal with the pandemic and the economic crisis.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that most of what Trump did can be undone in an afternoon. It’s going to take at least 10 days,” said John Podesta, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who lobbied for the targeted use of executive action in Obama’s second term when congressional Republicans blocked his environmental and immigration proposals.

“I think Trump sort of views Article II of the Constitution” — which details the powers of the presidency — “as making him omnipotent, and now he’s going to find out that except for cutting taxes, and maybe some of the foreign policy stuff, very little will actually last,” he added.

One former senior Trump aide, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, agreed. “Very little of what Trump did was done to ensure permanence. At the pace Biden is moving, everything Trump did will be gone by the time the sun rises on Monday — except his judicial appointments.”

The list of Biden executive orders aimed at rolling back Trump initiatives includes: restoring the country’s commitment to funding the World Health Organization; rejoining the Paris climate accords; reversing Trump’s ban on immigration from several predominantly Muslim nations and halting immigration enforcement in the country’s interior; stopping construction of the border wall; ensuring protections for LGBTQ workers undermined by Trump appointees; killing the Keystone XL pipeline permit; reimposing the ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; imposing new ethics rules and tossing out Trump’s “1776 Commission” report.

The effort has its roots in a less focused campaign at the start of the Trump administration. Four years ago, during the transition, a Trump aide printed out the detailed checklist of Obama’s campaign promises from the official White House website with the goal, never quite achieved, of reversing every single one.

Trump’s allies said his stewardship of the economy, even after the pandemic, was his greatest legacy, an opinion shared by his aides who put together a list of about 1,000 accomplishments that has subsequently been scrubbed from the White House website.

“Before the China Virus invaded our shores, we built the world’s most prosperous economy,” it begins. “America gained 7 million new jobs — more than three times government experts’ projections. Middle-Class family income increased nearly $6,000 — more than five times the gains during the entire previous administration.”

The list is light on legislative achievements. Trump, who did not take the time to learn the levers of power, did not consistently engage with congressional leaders, beyond basking in their support or making last-minute demands to increase funding for his wall by threatening to scuttle big budget deals.

While Trump lorded over Twitter, important lessons for him lurked, unwatched, on YouTube.

In a remarkable interview 10 days before his death in 1973, Lyndon B. Johnson, the most skilled legislator-president in the country’s recent history, explained why he had resisted the temptation to ram through landmark civil rights reforms by using executive orders.

Pursuing a legislative path was tougher and led to an uncertain outcome, but he wanted his reforms to endure, Johnson explained, and to do so they required the stubborn force of law.

Black leaders “wanted me to issue an executive order and proclaim this by presidential edict,” said Johnson, speaking of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — an approach that, he concluded, “would not be very effective if the Congress had not legislated.”

If Trump needed a more contemporary lesson than Johnson’s, he only had to look back to his predecessor, Obama, who endured a protracted and messy process to pass the Affordable Care Act — a law that has endured, albeit weakened, despite Trump’s repeated efforts to destroy it.

For the first two years of his administration, Trump enjoyed majorities in both houses of Congress, affording him the opportunity to legislate on the issues he campaigned on: tightening immigration restrictions and building a border wall, repealing Obamacare, and restoring vitality to the economically ravaged Midwestern heartland.

But he never seriously tried to build consensus on immigration reform and opted instead for acting unilaterally on the issue, drafting a poorly executed ban on visitors from several Muslim and African countries during his first days in office, to the chagrin of seasoned counselors, like his first White House counsel, Donald McGahn, former aides said.

Instead, Trump became enthralled with the pageantry of issuing the executive orders, turning quotidian signing sessions into televised demonstrations of his power.

At the same time, Trump was frittering away opportunities to create a durable legislative legacy, walking away, without explanation, from initiatives like an ambitious infrastructure package that might have drawn broad bipartisan consensus and altered the trajectory of his presidency.

Two bills broke that mold — the tax cuts and the 2018 criminal justice reform bill, a measure that enjoyed strong support in both parties and became a main theme of the Republican National Convention when he was seeking to win the support of Black voters.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader — who has soured on Trump since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol — was responsible for a more enduring element of his presidency: the clever use of congressional riders to repeal some agency regulations, making them harder to repeal than the thousands of quickly reversible rule changes implemented by the president’s appointees.

Whether Biden will also become overly reliant on executive action remains an open question. But as a guide, some on Biden’s team are using a 140-page law review article from 2001 by Justice Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court, then a professor at Harvard Law School, which charts a middle course, supporting the use of executive power as a tool for regulatory efforts but not as a license to unilaterally dictate every action taken by presidential subordinates.

Two officials involved in the rollout of Biden’s orders said that his use of executive decrees was not a reflection of an expansive view of executive authority but rather a response to the pandemic and the damage done by Trump’s policies.

They said his use of executive actions would diminish when congressional action picked up.

On Friday, Brian Deese, a Biden economic adviser, said the administration’s top priority was passing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, but stopgaps included in the orders, like a potential minimum wage hike for federal employees and increased food assistance, were needed to keep the country from falling into “a very serious economic hole.”

But Biden seems to know that the path to completing his agenda runs through Congress, particularly the Senate, where he served for nearly four decades.

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump boarded the plane to Florida on Wednesday, he cast his achievements as sweeping, ambitious and, above all, enduring — a few hours before his successor began demolishing that legacy at breakneck speed.

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump boarded the plane to Florida on Wednesday, he cast his achievements as sweeping, ambitious and, above all, enduring — a few hours before his successor began demolishing that legacy at breakneck speed. “We’ve accomplished so much together,” Trump told a crowd of his supporters, ticking off what he believed to be his top policy successes on immigration, deregulation, veterans affairs and taxes — adding, “We were not a regular administration.” The passage of Trump’s 2017 tax bill and his appointment of three justices to the Supreme Court are clearly his most enduring accomplishments. But many of Trump’s other signature actions were enacted via executive fiat, making them especially vulnerable to rapid reversal the same way — by an executive order. President Joe Biden, a more experienced Washington operator, is not using the process to build his legacy, as Trump tried to do, but as a means of erasing Trump’s. In his first 48 hours in office, Biden cranked out about 30 executive orders, of which 14 target a broad range of Trump executive mandates, with the remainder aimed at implementing emergency measures intended to deal with the pandemic and the economic crisis. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that most of what Trump did can be undone in an afternoon. It’s going to take at least 10 days,” said John Podesta, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who lobbied for the targeted use of executive action in Obama’s second term when congressional Republicans blocked his environmental and immigration proposals. “I think Trump sort of views Article II of the Constitution” — which details the powers of the presidency — “as making him omnipotent, and now he’s going to find out that except for cutting taxes, and maybe some of the foreign policy stuff, very little will actually last,” he added. One former senior Trump aide, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, agreed. “Very little of what Trump did was done to ensure permanence. At the pace Biden is moving, everything Trump did will be gone by the time the sun rises on Monday — except his judicial appointments.” The list of Biden executive orders aimed at rolling back Trump initiatives includes: restoring the country’s commitment to funding the World Health Organization; rejoining the Paris climate accords; reversing Trump’s ban on immigration from several predominantly Muslim nations and halting immigration enforcement in the country’s interior; stopping construction of the border wall; ensuring protections for LGBTQ workers undermined by Trump appointees; killing the Keystone XL pipeline permit; reimposing the ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; imposing new ethics rules and tossing out Trump’s “1776 Commission” report. The effort has its roots in a less focused campaign at the start of the Trump administration. Four years ago, during the transition, a Trump aide printed out the detailed checklist of Obama’s campaign promises from the official White House website with the goal, never quite achieved, of reversing every single one. Trump’s allies said his stewardship of the economy, even after the pandemic, was his greatest legacy, an opinion shared by his aides who put together a list of about 1,000 accomplishments that has subsequently been scrubbed from the White House website. “Before the China Virus invaded our shores, we built the world’s most prosperous economy,” it begins. “America gained 7 million new jobs — more than three times government experts’ projections. Middle-Class family income increased nearly $6,000 — more than five times the gains during the entire previous administration.” The list is light on legislative achievements. Trump, who did not take the time to learn the levers of power, did not consistently engage with congressional leaders, beyond basking in their support or making last-minute demands to increase funding for his wall by threatening to scuttle big budget deals. While Trump lorded over Twitter, important lessons for him lurked, unwatched, on YouTube. In a remarkable interview 10 days before his death in 1973, Lyndon B. Johnson, the most skilled legislator-president in the country’s recent history, explained why he had resisted the temptation to ram through landmark civil rights reforms by using executive orders. Pursuing a legislative path was tougher and led to an uncertain outcome, but he wanted his reforms to endure, Johnson explained, and to do so they required the stubborn force of law. Black leaders “wanted me to issue an executive order and proclaim this by presidential edict,” said Johnson, speaking of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — an approach that, he concluded, “would not be very effective if the Congress had not legislated.” If Trump needed a more contemporary lesson than Johnson’s, he only had to look back to his predecessor, Obama, who endured a protracted and messy process to pass the Affordable Care Act — a law that has endured, albeit weakened, despite Trump’s repeated efforts to destroy it. For the first two years of his administration, Trump enjoyed majorities in both houses of Congress, affording him the opportunity to legislate on the issues he campaigned on: tightening immigration restrictions and building a border wall, repealing Obamacare, and restoring vitality to the economically ravaged Midwestern heartland. But he never seriously tried to build consensus on immigration reform and opted instead for acting unilaterally on the issue, drafting a poorly executed ban on visitors from several Muslim and African countries during his first days in office, to the chagrin of seasoned counselors, like his first White House counsel, Donald McGahn, former aides said. Instead, Trump became enthralled with the pageantry of issuing the executive orders, turning quotidian signing sessions into televised demonstrations of his power. At the same time, Trump was frittering away opportunities to create a durable legislative legacy, walking away, without explanation, from initiatives like an ambitious infrastructure package that might have drawn broad bipartisan consensus and altered the trajectory of his presidency. Two bills broke that mold — the tax cuts and the 2018 criminal justice reform bill, a measure that enjoyed strong support in both parties and became a main theme of the Republican National Convention when he was seeking to win the support of Black voters. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader — who has soured on Trump since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol — was responsible for a more enduring element of his presidency: the clever use of congressional riders to repeal some agency regulations, making them harder to repeal than the thousands of quickly reversible rule changes implemented by the president’s appointees. Whether Biden will also become overly reliant on executive action remains an open question. But as a guide, some on Biden’s team are using a 140-page law review article from 2001 by Justice Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court, then a professor at Harvard Law School, which charts a middle course, supporting the use of executive power as a tool for regulatory efforts but not as a license to unilaterally dictate every action taken by presidential subordinates. Two officials involved in the rollout of Biden’s orders said that his use of executive decrees was not a reflection of an expansive view of executive authority but rather a response to the pandemic and the damage done by Trump’s policies. They said his use of executive actions would diminish when congressional action picked up. On Friday, Brian Deese, a Biden economic adviser, said the administration’s top priority was passing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, but stopgaps included in the orders, like a potential minimum wage hike for federal employees and increased food assistance, were needed to keep the country from falling into “a very serious economic hole.” But Biden seems to know that the path to completing his agenda runs through Congress, particularly the Senate, where he served for nearly four decades.

