Boko Haram terrorists on Saturday again ambushed an advance team of Borno State governor, Babagana Zulum, at Ja’alta along Gajiram to Monguno Road, killing seven soldiers and members of Civilian-JTF.
The insurgents attacked the convoy on their way to Baga in Kukawa Local Government Area as a security detail to Zulum, who is is spending two days with other government officials in the town to distribute food items to newly resettled displaced persons.
Sources said the governor had earlier flown by helicopter to the town with some top government officials.
“We were attacked by the gunmen who came with about six trucks and seven motorcycles. We engaged them but they have already destabilised.
“We had no option than to abort the trip and returned back to Maiduguri with corpses of the deceased. About seven people died immediately but two of my colleagues (soldiers) died from gunshot injuries when we got back to Maiduguri,” a soldier attached to the Governor told SaharaReporters.
In all, nine security men in the advance team were killed in a fierce battle with the terrorists.
This is the third attack on the governor in Baga in three months.
Zulum’s convoy was attacked twice along the Baga Highway in September.
A splinter of Boko Haram sect, the Islamic State of West Africa Province, is believed to have a stronghold in the area.
The decade-long insurgency has killed over 50,000 people and forced over two million from their homes.
Most of the displaced are housed in squalid camps where they are fed by international charities.
Jose Mourinho said his “amazing” Tottenham beat Manchester City on strategy as a vintage show from the Portuguese boss, sending his side top of the Premier League.
Spurs were stubborn and clinical, defeating City 2-0 thanks to goal from Heung-Min Son and Giovani Lo Celso in either half, with Mourinho’s side registering just four shots on goal to City’s 22.
The result means Spurs finish a day top of the Premier League table for the first time since August 2014, and Mourinho put the victory down to a superior strategy over his old enemy Pep Guardiola.
He told Sky Sports, “For me, I prefer the players to speak because they are the ones, they were fantastic, they gave everything. They follow a strategy and football sometimes, more than ever, strategy plays an important part. They were amazing.
“It was very important to respect [City] and not to forget the team they are. If we follow people speaking about them as being not as good as before, if we follow the fake table because they have one match in hand, we would probably be playing in a different way. City is a fantastic team that lost against a team that strategically was very good but City is still City.
“Of course, you have to score and we didn’t have many chances. You need a top goalkeeper to make crucial saves in crucial moments, but we knew they would have more of the ball but we would be very comfortable playing that way because we knew the way to do it.”
G-20 leaders will pledge to “spare no effort” in ensuring the equitable distribution of coronavirus vaccines worldwide and reaffirm support for debt-laden poor countries, according to a draft communique seen by AFP Sunday.
The leaders also struck a unified tone on supporting “multilateral” trade as well as the global fight against climate change, but the closing document lacks firm details on many of the issues dominating the virtual summit hosted by Riyadh.
The two-day gathering that began Saturday comes as international efforts intensify for a large-scale rollout of coronavirus vaccines after a breakthrough in trials, and as EU and other leaders call for G20 nations to plug a $4.5-billion funding shortfall.
“We have mobilised resources to address the immediate financing needs in global health to support the research, development, manufacturing and distribution of safe and effective Covid-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines,” the draft document said.
“We will spare no effort to ensure their affordable and equitable access for all people, consistent with members’ commitments to incentivise innovation.”
The communique offered no details on how the effort will be funded.
There could be changes in the final version of the document, which will be released later Sunday by the Saudi hosts.
In a comment echoed by other world leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday the coronavirus crisis was “a test for the G20”, stressing there “will be no effective response to the pandemic unless it is a global response”.
G20 nations have contributed more than $21 billion to combat the pandemic, which has infected 56 million people globally and left 1.3 million dead, and injected $11 trillion to “safeguard” the virus-battered world economy, summit organisers said.
But the group’s leaders face mounting pressure to help stave off possible credit defaults across developing nations.
G20 nations have extended a debt service suspension initiative (DSSI) for developing countries until June next year, but UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has pushed for a commitment to extend it until the end of 2021.
The draft communique, however, did not offer a firm commitment.
G20 finance ministers will examine the recommendation when the IMF and World Bank meet next spring “if the economic and financial situation requires” an extension by another six months, it said.
Closing Ranks On Climate
On trade, the club of the world’s richest nations also emphasised that supporting a multilateral system “is now as important as ever”.