The lure of executive orders: Easy to implement, but just as easy to cancel

The United States, under the new Biden administration, is planning to reverse Trump's "draconian" immigration approach while working on policies addressing the causes of migration.

Cracking down on both legal and illegal immigration was a core focus of Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden, meanwhile, has made an early push for a bill that would open a path for citizenship for the roughly 11 million people living in the United States illegally, though even his allies in Congress acknowledge that may be "a Herculean task."

In a Friday call with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Biden outlined his plan to create new legal pathways for immigration and improve the process for people requesting asylum, according to an account of the call released by the White House.

Priorities include "reversing the previous administration’s draconian immigration policies," the White House said.

The two leaders agreed to work together towards reducing "irregular migration."

The call was “pleasant and respectful,” López Obrador said in a brief Twitter post. "Everything indicates relations will be good and for the benefit of our people and nations."

Mexico has a major role to play in Biden’s plans for immigration reform. Earlier this month, Mexico helped coordinate efforts in Central America to contain a large caravan of migrants heading for the United States.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry also said it had begun talks with Washington about a COVID-19-related order signed by Biden to establish firmer health protocols for people entering US territory.

The United States, under the new Biden administration, is planning to reverse Trump's "draconian" immigration approach while working on policies addressing the causes of migration.

The United States, under the new Biden administration, is planning to reverse Trump's "draconian" immigration approach while working on policies addressing the causes of migration. Cracking down on both legal and illegal immigration was a core focus of Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden, meanwhile, has made an early push for a bill that would open a path for citizenship for the roughly 11 million people living in the United States illegally, though even his allies in Congress acknowledge that may be "a Herculean task." In a Friday call with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Biden outlined his plan to create new legal pathways for immigration and improve the process for people requesting asylum, according to an account of the call released by the White House. Priorities include "reversing the previous administration’s draconian immigration policies," the White House said. The two leaders agreed to work together towards reducing "irregular migration." The call was “pleasant and respectful,” López Obrador said in a brief Twitter post. "Everything indicates relations will be good and for the benefit of our people and nations." Mexico has a major role to play in Biden’s plans for immigration reform. Earlier this month, Mexico helped coordinate efforts in Central America to contain a large caravan of migrants heading for the United States. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry also said it had begun talks with Washington about a COVID-19-related order signed by Biden to establish firmer health protocols for people entering US territory.

US to reverse Trump's immigration policies, Biden tells Mexican president

Inside US President Joe Biden's redecorated Oval Office

Canadian leader Justin Trudeau and new US President Joe Biden spoke on the phone Friday on an extensive range of topics, and made plans to meet in person "next month," Ottawa said.&nbsp;

"The two leaders agreed to meet next month in order to advance the important work of renewing the deep and enduring friendship between Canada and the United States," Trudeau's office said in a statement.

Trudeau, who has been keen to embrace the new president and turn the page on the often tumultuous Donald Trump years, was the first foreign leader to speak with Biden since Wednesday's inauguration.

"They discussed collaboration on vaccines and acknowledged that the two countries’ efforts are strengthened by existing exchanges of medical personnel and the flow of critical medical supplies," according to a readout of the call.

The two also agreed to expand cooperation on continental defence and in the Arctic and said their respective top defence and foreign affairs would be meeting at the earliest opportunity.

Trudeau earlier on Friday hailed Biden's arrival as a "new era" for bilateral ties but the relationship has begun with an early disagreement after Biden scrapped the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the United States on his first day in office on Wednesday.

Pipeline builder TC Energy Corp said it would eliminate more than 1,000 construction jobs in coming weeks due to the cancellation.

"The prime minister raised Canada’s disappointment with the United States’ decision on the Keystone XL pipeline," according to the readout, which noted that Trudeau also brought up the "the importance of the softwood lumber industry, and urged the removal of duties."

The long-running dispute saw the Trump administration impose tariffs against what it saw as unfair subsidies for Canadian exporters of softwood lumber, which is used in home construction.

Canadian leader Justin Trudeau and new US President Joe Biden spoke on the phone Friday on an extensive range of topics, and made plans to meet in person "next month," Ottawa said.

Canadian leader Justin Trudeau and new US President Joe Biden spoke on the phone Friday on an extensive range of topics, and made plans to meet in person "next month," Ottawa said. "The two leaders agreed to meet next month in order to advance the important work of renewing the deep and enduring friendship between Canada and the United States," Trudeau's office said in a statement. Trudeau, who has been keen to embrace the new president and turn the page on the often tumultuous Donald Trump years, was the first foreign leader to speak with Biden since Wednesday's inauguration. "They discussed collaboration on vaccines and acknowledged that the two countries’ efforts are strengthened by existing exchanges of medical personnel and the flow of critical medical supplies," according to a readout of the call. The two also agreed to expand cooperation on continental defence and in the Arctic and said their respective top defence and foreign affairs would be meeting at the earliest opportunity. Trudeau earlier on Friday hailed Biden's arrival as a "new era" for bilateral ties but the relationship has begun with an early disagreement after Biden scrapped the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the United States on his first day in office on Wednesday. Pipeline builder TC Energy Corp said it would eliminate more than 1,000 construction jobs in coming weeks due to the cancellation. "The prime minister raised Canada’s disappointment with the United States’ decision on the Keystone XL pipeline," according to the readout, which noted that Trudeau also brought up the "the importance of the softwood lumber industry, and urged the removal of duties." The long-running dispute saw the Trump administration impose tariffs against what it saw as unfair subsidies for Canadian exporters of softwood lumber, which is used in home construction.

US President Joe Biden and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau to have first meeting 'next month'

President Joe Biden signed two executive orders address the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, including expanding food stamps and beginning the process to require that everyone working for the federal government get a minimum wage of $15 an hour.

Biden signs two executive orders on food aid and worker's protection

Saudi Arabia has said it was optimistic it would have "excellent relations" with the new US administration, led by President Joe Biden, and that it would continue to talk with Washington regarding the Iran nuclear deal.

Biden pledged on the election campaign trail to reassess ties with Saudi Arabia, a state he described as a "pariah" in 2019. Biden has said he would take a firmer stand on Saudi’s human rights record and the devastating Yemen war.

"I am optimistic. Saudi Arabia has built solid, historical relations where it worked with different administrations. We will continue to do that as well with President Biden," Saudi's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said in an interview with Arabiya TV.

Prince Faisal said Riyadh would continue to consult with Washington with regards to the Iran nuclear deal. The United States pulled out in 2018 of the 2015 deal between major powers and Iran, under which Iran restrained its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions.

"I believe basically the consultations will be around reaching a solid and strong agreement that takes into account Iran's failure to comply. ..with strong monitoring factors to ensure the implementation of the agreement," Prince Faisal said.

Biden has said that if Tehran resumed strict compliance with the agreement Washington would too.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies including the United Arab Emirates, concerned about Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional network of proxies, supported Trump’s maximum pressure campaign on Tehran and welcomed his decision to quit the nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran.

They have said that this time around they should be included in any potential negotiations between the Biden administration and Iran on a new nuclear deal, to ensure it addresses Iran’s missile capabilities and “malign activity”.

(with inputs from agencies)

Saudi Arabia has said it was optimistic it would have "excellent relations" with the new US administration, led by President Joe Biden, and that it would continue to talk with Washington regarding the Iran nuclear deal.

Saudi Arabia has said it was optimistic it would have "excellent relations" with the new US administration, led by President Joe Biden, and that it would continue to talk with Washington regarding the Iran nuclear deal. Biden pledged on the election campaign trail to reassess ties with Saudi Arabia, a state he described as a "pariah" in 2019. Biden has said he would take a firmer stand on Saudi’s human rights record and the devastating Yemen war. "I am optimistic. Saudi Arabia has built solid, historical relations where it worked with different administrations. We will continue to do that as well with President Biden," Saudi's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said in an interview with Arabiya TV. Prince Faisal said Riyadh would continue to consult with Washington with regards to the Iran nuclear deal. The United States pulled out in 2018 of the 2015 deal between major powers and Iran, under which Iran restrained its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions. "I believe basically the consultations will be around reaching a solid and strong agreement that takes into account Iran's failure to comply. ..with strong monitoring factors to ensure the implementation of the agreement," Prince Faisal said. Biden has said that if Tehran resumed strict compliance with the agreement Washington would too. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies including the United Arab Emirates, concerned about Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional network of proxies, supported Trump’s maximum pressure campaign on Tehran and welcomed his decision to quit the nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran. They have said that this time around they should be included in any potential negotiations between the Biden administration and Iran on a new nuclear deal, to ensure it addresses Iran’s missile capabilities and “malign activity”. (with inputs from agencies)

Saudi Arabia expects 'excellent relations' with new US administration

A top US intelligence officer for North Korea has claimed that the country is using diplomacy only for selfish motives which will ultimately be harmful for the world.

Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has reported that the new administration has planned a full review of the way US is planning to approach North Korea to bring negotiations back on the table.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/north-korea-unveil-submarine-launched-ballistic-missile-356997">North Korea unveil submarine-launched ballistic missile</a>

White House spokesperson Jen Psakin, on Friday, had also acknowledged North Korea's nuclear weapons as a serious threat against peace. She also reported that the Washington is gearing up to come up with plans of deterring Pyongyang.

Sydney Seiler, the US national intelligence officer for North Korea, has claimed that North Korea's weapons development has been one of the main consistent policy for the past 30 years.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/kim-jong-uns-sister-lashes-out-at-idiot-south-korean-authorities-kcna-356431">Kim Jong Un's sister lashes out at 'idiot' South Korean authorities: KCNA</a>

"Every engagement in diplomacy has been designed to further the nuclear programme, not to find a way out … I just urge people not to let the tactical ambiguity obstruct the strategic clarity about North Korea that we have," he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank.

"So we should not be overly encouraged if suddenly (North Korea leader Kim Jong-un) proposes dialogue tomorrow, nor should we be overly surprised, or discouraged, if there’s an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) launch by Sunday," he added.

While thse statements hint towards an active plan towards North Korea's deadly nuclear weapons development, some experts have urged the new Biden administration to learn from Obama administration's mistakes and not delay te plans.

A top US intelligence officer for North Korea has claimed that the country is using diplomacy only for selfish motives which will ultimately be harmful for the world.

A top US intelligence officer for North Korea has claimed that the country is using diplomacy only for selfish motives which will ultimately be harmful for the world. Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has reported that the new administration has planned a full review of the way US is planning to approach North Korea to bring negotiations back on the table. Also read| North Korea unveil submarine-launched ballistic missile White House spokesperson Jen Psakin, on Friday, had also acknowledged North Korea's nuclear weapons as a serious threat against peace. She also reported that the Washington is gearing up to come up with plans of deterring Pyongyang. Sydney Seiler, the US national intelligence officer for North Korea, has claimed that North Korea's weapons development has been one of the main consistent policy for the past 30 years. Also read| Kim Jong Un's sister lashes out at 'idiot' South Korean authorities: KCNA "Every engagement in diplomacy has been designed to further the nuclear programme, not to find a way out … I just urge people not to let the tactical ambiguity obstruct the strategic clarity about North Korea that we have," he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank. "So we should not be overly encouraged if suddenly (North Korea leader Kim Jong-un) proposes dialogue tomorrow, nor should we be overly surprised, or discouraged, if there’s an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) launch by Sunday," he added. While thse statements hint towards an active plan towards North Korea's deadly nuclear weapons development, some experts have urged the new Biden administration to learn from Obama administration's mistakes and not delay te plans.

North Korea using diplomacy to further nuclear weapons programme: US official

The leaders of the US Senate have agreed to push back former president Donald Trump's impeachment trial by two weeks.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said the trial is set to begin during the week of February 8, an arrangement praised by the chamber's top Republican, Mitch McConnell.

This would give the chamber more time to focus on President Joe Biden's legislative agenda and Cabinet nominees before turning to the contentious showdown over Trump.

Trump on January 13 became the first US president to have been impeached twice. The Senate acquitted him last year in the previous trial focused on his request that Ukraine investigate Biden and his son. Trump's presidential term ended on Wednesday.

The House of Representatives is due to formally deliver to the Senate on Monday (January 25) the impeachment charge accusing Trump of inciting an insurrection, a move that ordinarily would have triggered the beginning of the trial within a day.&nbsp;

The charge stems from Trump's incendiary speech to supporters before they stormed the Capitol on January 6 in a rampage that delayed the formal congressional certification of Biden's election victory and left five people dead, including a police officer.

The new timeline, however, will allow the Senate to move quickly on key Biden appointees and other tasks while giving House lawmakers who will prosecute the case and Trump's team more time to prepare for the trial.

The timeline was a compromise after McConnell had asked the Democratic-led House to delay sending the charge until next Thursday, and called on Schumer to postpone the trial until mid-February to give Trump more time to prepare a defense.

Doug Andres, a spokesman for McConnell, said the senator was pleased Democrats had given Trump's defense more time, and laid out a timeline that could have the trial begin as soon as February 9.

Under the timeline, House impeachment managers will file their pre-trial brief and Trump's defense team will file an answer to the impeachment charge on February 2, and each side will respond to those filings on February 8.

Meanwhile, conviction in the Senate would require a two-thirds vote - meaning 17 of Trump's fellow Republicans would have to vote against him. A conviction would clear the way for a second vote, requiring a simply majority, to bar Trump from holding office again.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters earlier in the day that the Senate should be able to move forward with both the trial and Biden's agenda, beginning with his call for $1.9 trillion of fresh COVID-19 assistance for Americans and the US economy.

The deal came even as Schumer and McConnell struggled to assert control in a chamber divided 50-50, with Democrats holding a majority thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote.

Trump has, meanwhile, said he may seek the presidency again in 2024.

The leaders of the US Senate have agreed to push back former president Donald Trump's impeachment trial by two weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said the trial is set to begin during the week of February 8, an arrangement praised by the chamber's top Republican, Mitch McConnell.