“We strive to realise the goal of a free, fair, inclusive, non-discriminatory, transparent, predictable, and stable trade and investment environment, and to keep our markets open,” the communique said.
Ahead of the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she hoped the US will adopt a more multilateralist stance under the incoming administration of Joe Biden.
US President Donald Trump’s robust “America first” trade policy has rankled world leaders.
Von der Leyen also added that she expected consensus and a “new momentum from the new US administration” on climate change, and a reversal of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.
Differences within the G20 group surfaced at last year’s summit in the Japanese city of Osaka as the United States demanded the insertion of a separate paragraph on issues such as environmental protection.
But under the Saudi chairmanship, G20 leaders projected a unified stance, with the draft communique reiterating support for tackling “pressing” environmental challenges.
Outside it has become night. In front of the windows of one of Abuja’s grandest hotels, the pool shines turquoise blue. Finally, the phone rings. It is the hotel’s front desk, announcing a guest.
The man, who comes into the room, hours late for the scheduled appointment, is named Umaru Potiskum. He is an art dealer in his late 50s. He’s wearing a dark blue dashiki and is full of self-confidence, but is also a suspicious. He knows us as art fundis, and possible buyers, but one of us has also introduced himself as journalist. His is, after all, an underground, illegal business.
“Here I have met many customers,” he says; buyers from Belgium, France, Spain, England and Germany. He shows us what he’s selling, carefully unwrapping two delicate terracotta statues from a piece of cloth.
The eyes gazing out from the ancient clay are triangular, typical of Nok figurines. Over the decades, thousands of these figurines have been taken out of Nigeria. Many are on display in some of the world’s most prestigious art galleries, including at the Louvre in Paris and Yale University. Many more are no longer displayed, however, because their provenance is questionable.
Anyone who wants to understand what drives this multi-million-dollar global trade must go searching: in Abuja and Paris, in Frankfurt and New Haven. But the first stop is the Nok Valley.
A Cradle Of Civilisation
One hundred and fifty kilometres northeast of Abuja, a reddish-brown bush track winds through the lush green of the Nok Valley, towards a village. Mango and palm trees and millet fields surround about three-dozen houses and mud huts. Children are running after a hoop, while women chat under the shade of a tree.
It was here, in 1928, that a foreign miner supposedly discovered the first antique terracotta figure: a monkey head, 10 centimetres high. As archaeologists dug further, they discovered more remnants of an ancient culture, which as per convention, they named after the surrounding area. Nok.
From around 1500 BC – at the same time that ancient Greece was flourishing, the Mayan civilisation was developing and Egyptian pharaohs were ruthlessly expanding their empire – a highly-developed society was spreading across the valley, encompassing an area the size of Portugal. It is the earliest known civilization in West Africa, according to Archaeology magazine.
Between the years of 900 and 300 BC, the Nok produced a staggering number of striking clay figurines, including elaborately stylized people, animals and fantasy creatures, adorned with ornaments, jewelry and symbols. Many appeared to have been buried in shards. Even today these figurines are a riddle: why were they made? What did they mean? Why did so many appear to have been deliberately broken and then buried?
Thousands of figurines have been dug up. But today, it is getting harder and harder to find any more – making them all the more valuable.
The Thirsty Dealer
At the Abuja hotel, Potiskum takes another drink and starts talking numbers. His two figurines – a man’s head and a larger statue of a woman – are more than 2000 years old, he claims, and any laboratory analysis will prove it. He charges 2,000 euros ($2,350) for the man’s head, and claims that it can be sold to buyers overseas for ten times that amount. The female figurine goes for considerably more.
These sums would seem astronomical to residents in the Nok Valley, some of whom help to find and dig up the terracottas. They are paid five euros per day, at most; many earn just one euro per day.
But that’s how it works, explains Nigeria’s minister for information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. Nigerian middlemen buy the Nok terracottas at source for a pittance, and then sell them on for a fortune. “We have not yet done enough to stop our own people and to convince them to protect their own cultural heritage,” he says.
But given the lack of alternative employment opportunities, the state has found it nearly impossible to control – much to the minister’s frustration. “These works define our history. They define who we are. Those who sell our cultural heritage abroad are harming Nigeria,” he says. He is also critical of the international art market, which seems unable to stop the illicit trade in Nok terracottas once they have left Nigeria.