The leaders of the US Senate have agreed to push back former president Donald Trump's impeachment trial by two weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said the trial is set to begin during the week of February 8, an arrangement praised by the chamber's top Republican, Mitch McConnell. This would give the chamber more time to focus on President Joe Biden's legislative agenda and Cabinet nominees before turning to the contentious showdown over Trump. Trump on January 13 became the first US president to have been impeached twice. The Senate acquitted him last year in the previous trial focused on his request that Ukraine investigate Biden and his son. Trump's presidential term ended on Wednesday. The House of Representatives is due to formally deliver to the Senate on Monday (January 25) the impeachment charge accusing Trump of inciting an insurrection, a move that ordinarily would have triggered the beginning of the trial within a day. The charge stems from Trump's incendiary speech to supporters before they stormed the Capitol on January 6 in a rampage that delayed the formal congressional certification of Biden's election victory and left five people dead, including a police officer. The new timeline, however, will allow the Senate to move quickly on key Biden appointees and other tasks while giving House lawmakers who will prosecute the case and Trump's team more time to prepare for the trial. The timeline was a compromise after McConnell had asked the Democratic-led House to delay sending the charge until next Thursday, and called on Schumer to postpone the trial until mid-February to give Trump more time to prepare a defense. Doug Andres, a spokesman for McConnell, said the senator was pleased Democrats had given Trump's defense more time, and laid out a timeline that could have the trial begin as soon as February 9. Under the timeline, House impeachment managers will file their pre-trial brief and Trump's defense team will file an answer to the impeachment charge on February 2, and each side will respond to those filings on February 8. Meanwhile, conviction in the Senate would require a two-thirds vote - meaning 17 of Trump's fellow Republicans would have to vote against him. A conviction would clear the way for a second vote, requiring a simply majority, to bar Trump from holding office again. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters earlier in the day that the Senate should be able to move forward with both the trial and Biden's agenda, beginning with his call for $1.9 trillion of fresh COVID-19 assistance for Americans and the US economy. The deal came even as Schumer and McConnell struggled to assert control in a chamber divided 50-50, with Democrats holding a majority thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote. Trump has, meanwhile, said he may seek the presidency again in 2024.

Trump impeachment trial put off until early February

Over 150 National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC for the inauguration of President Joe Biden have tested positive for coronavirus. Biden was sworn in as US president on January 21.

Over 150 troops deployed for Biden's inauguration test positive for Coronavirus

The Biden administration said it would review a landmark US deal with the Taliban. It added that while doing so it would focus on whether the insurgent group has kept with its side of the agreement and has reduced attacks in Afghanistan.

Washington struck a deal with the Taliban in Qatar last year, to begin withdrawing its troops in return for security guarantees from the militants and a commitment to kickstart peace talks with the Afghan government.

But violence across Afghanistan has surged despite the two sides engaging talks since September.

New US President Joe Biden's newly appointed national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, spoke with his Afghan counterpart Hamdullah Mohib and "made clear the United States' intention to review" the deal, said National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne late Friday.

Washington notably wants to check that the Taliban is "living up to its commitments to cut ties with terrorist groups, to reduce violence in Afghanistan, and to engage in meaningful negotiations with the Afghan government and other stakeholders," her statement continued.

It added that Sullivan "underscored that the US will support the peace process with a robust and regional diplomatic effort, which will aim to help the two sides achieve a durable and just political settlement and permanent ceasefire."

Sullivan also discussed the United States' support for protecting recent progress made on women and minority groups' rights as part of the peace process.

Taliban, to this end, said they remained "committed to the agreement and honour our commitments".

Washington's move was met with a sigh of relief from officials in Kabul after months of speculation over how the new administration would potentially recalibrate the Afghan policy.&nbsp;

Mohib, the Afghan national security advisor, tweeted that during the call the two sides "agreed to work toward a permanent ceasefire and a just and durable peace" in the country.&nbsp;

Other Afghan government officials have been accusing the Taliban of not living up to the February 2020 deal, saying the agreement had failed to achieve its stated goals.

Deadly attacks and high-profile assassinations have increased in recent months, particularly in Kabul where several journalists, activists, judges and politicians have been murdered in brazen daylight attacks.

The Taliban have denied responsibility for these killings, but Afghan and US officials have blamed the group for the murders.

(with inputs from agencies)

The Biden administration said it would review a landmark US deal with the Taliban. It added that while doing so it would focus on whether the insurgent group has kept with its side of the agreement and has reduced attacks in Afghanistan.

The Biden administration said it would review a landmark US deal with the Taliban. It added that while doing so it would focus on whether the insurgent group has kept with its side of the agreement and has reduced attacks in Afghanistan. Washington struck a deal with the Taliban in Qatar last year, to begin withdrawing its troops in return for security guarantees from the militants and a commitment to kickstart peace talks with the Afghan government. But violence across Afghanistan has surged despite the two sides engaging talks since September. New US President Joe Biden's newly appointed national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, spoke with his Afghan counterpart Hamdullah Mohib and "made clear the United States' intention to review" the deal, said National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne late Friday. Washington notably wants to check that the Taliban is "living up to its commitments to cut ties with terrorist groups, to reduce violence in Afghanistan, and to engage in meaningful negotiations with the Afghan government and other stakeholders," her statement continued. It added that Sullivan "underscored that the US will support the peace process with a robust and regional diplomatic effort, which will aim to help the two sides achieve a durable and just political settlement and permanent ceasefire." Sullivan also discussed the United States' support for protecting recent progress made on women and minority groups' rights as part of the peace process. Taliban, to this end, said they remained "committed to the agreement and honour our commitments". Washington's move was met with a sigh of relief from officials in Kabul after months of speculation over how the new administration would potentially recalibrate the Afghan policy. Mohib, the Afghan national security advisor, tweeted that during the call the two sides "agreed to work toward a permanent ceasefire and a just and durable peace" in the country. Other Afghan government officials have been accusing the Taliban of not living up to the February 2020 deal, saying the agreement had failed to achieve its stated goals. Deadly attacks and high-profile assassinations have increased in recent months, particularly in Kabul where several journalists, activists, judges and politicians have been murdered in brazen daylight attacks. The Taliban have denied responsibility for these killings, but Afghan and US officials have blamed the group for the murders. (with inputs from agencies)

Biden administration says will review US-Taliban withdrawal deal

US President Joe Biden's administration is reportedly set to review the US deal with the Taliban. As part of this evaluation, the administration will focus on whether the Taliban has reduced attacks in Afghanistan.

Last year, the US struck a deal with the Taliban in Qatar. As part of this, it promised withdrawal of its troops from the country. This kicked off peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghanistan government.&nbsp;

Even then, violence across the country has increased as both sides continue to hold talks.

Biden's freshly appointed national security advisor - Jake Sullivan spoke with his counterpart from Afghanistan - Hamdullah Mohib, and relayed to them that they plan to review the deal.

National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said that he "made clear the US' intention to review".

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/with-2500-each-us-says-lowest-troops-deployed-in-iraq-afghanistan-in-about-two-decades-356978" hreflang="en">With 2,500 each, US says lowest troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan in about two decades</a>

The US is attempting to understand whether the Taliban is "living up to its commitments to cut ties with terrorist groups, to reduce violence in Afghanistan, and to engage in meaningful negotiations with the Afghan government and other stakeholders", Horne's statement said.

The statement added how Sullivan "underscored that the US will support the peace process with a robust and regional diplomatic effort, which will aim to help the two sides achieve a durable and just political settlement and permanent ceasefire."

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/china-offered-bounties-to-non-state-actors-in-afghanistan-to-attack-american-soldiers-report-says-353536" hreflang="en">China offered bounties to non-state actors in Afghanistan to attack American soldiers, report says</a>

As part of the peace process, Sullivan said that the US is also extending support to the progress the country recently made in terms of women and minority rights groups.

Afghanistan's national security advisor - Mohib, tweeted that during the call both sides "agreed to work toward a permanent ceasefire and a just and durable peace".

US President Joe Biden's administration is reportedly set to review the US deal with the Taliban. As part of this evaluation, the administration will focus on whether the Taliban has reduced attacks in Afghanistan.

US President Joe Biden's administration is reportedly set to review the US deal with the Taliban. As part of this evaluation, the administration will focus on whether the Taliban has reduced attacks in Afghanistan. Last year, the US struck a deal with the Taliban in Qatar. As part of this, it promised withdrawal of its troops from the country. This kicked off peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghanistan government. Even then, violence across the country has increased as both sides continue to hold talks. Biden's freshly appointed national security advisor - Jake Sullivan spoke with his counterpart from Afghanistan - Hamdullah Mohib, and relayed to them that they plan to review the deal. National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said that he "made clear the US' intention to review". Also read: With 2,500 each, US says lowest troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan in about two decades The US is attempting to understand whether the Taliban is "living up to its commitments to cut ties with terrorist groups, to reduce violence in Afghanistan, and to engage in meaningful negotiations with the Afghan government and other stakeholders", Horne's statement said. The statement added how Sullivan "underscored that the US will support the peace process with a robust and regional diplomatic effort, which will aim to help the two sides achieve a durable and just political settlement and permanent ceasefire." Also read: China offered bounties to non-state actors in Afghanistan to attack American soldiers, report says As part of the peace process, Sullivan said that the US is also extending support to the progress the country recently made in terms of women and minority rights groups. Afghanistan's national security advisor - Mohib, tweeted that during the call both sides "agreed to work toward a permanent ceasefire and a just and durable peace".

Under Biden, US set to review deal with Taliban

President Joe Biden, vowing to restore environmental protections frayed over the past four years, has ordered the review of more than 100 rules and regulations on air, water, public lands, endangered species and climate change that were weakened or rolled back by his predecessor.

But legal experts warn that it could take two to three years — and in some cases, most of Biden’s term — to put many of the old rules back in place.

“People should temper their expectations about what can be done quickly,” said Kevin Minoli, who served as a lawyer at the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. He added, “It’s very possible, more possible than not, that some of the Trump rules will still be in effect for a couple of years.”

Biden has an array of legal tools to reinstate environmental protections that were dismantled by the Trump administration. Gina McCarthy, his top domestic climate change adviser, headed the EPA in the Obama administration and served as the chief author of some of the nation’s most comprehensive climate change rules. She has now reviewed every possible option to restore those protections, according to a White House official who is familiar with her thinking but was not authorized to speak on the record.

But those tools take time. Experts in environmental law who have spoken with top Biden administration officials said the process of rolling back the Trump-era rollbacks would quite likely fall into a few broad categories. In a limited set of cases, Biden will be able to use his executive authority immediately, for instance to cancel individual fossil fuel infrastructure projects or reinstate federal protections on distinct areas of land and water. He did that on Day One when he rescinded the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried oil from Canadian oil sands across the American Midwest.

The White House announced Thursday that any new lease of drilling rights on public lands must have the personal approval of the highest-ranking officials at the Department of Interior — either the secretary or an assistant secretary.

Likewise, Biden is expected in the first months of his term to restore federal protections around at least two national monuments in Utah: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. In 2017, Trump opened nearly 2 million acres around those monuments to mining, logging and drilling — at the time the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.

On Thursday night, the White House released a fact sheet singling out its review of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, along with one other, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monuments off the New England coast, to “determine whether restoration of the monument boundaries and conditions would be appropriate.”

Patrick Parenteau, a professor of law with the Vermont Law School, said the Biden administration could also act quickly to block Trump’s push to drill in Alaska. In the last days of Trump’s administration, the Interior Department auctioned off oil and gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“The Biden administration can pretty quickly cancel those leases,” said Parenteau, although he noted that before doing so, the administration would quite likely want to conduct a legal review of whether it would need to compensate the companies that purchased the leases.

Biden’s team has also looked to Congress, where Democrats could potentially use their razor-thin House and Senate majorities to revoke some of the Trump administration’s last-minute regulatory rollbacks. Under the Congressional Review Act, any regulation finalized within 60 legislative days of the end of a presidential term can be overturned with a simple congressional vote.

In the early days of the Trump administration, Republicans used that law to quickly wipe out 16 Obama-era rules.

But legal experts have warned Democrats that using that law to undo environmental policies could backfire: Once Congress has used it to wipe out a regulation, the administration is legally barred from enacting a substantially similar rule. That twist would bar the Biden administration from replacing a weak Trump-era rule with a similar but more stringent one.

“They don’t want to create roadblocks to creating future regulations,” said Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, who has closely studied the Trump administration’s rollbacks.

Vizcarra cited just one such rollback as a good candidate for rapid reversal under the Congressional Review Act: a January rule that reduced protections for migratory birds by ending penalties for energy and construction companies that harm the birds and their habitats in construction projects and oil spills.

Then there are the longer-term rollbacks. It could take two years or more for the administration to restore Obama-era climate change regulations, rolled back by the Trump administration, that were designed to cut emissions of planet-warming pollution across major sectors of the economy. It could also take that long to restore rules on industrial emissions of toxic pollutants such as mercury, as well as a major rule, Waters of the United States, designed to protect wetlands and waterways.

“When it comes to restoring the vast majority of these Obama environmental policies, the rollbacks were actually done by putting in place new regulations,” Jeffrey Holmstead, a lawyer representing fossil fuel companies who served in the EPA in both Bush administrations. “In some cases that took two to three years. They will have to be replaced with new regulations. There is a legal process that has to be followed.”

The work of reinstating the federal government’s more comprehensive regulations on air, water and climate pollution will take even longer. A key reason, explained legal experts: when the Trump administration rolled back those rules, it almost never eliminated them entirely. Rather, it replaced strict federal pollution regulations with new, weaker pollution regulations.

The Biden administration, in turn, will seek to legally undo those weak regulations and replace them with tougher ones. And that legal process typically takes two years or more. For example, the Trump EPA undid the Obama administration’s single largest policy aimed at curbing climate change, a rule that forced automakers to rapidly increase the fuel economy of passenger vehicles, and, in so doing, drastically lowering their pollution of heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution. To do that, the EPA had to follow a long legal path; formally publishing a proposal to change the rule; opening it to public comments; drafting legal, economic and scientific justifications for the rule; and performing complex technical analyses of the effects of the new rule on highway safety, air quality and consumer behavior.

Although the Trump administration began its rollback of the Obama auto pollution rule within Trump’s first days of taking office, it was not completed until last spring.

The same timetable could await Biden as he seeks to reinstate the rule.

“It’s a laborious, time-consuming process,” said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University, who was on Biden’s short list to run the EPA.

“No one doubts the EPA’s authority to put these regulations on auto pollution back in place,” Revesz said. “But they can’t just make the Trump rules go away by executive order. They have to follow the same process — preparing all the scientific and economic analyses, and you have to get all that right.”

Revesz noted that while the Obama administration had performed such analyses a decade ago when it first put the auto pollution rule in place, much has changed since then, including the economy, the auto industry and the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. So Biden’s EPA staff will need to conduct all that work again, with present-day data.

And he noted that after four years in which the staff and budget of the EPA has shrunk, the agency is now being asked to do far more with far fewer resources.

“They want to do a lot, but they can’t do it all at the same time,” Revesz said. “EPA has suffered the loss of a lot of senior staff. They’ll need to prioritize. So they may not get to some of these until the end of a first term.”

Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School, said it could take even longer for the EPA to restore the Waters of the United States rule, which was designed to protect the streams, wetlands and smaller water systems that flow into larger bodies of water, such as lakes and rivers. The Trump administration replaced that rule last year with a new rule that stripped away protections of those wetlands and smaller water bodies.

“Replacing that water rule will take a very long time,” Gerrard said. “And they won’t want to rescind the Trump rule while they are working on the new rule, because then the waterways would be left with no protection.”

President Joe Biden, vowing to restore environmental protections frayed over the past four years, has ordered the review of more than 100 rules and regulations on air, water, public lands, endangered species and climate change that were weakened or rolled back by his predecessor.