The minister says that the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), which is under him, cooperates with the Artefacts Rescuers Association of Nigeria, an organisation of art dealers that purports to protect Nigerian cultural heritage. However, unfortunately the NCMM has not enough money for rescuers at the moment, and sometimes the sums demanded by the “rescuers” are far too much.
Minister Mohammed does not have an easy job. Nigeria’s population is about 190-million people, and they speak more than 500 languages. The country is a finely woven carpet of religions and ethnicities and cultures, some rooted in emirates and kingdoms whose traditions stretch back for thousands of years. Its borders are arbitrary, drawn up by British colonisers whose understanding of local dynamics was limited at best. Arts and culture is one tool that the government has to bring this diverse nation together, so it does not help when important cultural artefacts keep ending up in other countries.
Potiskum knows a thing or two about those British colonists. His father was a close colleague of Bernhard Fagg, an English archaeologist who worked in the colonial administration in Nigeria from the 1940s to the 1960s. He was responsible for telling the Western academic world about the newly discovered Nok culture, astonishing them in the process. At the time, “Black Africa” was, in the Western world, widely considered to be a terrain without history; a “heart of darkness” just waiting to be civilised. This myth helped to legitimise the brutal subjugation of the continent by western colonists.
The very existence of the Nok culture challenged that racist myth. Today, in academic circles, Fagg is still seen as the great pioneer of Nok studies, or even the ‘discoverer’ of Nok culture. And in the Nok valley, in the village of the same name, the house where Fagg once lived is still standing. Sometimes tourists even come to look at it. But if they want to hear nice things about Fagg, they had better not ask Beno Adamu, the village chief.
Adamu’s house is made of stone and is located at the entrance of the village, on the left side. Inside the house, the 75-year-old dignitary sits in a big, soft armchair. His memories and knowledge differ greatly from the versions in the history books. He dismisses the notion that the Nok terracottas were “discovered” by foreigners.
“We, Ham people here in Nok, look back at a long, long history and have always known these terracottas. Our grandfathers told us about them.” The Ham people, they are 350.000, live in southern Kaduna and speak Hyam language, had them in their shrines, houses and even out in the fields as scarecrows – long before Fagg “discovered” them.
Adamu met Fagg a few times, when he was a young boy. He remembers: “Fagg asked the people to bring their terracottas to his house. Which they did. Then he told them that the pieces would be worthless. They never saw their terracottas again. They were already packed.”
Adamu speaks openly about what many people in the village think: “We are warm-hearted people. We like to have guests. But our treasures have been taken away and we do not see them again. Today they are in England, Germany and France. Many people came here, selfish, and used us as cheap labour. Then they disappeared and nobody supported us in our development. Not even our own government. We have not really benefited from our great heritage.”
‘Don’t Worry, I Know A Guy’
Almost every Nok terracotta excavated over the last 50 years has left Nigeria for the international art market. When talking to local government officials in Kaduna State, where the Nok Valley is situated, it becomes clear that there are few systems in place to keep them in the country.
The head of prisons does not know of any inmate who has been imprisoned for illegal digging or smuggling of cultural artefacts. The police chief says that his priorities are kidnappings, banditry and conflict between cattle herders and farmers. He does not have time to worry about the terracottas. The immigration boss has been to workshops about cultural heritage and how to protect it, but has not yet confiscated any smuggled artefacts.
In the hotel room, Umaru Potiskum boasts: “Don’t worry, export is no problem. Wherever I have to deliver, I deliver. I just need the address.” He knows the customs people; border guards in Lagos; an international shipping company, which helps him. He can even organise the export via other West African countries like Togo, Benin and Ghana. He has a well-functioning network there.
And the export papers? “I can get everything,” he promises. Never mind that he is also a member of the Artefacts Rescuers Association of Nigeria, an organization of art dealers that purports to protect Nigerian cultural heritage.
Potiskum says that it does not pay to remain above the law. He says he once handed over 72 Nok terracottas to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, but has not seen a single naira for them – despite the government’s promise to pay for rescued antiques. He claims that the NCMM owes him N65million (about $170,000).
The investigation was supported by the German journalism association “Hard work and courage” and its Cartographers Program for journalists.
The 81 Division of the Nigerian Army, the formation involved in the October 20, 2020 Lekki shooting of peaceful protesters, has said that soldiers went to the toll gate with live ammunitions.
Ibrahim Taiwo, Commander of the division, disclosed this on Saturday while testifying before the panel the Lagos State Government set up to probe the incident.