President Joe Biden, vowing to restore environmental protections frayed over the past four years, has ordered the review of more than 100 rules and regulations on air, water, public lands, endangered species and climate change that were weakened or rolled back by his predecessor. But legal experts warn that it could take two to three years — and in some cases, most of Biden’s term — to put many of the old rules back in place. “People should temper their expectations about what can be done quickly,” said Kevin Minoli, who served as a lawyer at the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. He added, “It’s very possible, more possible than not, that some of the Trump rules will still be in effect for a couple of years.” Biden has an array of legal tools to reinstate environmental protections that were dismantled by the Trump administration. Gina McCarthy, his top domestic climate change adviser, headed the EPA in the Obama administration and served as the chief author of some of the nation’s most comprehensive climate change rules. She has now reviewed every possible option to restore those protections, according to a White House official who is familiar with her thinking but was not authorized to speak on the record. But those tools take time. Experts in environmental law who have spoken with top Biden administration officials said the process of rolling back the Trump-era rollbacks would quite likely fall into a few broad categories. In a limited set of cases, Biden will be able to use his executive authority immediately, for instance to cancel individual fossil fuel infrastructure projects or reinstate federal protections on distinct areas of land and water. He did that on Day One when he rescinded the construction permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried oil from Canadian oil sands across the American Midwest. The White House announced Thursday that any new lease of drilling rights on public lands must have the personal approval of the highest-ranking officials at the Department of Interior — either the secretary or an assistant secretary. Likewise, Biden is expected in the first months of his term to restore federal protections around at least two national monuments in Utah: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. In 2017, Trump opened nearly 2 million acres around those monuments to mining, logging and drilling — at the time the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history. On Thursday night, the White House released a fact sheet singling out its review of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, along with one other, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monuments off the New England coast, to “determine whether restoration of the monument boundaries and conditions would be appropriate.” Patrick Parenteau, a professor of law with the Vermont Law School, said the Biden administration could also act quickly to block Trump’s push to drill in Alaska. In the last days of Trump’s administration, the Interior Department auctioned off oil and gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “The Biden administration can pretty quickly cancel those leases,” said Parenteau, although he noted that before doing so, the administration would quite likely want to conduct a legal review of whether it would need to compensate the companies that purchased the leases. Biden’s team has also looked to Congress, where Democrats could potentially use their razor-thin House and Senate majorities to revoke some of the Trump administration’s last-minute regulatory rollbacks. Under the Congressional Review Act, any regulation finalized within 60 legislative days of the end of a presidential term can be overturned with a simple congressional vote. In the early days of the Trump administration, Republicans used that law to quickly wipe out 16 Obama-era rules. But legal experts have warned Democrats that using that law to undo environmental policies could backfire: Once Congress has used it to wipe out a regulation, the administration is legally barred from enacting a substantially similar rule. That twist would bar the Biden administration from replacing a weak Trump-era rule with a similar but more stringent one. “They don’t want to create roadblocks to creating future regulations,” said Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, who has closely studied the Trump administration’s rollbacks. Vizcarra cited just one such rollback as a good candidate for rapid reversal under the Congressional Review Act: a January rule that reduced protections for migratory birds by ending penalties for energy and construction companies that harm the birds and their habitats in construction projects and oil spills. Then there are the longer-term rollbacks. It could take two years or more for the administration to restore Obama-era climate change regulations, rolled back by the Trump administration, that were designed to cut emissions of planet-warming pollution across major sectors of the economy. It could also take that long to restore rules on industrial emissions of toxic pollutants such as mercury, as well as a major rule, Waters of the United States, designed to protect wetlands and waterways. “When it comes to restoring the vast majority of these Obama environmental policies, the rollbacks were actually done by putting in place new regulations,” Jeffrey Holmstead, a lawyer representing fossil fuel companies who served in the EPA in both Bush administrations. “In some cases that took two to three years. They will have to be replaced with new regulations. There is a legal process that has to be followed.” The work of reinstating the federal government’s more comprehensive regulations on air, water and climate pollution will take even longer. A key reason, explained legal experts: when the Trump administration rolled back those rules, it almost never eliminated them entirely. Rather, it replaced strict federal pollution regulations with new, weaker pollution regulations. The Biden administration, in turn, will seek to legally undo those weak regulations and replace them with tougher ones. And that legal process typically takes two years or more. For example, the Trump EPA undid the Obama administration’s single largest policy aimed at curbing climate change, a rule that forced automakers to rapidly increase the fuel economy of passenger vehicles, and, in so doing, drastically lowering their pollution of heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution. To do that, the EPA had to follow a long legal path; formally publishing a proposal to change the rule; opening it to public comments; drafting legal, economic and scientific justifications for the rule; and performing complex technical analyses of the effects of the new rule on highway safety, air quality and consumer behavior. Although the Trump administration began its rollback of the Obama auto pollution rule within Trump’s first days of taking office, it was not completed until last spring. The same timetable could await Biden as he seeks to reinstate the rule. “It’s a laborious, time-consuming process,” said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University, who was on Biden’s short list to run the EPA. “No one doubts the EPA’s authority to put these regulations on auto pollution back in place,” Revesz said. “But they can’t just make the Trump rules go away by executive order. They have to follow the same process — preparing all the scientific and economic analyses, and you have to get all that right.” Revesz noted that while the Obama administration had performed such analyses a decade ago when it first put the auto pollution rule in place, much has changed since then, including the economy, the auto industry and the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. So Biden’s EPA staff will need to conduct all that work again, with present-day data. And he noted that after four years in which the staff and budget of the EPA has shrunk, the agency is now being asked to do far more with far fewer resources. “They want to do a lot, but they can’t do it all at the same time,” Revesz said. “EPA has suffered the loss of a lot of senior staff. They’ll need to prioritize. So they may not get to some of these until the end of a first term.” Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School, said it could take even longer for the EPA to restore the Waters of the United States rule, which was designed to protect the streams, wetlands and smaller water systems that flow into larger bodies of water, such as lakes and rivers. The Trump administration replaced that rule last year with a new rule that stripped away protections of those wetlands and smaller water bodies. “Replacing that water rule will take a very long time,” Gerrard said. “And they won’t want to rescind the Trump rule while they are working on the new rule, because then the waterways would be left with no protection.”

Restoring environmental rules rolled back by Trump could take years

Minutes after Joe Biden took oath, China announced sanctions against former members of the Trump administration - including Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Palki Sharma Upadhyay tells you why Biden needs allies like India to counter China.

Gravitas: China welcomes Joe Biden with sanctions against Trump officials

U.S. President Joe Biden is building a team that 'looks like America'. The choices represent a diversity of ideology, background, race & religion. Palki Sharma Upadhyay gets you all the names.

Gravitas: Here are all the members of Team Biden

The US Senate confirmed retired general Lloyd Austin as secretary of defense Friday, the second cabinet nominee of new President Joe Biden to gain approval and the first African American to lead the Pentagon.

Austin sailed through with overwhelming support from both Biden's Democrats and opposition Republicans, who voted 93-2 in his favor.

The retired four-star general will be the first African American to lead the Department of Defense, and takes on the job as the Pentagon sees the need for greater efforts to root out racism in the ranks and give more opportunities for leadership positions to minorities.

Biden picked Austin, and the Senate endorsed him, despite a law that says the US military must be led by a civilian or, if a former military official, someone who has been out of the service at least seven years.

The requirement is to ensure civilian control of the military,

That meant both houses of Congress had to grant a waiver for Austin, who retired in 2016.

Biden chose a former officer he knew well from when he was vice president in the administration of Barack Obama.

Austin, a West Point graduate who served four decades in the military, was commander of US forces in Iraq and then head of the US Central Command covering the Middle East, from 2010 to 2016.

The two bonded because Austin was friendly with Biden's late son when both were serving in Iraq.

Biden called him "uniquely qualified to take on the challenges and crises we face in the current moment" when announcing the nomination in December.

Austin, known to be media-shy and not particularly politically savvy, tweeted a statement quickly after gaining Senate approval.

"It's an honor and a privilege to serve as our country's 28th Secretary of Defense, and I'm especially proud to be the first African American to hold the position," he wrote.

"Let's get to work."

- Key threats: China, extremism -

He honed in on two urgent issues facing the US military in his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

He singled out China as the country's most potent adversary.

Under his leadership, the Pentagon would "make sure that we are prepared to&nbsp;meet any challenge and that we continue&nbsp;to present a&nbsp;credible deterrent&nbsp;to&nbsp;China&nbsp;or&nbsp;any&nbsp;other aggressor who would&nbsp;want to&nbsp;take us on, and convince them that would be a&nbsp;really bad idea," he said.

He also pledged to tackle extremists in the forces, after some members of the military took part in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of then-president Donald Trump. &nbsp;

"The activity&nbsp;that we've&nbsp;seen recently in terms&nbsp;of&nbsp;potential racists&nbsp;or extremist behavior&nbsp;within our&nbsp;ranks is in my&nbsp;view absolutely&nbsp;unacceptable," Austin said.

"The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies. But we can't do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks," he added.&nbsp;

The US Senate confirmed retired general Lloyd Austin as secretary of defense Friday, the second cabinet nominee of new President Joe Biden to gain approval and the first African American to lead the Pentagon.

The US Senate confirmed retired general Lloyd Austin as secretary of defense Friday, the second cabinet nominee of new President Joe Biden to gain approval and the first African American to lead the Pentagon. Austin sailed through with overwhelming support from both Biden's Democrats and opposition Republicans, who voted 93-2 in his favor. The retired four-star general will be the first African American to lead the Department of Defense, and takes on the job as the Pentagon sees the need for greater efforts to root out racism in the ranks and give more opportunities for leadership positions to minorities. Biden picked Austin, and the Senate endorsed him, despite a law that says the US military must be led by a civilian or, if a former military official, someone who has been out of the service at least seven years. The requirement is to ensure civilian control of the military, That meant both houses of Congress had to grant a waiver for Austin, who retired in 2016. Biden chose a former officer he knew well from when he was vice president in the administration of Barack Obama. Austin, a West Point graduate who served four decades in the military, was commander of US forces in Iraq and then head of the US Central Command covering the Middle East, from 2010 to 2016. The two bonded because Austin was friendly with Biden's late son when both were serving in Iraq. Biden called him "uniquely qualified to take on the challenges and crises we face in the current moment" when announcing the nomination in December. Austin, known to be media-shy and not particularly politically savvy, tweeted a statement quickly after gaining Senate approval. "It's an honor and a privilege to serve as our country's 28th Secretary of Defense, and I'm especially proud to be the first African American to hold the position," he wrote. "Let's get to work." - Key threats: China, extremism - He honed in on two urgent issues facing the US military in his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. He singled out China as the country's most potent adversary. Under his leadership, the Pentagon would "make sure that we are prepared to meet any challenge and that we continue to present a credible deterrent to China or any other aggressor who would want to take us on, and convince them that would be a really bad idea," he said. He also pledged to tackle extremists in the forces, after some members of the military took part in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of then-president Donald Trump. "The activity that we've seen recently in terms of potential racists or extremist behavior within our ranks is in my view absolutely unacceptable," Austin said. "The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies. But we can't do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks," he added.

US Senate confirms Lloyd Austin as first Black chief of Pentagon

If the United States’ failure to anticipate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of imagination, missing the terrorist attack of Jan. 6, 2021, was a failure of perception — a persistent refusal at the highest levels of our government to acknowledge the empirical reality of the threat posed by right-wing terrorists.

Terrorism in the United States is overwhelmingly domestic and motivated by far-right ideologies, often racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. In the past decade — indeed, in just about every year since 1990, other than 2001 — acts of right-wing domestic terrorism have been far more numerous and more lethal than acts of terrorism inspired or influenced by groups or movements overseas, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a research center at the University of Maryland. Far-right plots are also less likely to be disrupted by law enforcement; in the past decade about two-thirds of right-wing domestic terrorist plans have ended in “success,” according to the center, compared with 22% of terrorist plans hatched by international and affiliated actors.

So one of the most striking passages in President Joe Biden’s inaugural address Wednesday was also one of the most straightforward: He named the enemy. “Political extremism, white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism,” he said, are dangers “that we must confront and we will defeat.”

It was a quick line delivered without much flourish, and it may sound overgenerous to congratulate Biden simply for speaking plainly. Yet it is a sign of how reluctant American officials have been to take on right-wing violence that his line made history. He may be the first president to directly address white supremacy — a stain on the United States since before its founding — in an inaugural address.

Incantation alone cannot solve any problem, of course. But in the fight against far-right attacks, a president’s naming the menace might at least push the nation out of the ditch of inaction we’ve been stuck in for decades.

The primary reason that right-wing political violence persists in the United States is that it has rarely been prioritized by law enforcement, and the primary reason it has rarely been prioritized is political reluctance to do so. In the past decade, the lethal attacks kept coming — at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina; at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; at a protest against a racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, — but under Donald Trump and even under Barack Obama, security officials continued to shower resources on addressing foreign threats rather than those closer to home.

The government’s lapse has now become obvious. In the months leading up to the Capitol riot, right-wing assailants hardly attempted to hide their intentions. Many promised in public that they were planning to attack the government. They photographed themselves preparing to attack the government. They posted the routes they planned to take on their way to attack the government. Some even practiced attacking the federal government by attacking state governments. Undoing their plot was not a matter of finding a needle in a haystack; this was more like searching for a porcupine in a haystack, unmissable by anyone who cared to take minimal notice.

And yet the counterterrorism community still missed this huge attack — just as experts had long predicted would happen.

“Many of us in the counterterrorism community were feeling frustrated that we couldn’t quite drive progress the way we thought it needed to be driven,” said Elizabeth Neumann, who was an assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security.

Much of this problem was instigated and exacerbated by Trump himself. With the president winking at and even encouraging right-wing violence while falsely claiming that left-wing groups were the real problem, it’s hardly surprising that federal law enforcement would downplay the issue. Last year a whistleblower charged that Homeland Security officials delayed publishing an assessment that declared white supremacy the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland” in order to align the agency’s message with Trump’s; the department finally published the document late last year.

Republican politicians and luminaries of conservative media have also cultivated cozy ties with the far-right. Gavin McInnes, a founder of the Proud Boys, an extremist group whose members took part in the Capitol riot, has appeared dozens of times on Fox News. A leader of Stop the Steal, one of the groups that organized the Capitol protest, has claimed that it coordinated with some Republican members of Congress — who now may face legal trouble. There is also right-wing gun culture, which has become intertwined with white supremacy. A 2017 ad by the National Rifle Association divides the country into “ours” and “theirs,” leaving little question about the skin color of “ours.”

But doubt about the threat posed by domestic terrorists extended beyond Trump and other conservatives. Neumann told me that there was a sense among many in law enforcement that Americans could not cause great harm — domestic terrorists were “lone wolves”; they were disorganized and uncoordinated; their danger was nothing existential. There was some truth to this belief, Neumann acknowledged, but the view was so fixed that it created its own warped reality.

In the absence of leaders declaring that “this is the threat that we’re facing, and we’re going to leverage all our tools in our tool kit to go after it,” Neumann said, misinformation and disinformation clouded the issue, which is why many so many Americans are unaware of the prevalence of far-right terrorist acts — which, in turn, is why there’s little political focus on it.

After acknowledging the problem, there are several practical steps the Biden administration might take to address right-wing violence. Many of these are obvious, following the lessons that counterterrorism officials have learned investigating Islamic terrorism.

Experts I talked to called for vigilant investigation and prosecution of the Capitol rioters; more resources for anti-radicalization programs, which have proved effective in countering jihadi recruitment; a much greater federal emphasis on investigating hate crimes, acts of ideologically motivated violence that often fly under the radar of terrorism investigators; continued deplatforming of right-wing agitators from mainstream media; and greater cooperation between the United States and other countries in tracking and preventing attacks and recruitment that crosses borders, a growing problem in a digital world.

But the most important political move Biden can make is simply to keep shining a bright light on this scourge. Trump often mocked Democrats for refusing to say the phrase “radical Islamic terror,” as if that were a spell that could make the Islamic State group vanish. It wasn’t — but asking Republicans to repeatedly and specifically disavow radical white terrorism wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

If the United States’ failure to anticipate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of imagination, missing the terrorist attack of Jan. 6, 2021, was a failure of perception — a persistent refusal at the highest levels of our government to acknowledge the empirical reality of the threat posed by right-wing terrorists.

If the United States’ failure to anticipate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was one of imagination, missing the terrorist attack of Jan. 6, 2021, was a failure of perception — a persistent refusal at the highest levels of our government to acknowledge the empirical reality of the threat posed by right-wing terrorists. Terrorism in the United States is overwhelmingly domestic and motivated by far-right ideologies, often racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. In the past decade — indeed, in just about every year since 1990, other than 2001 — acts of right-wing domestic terrorism have been far more numerous and more lethal than acts of terrorism inspired or influenced by groups or movements overseas, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a research center at the University of Maryland. Far-right plots are also less likely to be disrupted by law enforcement; in the past decade about two-thirds of right-wing domestic terrorist plans have ended in “success,” according to the center, compared with 22% of terrorist plans hatched by international and affiliated actors. So one of the most striking passages in President Joe Biden’s inaugural address Wednesday was also one of the most straightforward: He named the enemy. “Political extremism, white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism,” he said, are dangers “that we must confront and we will defeat.” It was a quick line delivered without much flourish, and it may sound overgenerous to congratulate Biden simply for speaking plainly. Yet it is a sign of how reluctant American officials have been to take on right-wing violence that his line made history. He may be the first president to directly address white supremacy — a stain on the United States since before its founding — in an inaugural address. Incantation alone cannot solve any problem, of course. But in the fight against far-right attacks, a president’s naming the menace might at least push the nation out of the ditch of inaction we’ve been stuck in for decades. The primary reason that right-wing political violence persists in the United States is that it has rarely been prioritized by law enforcement, and the primary reason it has rarely been prioritized is political reluctance to do so. In the past decade, the lethal attacks kept coming — at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina; at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; at a protest against a racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, — but under Donald Trump and even under Barack Obama, security officials continued to shower resources on addressing foreign threats rather than those closer to home. The government’s lapse has now become obvious. In the months leading up to the Capitol riot, right-wing assailants hardly attempted to hide their intentions. Many promised in public that they were planning to attack the government. They photographed themselves preparing to attack the government. They posted the routes they planned to take on their way to attack the government. Some even practiced attacking the federal government by attacking state governments. Undoing their plot was not a matter of finding a needle in a haystack; this was more like searching for a porcupine in a haystack, unmissable by anyone who cared to take minimal notice. And yet the counterterrorism community still missed this huge attack — just as experts had long predicted would happen. “Many of us in the counterterrorism community were feeling frustrated that we couldn’t quite drive progress the way we thought it needed to be driven,” said Elizabeth Neumann, who was an assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. Much of this problem was instigated and exacerbated by Trump himself. With the president winking at and even encouraging right-wing violence while falsely claiming that left-wing groups were the real problem, it’s hardly surprising that federal law enforcement would downplay the issue. Last year a whistleblower charged that Homeland Security officials delayed publishing an assessment that declared white supremacy the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland” in order to align the agency’s message with Trump’s; the department finally published the document late last year. Republican politicians and luminaries of conservative media have also cultivated cozy ties with the far-right. Gavin McInnes, a founder of the Proud Boys, an extremist group whose members took part in the Capitol riot, has appeared dozens of times on Fox News. A leader of Stop the Steal, one of the groups that organized the Capitol protest, has claimed that it coordinated with some Republican members of Congress — who now may face legal trouble. There is also right-wing gun culture, which has become intertwined with white supremacy. A 2017 ad by the National Rifle Association divides the country into “ours” and “theirs,” leaving little question about the skin color of “ours.” But doubt about the threat posed by domestic terrorists extended beyond Trump and other conservatives. Neumann told me that there was a sense among many in law enforcement that Americans could not cause great harm — domestic terrorists were “lone wolves”; they were disorganized and uncoordinated; their danger was nothing existential. There was some truth to this belief, Neumann acknowledged, but the view was so fixed that it created its own warped reality. In the absence of leaders declaring that “this is the threat that we’re facing, and we’re going to leverage all our tools in our tool kit to go after it,” Neumann said, misinformation and disinformation clouded the issue, which is why many so many Americans are unaware of the prevalence of far-right terrorist acts — which, in turn, is why there’s little political focus on it. After acknowledging the problem, there are several practical steps the Biden administration might take to address right-wing violence. Many of these are obvious, following the lessons that counterterrorism officials have learned investigating Islamic terrorism. Experts I talked to called for vigilant investigation and prosecution of the Capitol rioters; more resources for anti-radicalization programs, which have proved effective in countering jihadi recruitment; a much greater federal emphasis on investigating hate crimes, acts of ideologically motivated violence that often fly under the radar of terrorism investigators; continued deplatforming of right-wing agitators from mainstream media; and greater cooperation between the United States and other countries in tracking and preventing attacks and recruitment that crosses borders, a growing problem in a digital world. But the most important political move Biden can make is simply to keep shining a bright light on this scourge. Trump often mocked Democrats for refusing to say the phrase “radical Islamic terror,” as if that were a spell that could make the Islamic State group vanish. It wasn’t — but asking Republicans to repeatedly and specifically disavow radical white terrorism wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Finally, a president acknowledges White supremacy