While being cross examined by Olumide Fusika, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Taiwo insisted that no one was shot dead as soldiers only fired blank ammunition at the protesters and not live rounds.
He said that they were meant for the protection of the army team that was deployed to restore order in the state.
Despite evidence of people being killed and injured at the Lekki incident, the army representative said the soldiers only used blank bullets while their colleagues with live rounds were on ground to protect them from suspected hoodlums, who caused trouble.
Brighton survived late penalty controversy to secure their first-ever victory at Aston Villa on Saturday.
Brighton’s 2-1 success ended a run of seven games without a win in all competitions, but it didn’t come easily for the Seagulls.
Graham Potter’s side, who had won only once in the league this term, took the lead through Danny Welbeck before Ezri Konsa’s equaliser for Villa.
Solly March put Brighton back in front, but Brighton defender Tariq Lamptey was sent off for a foul on Jack Grealish in stoppage-time.
Villa were controversially denied a penalty in the final seconds when Michael Oliver gave a spot-kick for March’s challenge on Trezeguet, only for the referee to change his mind after consulting the pitchside monitor.
In the 12th minute, Welbeck took Adam Lallana’s pass near the halfway line, sprinted away from the sluggish Villa defence and clipped a cool finish over Emiliano Martinez.
It was the 29-year-old’s first goal since July when the former Arsenal forward netted in his last game for Watford.
Fresh from his fine performances for England during the international break, Grealish was full of confidence and the Villa captain’s curling effort was well saved by Mat Ryan.
Ryan saved with his leg to keep out Tyrone Mings’ close-range effort, but a game full of chances finally featured a Villa goal in the 47th minute.
Bertrand Traore’s free-kick reached Konsa at the far post and the unmarked Villa defender slid in for a clinical finish.
March restored Brighton’s lead from Pascal Gross’s pass in the 56th minute, bending a superb strike into the top corner from the edge of the area.
Four persons were on Saturday crushed to death in an accident involving a DAF truck and a commercial bus around Capital Hotel on Ijebu Ode-Oru road.
Mr Babatunde Akinbiyi, the Spokesperson, Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Corps (TRACE), confirmed the incident to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abeokuta.
Akinbiyi explained that the accident which occurred around 1:15 p.m., was caused by excessive speeding and loss of control on the part of the DAF truck driver.
He said that six people were involved in the accident which comprised of three male adults and three female adults, saying that four persons died while two were injured.
He explained that the truck driver, due to excessive speeding lost control of the vehicle; left his lane and rammed into a bus loaded with Kolanut in the opposite direction.
“The bus was going to Ibadan from an unknown destination while the truck was heading toward Ijebu-Ode from Ibadan axis.
“All the passengers in the bus, including the driver and three women died on the spot,’’ Akinbiyi said.
The TRACE spokesman said that the deceased had been deposited at the morgue of Ijebu Ode General Hospital, while the injured truck driver and one other were taken to same hospital.
He said that the TRACE Corps Commander, Seni Ogunyemi, commiserated with the families of the dead victims.
He warned drivers of articulated vehicles against reckless and dangerous driving as well as excessive speeding because of its attendant consequences.
Police officers investigate the area at the Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, on November 20, 2020. Multiple people were injured in a shooting at the US mall on November 20, according to local media, with victims rushed to hospital but no fatalities immediately reported. The FBI and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s office tweeted that their officers were on the scene at the Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, supporting the “active” response by local police. KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP
Eight people were injured in a shooting at a US mall in Wisconsin on Friday, according to the Police, who said they were still hunting for the shooter.
The FBI and the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s office tweeted that their officers were on the scene at the Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, supporting the “active” response by local police.
“When emergency personnel arrived, the shooter was no longer at the scene,” the Wauwatosa Police Department said in a statement.
It said the wounded included seven adults and one teenager who had been rushed to hospital. The seriousness of their injuries was not immediately known, but Wauwatosa mayor Dennis McBride told ABC news their injuries were not life threatening.
The shooter was identified by police as a “white male in his 20s or 30s.”
Numerous workers at the mall took shelter inside the building as the shooter rampaged, according to videos circulating on social media.
Shopper Jill Wooley told a local news station she was inside with her 79-year-old mother when the gunfire erupted.
“I knew right away it was a gunshot and they just kept coming one right after the other,” Wooley told CBS affiliate WDJT. “We just dropped to the floor.”
“I think we’re all born with it,” she said. “We’ve all been exposed to public shootings like this. I think all of us have thought of what we would do in a situation like this.”
“We are disheartened and angered that our guests and tenants were subject to this violent incident today,” the company that operates the mall said in a statement.
“We are thankful for our partners at the Wauwatosa Police Department and we are cooperating with them as their investigation develops,” it added.
According to gross domestic product numbers released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday, the nation recorded a contraction of 3.62 percent in the third quarter of 2020.
The Cable reports that the world’s most populous black nation, Nigeria has officially slid into its worst economic recession in over three decades.
According to gross domestic product numbers released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday, the nation recorded a contraction of 3.62 percent in the third quarter of 2020.
This is the second consecutive quarterly GDP decline since the recession of 2016. The cumulative GDP for the first nine months of 2020, therefore, stood at -2.48 percent.
The last time Nigeria recorded such cumulative GDP was in 1987, when GDP declined by 10.8 percent.
According to World Bank and NBS figures monitored by The Cable, this is also the second recession under President Muhammadu Buhari’s democratic reign — and his fourth as head of state.
Overturning elections sounds like the stuff of secret deals in smoke-filled rooms, but President Donald Trump’s not even trying to hide his effort to subvert the results of the election as President-elect Joe Biden’s margin widens to more than six million votes.
President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on November 20, 2020 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump held his first press conference in over a week to make an announcement on prescription drug prices as he continues to challenge the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
Trump’s efforts to deny Biden the White House traveled from the courts to state legislatures on Friday with Trump’s personal reception with Republican lawmakers from Michigan — and their counterparts in Pennsylvania may be next on the list.
But there were signs, even among Republicans, that Trump’s efforts need some evidence.
“As legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election,” Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield said in a joint statement after their meeting at the White House.
Importantly, they acknowledged there is no actual evidence of wrongdoing, a blow to a President and his allies who’ve been peddling baseless claims about fraud.
“Allegations of fraudulent behavior should be taken seriously, thoroughly investigated, and if proven, prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And the candidates who win the most votes win elections and Michigan’s electoral votes. These are simple truths that should provide confidence in our elections,” the Michigan lawmakers said.
Another blow for Trump came on Friday in Georgia, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the paperwork that officially grants the state’s 16 electoral votes to Biden. A federal judge on Thursday had rejected a last-ditch lawsuit that tried to block certification, and Biden’s victory was certified Friday afternoon by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican.
Other setbacks came in Nevada, where a district judge on Friday denied a request brought by a conservative activist to halt the certification next week of the state’s election results — which show Biden leading by more than 33,000 votes — and in Wisconsin, where elections officials in the Democratic stronghold of Dane County rejected requests from the Trump campaign to throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots on Friday as the state kicked off its partial presidential recount.
Testing out loopholes
To succeed, Trump would need to bulldoze the Electoral College system. But for all the angst he’s sparked about a coup, the President doesn’t seem to have a plan so much as a shameless sense of entitlement to the White House. What he’s doing is exploiting loopholes and prying at technicalities to see if any of them will give.
He’s clearly trying to generate the heat and noise he craves. But he’s also casting about for an unexpected opening, as he’s done so many times before.
Trump refused to take questions at the White House Friday at what he had falsely billed a “press conference,” where he discussed prescription drug prices and gave a business-as-usual veneer to the democratic subversion he’s orchestrating from the Oval Office and the raging pandemic he appears to be largely ignoring. The appearance came just as Covid hospitalizations and new daily cases hit a record again and news emerged that his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has tested positive. Cases to continue to climb in Congress, too, with Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida — a staunch Trump ally — becoming the latest to test positive.
Trump, perhaps in a brief moment of reality, appeared to acknowledge his impending departure from the White House, implying that it will be up to the new administration to maintain the drug pricing rules he was announcing. But he quickly repeated during the same lie that he won the election, despite the results, and he promised, “We’ll find that out.”
What he meant was this: If he can delay certification, whether in Michigan or Pennsylvania or another Biden-won state with a Republican-run legislature, then he can maybe lean on lawmakers to appoint pro-Trump slates of presidential electors.
That’s why Trump met with the Michigan GOP lawmakers on Friday. He’d need to turn them and a majority of the Michigan statehouse into accomplices if his effort is to succeed, after previous legal attempts all failed. Trump’s top campaign attorneys — Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis — did not attend the meeting after Giuliani’s son, who works at the White House, tested positive for Covid-19. Also not in attendance: Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, who is from Michigan.