A decision to turn a chilly underground parking garage into an overnight billet for National Guard troops in Washington to protect President Joe Biden's inauguration has stirred an uproar.

A number of the 25,000 troops standing guard around the US Capitol in recent days in the wake of the January 6 insurrection had been allowed to take breaks and naps in between long shifts on the floors of the building housing the US Congress.

But on Thursday afternoon, after the legislature resumed work a day after the Biden inauguration, someone decided instead to force them out to a nearby parking garage.

Photos that spread quickly over the internet showed guardsmen and women stretched out under flourescent lights in parking slots, with few toilets, outlets for charging phones, or other facilities available.

Many members of Congress, noting that many of the troops came from their constituencies, voiced outrage.

"This is an insult to all National Guard units that followed orders and served in the cold and rain through the night without fail.&nbsp;They protected our Capitol when we needed them most," said Representative Brendan Boyle on Twitter.

Lawmakers visited the troops and apologized early Friday.

"What happened was an outrage and it will never happen again," said Chuck Schumer, the new Senate Majority leader, as he walked in a hall in the Capitol with dozens of soldiers sleeping on both sides.

Schumer said nobody knew exactly who ordered the part-time soldiers moved to the garage.

Echoing the recriminations over responsibility for letting hundreds of violent supporters of then-president Donald Trump crash the Capitol on January 6, National Guard officials said Capitol Police told them to move to the garage, and the Capitol Police denied it.

They "did not instruct the National Guard to vacate Capitol building facilities," said Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman in a statement.

"As of this morning, all Guardsmen and women have ben relocated to space within the Capitol complex."&nbsp;

A decision to turn a chilly underground parking garage into an overnight billet for National Guard troops in Washington to protect President Joe Biden's inauguration has stirred an uproar.

A decision to turn a chilly underground parking garage into an overnight billet for National Guard troops in Washington to protect President Joe Biden's inauguration has stirred an uproar. A number of the 25,000 troops standing guard around the US Capitol in recent days in the wake of the January 6 insurrection had been allowed to take breaks and naps in between long shifts on the floors of the building housing the US Congress. But on Thursday afternoon, after the legislature resumed work a day after the Biden inauguration, someone decided instead to force them out to a nearby parking garage. Photos that spread quickly over the internet showed guardsmen and women stretched out under flourescent lights in parking slots, with few toilets, outlets for charging phones, or other facilities available. Many members of Congress, noting that many of the troops came from their constituencies, voiced outrage. "This is an insult to all National Guard units that followed orders and served in the cold and rain through the night without fail. They protected our Capitol when we needed them most," said Representative Brendan Boyle on Twitter. Lawmakers visited the troops and apologized early Friday. "What happened was an outrage and it will never happen again," said Chuck Schumer, the new Senate Majority leader, as he walked in a hall in the Capitol with dozens of soldiers sleeping on both sides. Schumer said nobody knew exactly who ordered the part-time soldiers moved to the garage. Echoing the recriminations over responsibility for letting hundreds of violent supporters of then-president Donald Trump crash the Capitol on January 6, National Guard officials said Capitol Police told them to move to the garage, and the Capitol Police denied it. They "did not instruct the National Guard to vacate Capitol building facilities," said Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman in a statement. "As of this morning, all Guardsmen and women have ben relocated to space within the Capitol complex."

Outrage after troops protecting US Capitol forced to sleep in parking garage

Roughly 40 million people watched live coverage of Democrat Joe Biden`s inauguration as US&nbsp;president on six TV networks, according to Nielsen data released on Thursday, a 4% increase over the number that tuned in for Donald Trump`s swearing-in four years ago. 
 
The figure covers the 30-minute span starting at 11:45 a.m. EST on Wednesday when Biden took the oath of office and delivered his inaugural address from the US&nbsp;Capitol. It includes the audience on broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC and cable channels Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. 
 
In 2017, about 38.3 million people watched Republican Trump`s inauguration and speech on those networks. The swearing-in of Democrat Barack Obama in 2009 as the first Black U.S. president drew 51.2 million viewers. 
 
Biden, Obama`s vice president, became the 46th US&nbsp;president on Wednesday in a ceremony that included performances by Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brooks. Kamala Harris made history as she became the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice president. 
 
The TV viewing figures do not capture people who tuned in via digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube that streamed the event live, or others who watched on television at places outside of their homes such as bars and restaurants.

Updated figures are expected in the coming days.

CNN, owned by AT&amp;T Inc, led all networks with nearly 10 million viewers of Biden`s ceremony. Walt Disney Co`s ABC finished second. Fox Corp`s Fox News Channel ranked last among the six major networks with 2.8 million viewers. 
 
The ranking reflected a reversal from four years ago. Fox News, which is popular with conservative viewers, topped all networks for Trump`s swearing-in with 11.8 million viewers, an Inauguration Day record for a single network. CNN ranked fifth at the time with 3.4 million. 
&nbsp;

Roughly 40 million people watched live coverage of Democrat Joe Biden`s inauguration as US president on six TV networks, according to Nielsen data released on Thursday, a 4% increase over the number that tuned in for Donald Trump`s swearing-in four years ago.

Roughly 40 million people watched live coverage of Democrat Joe Biden`s inauguration as US president on six TV networks, according to Nielsen data released on Thursday, a 4% increase over the number that tuned in for Donald Trump`s swearing-in four years ago. The figure covers the 30-minute span starting at 11:45 a.m. EST on Wednesday when Biden took the oath of office and delivered his inaugural address from the US Capitol. It includes the audience on broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC and cable channels Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. In 2017, about 38.3 million people watched Republican Trump`s inauguration and speech on those networks. The swearing-in of Democrat Barack Obama in 2009 as the first Black U.S. president drew 51.2 million viewers. Biden, Obama`s vice president, became the 46th US president on Wednesday in a ceremony that included performances by Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brooks. Kamala Harris made history as she became the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice president. The TV viewing figures do not capture people who tuned in via digital platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube that streamed the event live, or others who watched on television at places outside of their homes such as bars and restaurants. Updated figures are expected in the coming days. CNN, owned by AT&T Inc, led all networks with nearly 10 million viewers of Biden`s ceremony. Walt Disney Co`s ABC finished second. Fox Corp`s Fox News Channel ranked last among the six major networks with 2.8 million viewers. The ranking reflected a reversal from four years ago. Fox News, which is popular with conservative viewers, topped all networks for Trump`s swearing-in with 11.8 million viewers, an Inauguration Day record for a single network. CNN ranked fifth at the time with 3.4 million.

TV audience for Joe Biden inauguration tops Donald Trump's viewership four years earlier

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