But Michigan’s just the first part of Trump’s puzzle. Biden has 306 of the 538 available electoral votes, which means Trump would need to find a way to claw back 37 to bring Biden under the 270 normally needed to win. So he’d need to poach votes in at least three states where a majority of voters said Biden should be President.
The clear focus by the White House is on Michigan (16 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes).
Overturning the results of one state’s election would be brazen and horrible enough. Overturning three would be a macabre triple Lindy.
That doesn’t mean Trump won’t try. Two sources tell CNN there are discussions currently underway with the President about inviting Republican state legislators from Pennsylvania to the White House. It’s not clear if those invitations have been extended yet, but Trump has expressed interest in doing so as he tries to insert himself into the vote certification process.
The election certification deadline for both Michigan and Pennsylvania is Monday, so the plotting will have to move into overdrive if it’s to be anything more than a delusional sideshow.
One state is off the map, though, with Georgia’s Republican governor certifying the election resultsafter his Republican secretary of state formalized the fact that Biden won, very narrowly. Every small normally procedural step is under scrutiny during this strange time, and these Republicans were true to the democratic result.
Legal experts have made clear that it would be incredibly difficult for Trump to hack any path from his current deficit to a second term.
For starters, they’ve pointed out that if Trump can get electoral votes thrown out or contested so that they’re not approved in Congress, it changes the 270 threshold and doesn’t necessarily gain Trump ground.
As Michael Morley, a professor of election law at Florida State University and a member of National Task Force on Election Crises, said, “In short, under any remotely plausible scenario, the election will be settled in the Electoral College without triggering a contingent election in the House.”
Read the fine print
As his effort to stay in the White House becomes more frantic, Trump’s continuing to ask for more money.
But as CNN’s Fredeka Schouten notes, donors need to read the fine print of the solicitation, in which Trump’s political team says it has upped to 75% the share of the money that goes to Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America. It had been a 60% cut last week.
This money is not primarily geared at Trump’s legal efforts, but rather could fund Trump’s post-presidential political efforts.
That Trump’s adviser and aides are tacitly eyeing what comes next is not news, but the extent of his efforts to gum things up and make things more difficult for Biden continues to become clear.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, for instance, is defending a decision to claw back billions the government had given the Federal Reserve to help American small businesses. It’s a program more easily ended than spun back up. And while the move certainly creates political headaches for Biden, it’ll also have a negative impact on everyday Americans still living in a pandemic.
Biden moves forward with his Cabinet
Even if Trump continues to block a formal transition, Biden is carrying forward with his own preparations to take office. On Friday, his 78th birthday, he met in Wilmington, Delaware, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer.
What they’ll be able to accomplish on Capitol Hill and who Biden will be able to place in his Cabinet depends very much on who wins the twin Senate runoffs in Georgia on January 5, the day before Electoral College votes are counted on Capitol Hill.
Biden said he’s already selected his Treasury secretary, but will make the announcement in the coming week.
As Trump’s agitating leads him to darker, more dangerous places, the former vice president’s mandate has only grown. He had won nearly 80 million votes, as of Friday evening, which is more votes than any US presidential candidate in history by a considerable margin. Trump has received nearly 74 million votes.
While most of GOP leadership continues to back Trump’s efforts to contest those results, a growing number of veteran Republicans pushed back on Trump’s tactics and expressed frustration about the transition being held up.
“If there is any chance whatsoever that Joe Biden will be the next president, and it looks like he has a very good chance, the Trump administration should provide the Biden team with all transition materials, resources, and meetings necessary to ensure a smooth transition so that both sides are ready on day one,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman, who’s retiring at the end of this year.
“That especially should be true, for example, on vaccine distribution,” he added in his statement.
“I think that it’s time to move on,” 12-term Rep. Kay Granger of Texas said Friday when asked about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.
“I think it’s time for him to really realize and be very clear about what’s going on.”
![Donald Trump wearing a suit and tie: WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 20: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on November 20, 2020 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump held his first press conference in over a week to make an announcement on prescription drug prices as he continues to challenge the results of the 2020 Presidential election. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"80","h":"45","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1bdCaD.img?h=450&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=456&y=248"},"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"35","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1bdCaD.img?h=352&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=456&y=248"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"35","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1bdCaD.img?h=352&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=456&y=248"}})