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WASHINGTON (AP) The last time Merrick Garland was nominated by the White House for a job, Republicans wouldn't even meet with him.

Now, the once-snubbed Supreme Court pick will finally come before the Senate, this time as President Joe Biden's choice for attorney general. Garland, an appeals court judge, is widely expected to sail through his confirmation process, which begins Monday before the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support.

Judge Garlands extensive legal experience makes him well-suited to lead the Department of Justice, and I appreciated his commitment to keep politics out of the Justice Department, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement. Unless I hear something new, I expect to support his nomination before the full Senate."

Bidens choice of Garland reflects the presidents goal of restoring the departments reputation as an independent body. During his four years as president, Donald Trump had insisted that the attorney general must be loyal to him personally, a position that battered the departments reputation. Garland's high court nomination by President Barack Obama in 2016 died because the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold a hearing.

Garland will inherit a Justice Department that endured a tumultuous time under Trump rife with political drama and controversial decisions and abundant criticism from Democrats over what they saw as the politicizing of the nations top law enforcement agencies.

The departments priorities and messaging are expected to shift drastically in the Biden administration, with a focus more on civil rights issue, criminal justice overhauls and policing policies in the wake of nationwide protests over the death of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.

Garland plans to tell senators the department must ensure laws are fairly and faithfully enforced and the rights of all Americans are protected, while reaffirming an adherence to policies to protect its political independence, with the attorney general acting as a lawyer for the American people, not for the president. The Justice Department on late Saturday released a copy of Garlands opening statement.

Garland will also confront some immediate challenges, including the criminal tax investigation into Bidens son, Hunter, and calls from some Democrats to investigate Trump, especially after thousands of pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress was meeting to certify Bidens electoral win. Garland, in his prepared remarks for the Senate committee, calls the insurrection a heinous attack that sought to distrust a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.

A special counsels inquiry started by William Barr, while he was attorney general, into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation also remains open. It will be up to Garland to decide what to make public from that report,

Garland was at the center of a political firestorm five years ago as part of a Republican gamble that eventually shaped the future of the Supreme Court. As Obamas nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who had died unexpectedly in February of 2016, Garland was a moderate choice and generally well liked by senators.

But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said hours after Scalias death that he would not consider any Obama nominee and that the voters should decide by picking a new president that November. McConnell's entire caucus went along. Many declined even to meet with Garland, even though some privately questioned the gambit.

It was a huge political risk. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was ahead in most polls and could have easily nominated someone more liberal than Garland had she won the White House. But she did not, Trump did and Republicans were elated as they voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch as a justice a year later. The bet later paid off unexpected returns as the Senate remained in Republican hands for the next four years and Trump had the opportunity to nominate two additional conservative justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, reshaping the political balance of the court.

Before the high court drama, Garland had been repeatedly praised by some Republicans as exactly the sort of moderate nominee they could support.

The criticism, such as it was, came from liberals, who had hoped Obama would pick someone more progressive, or diverse, than Garland. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, then seeking the 2016 nomination against Clinton, said he wouldnt have chosen Garland. Liberal activist groups were tepid in their support.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., was one of a handful of senators who met with Garland, but didn't budge from his position that a president should not choose a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. Graham reversed course when his party had the chance, ramming through Coney Barrett's nomination in record time during a global pandemic with just weeks to go before the 2020 election, which his party then lost.

Graham said in a tweet that Garland would be a sound choice to lead the Justice Department. He is a man of great character, integrity, and tremendous competency in the law."

Garland is a white man, but two other members of the Justice Department leadership, Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, are women with significant experience in civil rights. Their selections appeared designed to blunt any concerns about Biden's choice for attorney general and served as a signal that progressive causes would be prioritized in the new administration.

Garland is an experienced judge who held senior positions at the Justice Department decades ago, including as a supervisor in the prosecution of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. But he is set to return to a department that is radically different from the one he left. His experience prosecuting domestic terrorism cases could prove exceptionally handy now.

Garland probably will face pressure from civil rights groups to end the federal death penalty after an unprecedented run of capital punishment during the Trump administration. Thirteen federal executions were carried out in six months, and they became superspreaders during the coronavirus pandemic.

There could be questions, too, about the department's handling of a federal criminal and civil rights investigation examining whether members of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration intentionally manipulated data about nursing home coronavirus deaths.

The new chairman of the Senate committee handling the nomination, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Garland was well deserving of the post.

And in light of his past treatment of the United States Senate, his day before the microphones is long overdue, Durbin said.

Associated Press writers Mark Sherman and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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Snubbed as Obama high court pick, Garland in line to be AG - FOX5 Las Vegas

Former President Trump's lawyers are arguing now on the Senate floor against the constitutionality of the impeachment trial.

The lawyers who signed on to lead Trump's impeachment defense team bring a curious history of experience. David Schoen, a seasoned civil and criminal lawyer, and Bruce L. Castor, Jr, a well-known lawyer and the former Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, district attorney, are defending him in the trial.

The lawyers, both of whom have legal careers peppered with curiosities, joined Trump's team a day after five members of his defense left, effectively collapsing the team.

Trumps lawyers are tasked with devising a defense strategy for a former President who faces the impeachment charge of inciting a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, something that if convicted could also result in him being barred from holding federal office ever again.

For Schoen, whose website says he "focuses primarily on the litigation of complex civil and criminal cases before trial and appellate courts," Trump is just the latest controversial figure his career has brought him to in recent years.

Schoen was on the team of lawyers representing Roger Stone, Trump's longtime friend and former adviser, in the appeal of his conviction related to issues Stone took with the jury. Stone dropped that appeal after the then-President commuted his prison sentence, but before Stone received a full presidential pardon for convictions, including lying to Congress to protect Trump.

Schoen, who holds a master of laws from Columbia University and a juris doctorate from Boston College, according to his biography, serves as chair of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Subcommittee of the Civil Rights Litigation Committee.

Castor, meanwhile, served as Montgomery County district attorney from 2000 to 2008, before serving two terms as the county commissioner, according to a release from Trump's office.

He was involved in at least one high-profile case as district attorney, when he declined in 2005 to prosecute Bill Cosby after Andrea Constand reported the actor had touched her inappropriately at his home in Montgomery County, citing "insufficient credible and admissible evidence."

Cosby was later tried and convicted in 2018 for drugging and sexually assaulting Constand at his home in 2004, despite the fact that Castor argued during a pre-trial hearing that he'd already committed the state to not prosecuting the actor.

Read more about the lawyers here.

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(2) Trump once suggested impeaching Obama after he was out of office - CNN

Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images

Joe Biden assumed the presidency confronting an economic crisis reminiscent of the one that faced him when he and Barack Obama took office 12 years earlier. But it is already apparent that the political atmosphere surrounding Biden is unrecognizable. He enjoys freedom of action and a presumptive legitimacy in tackling the crisis that had been denied the last Democratic presidency. Every actor around him the Republican opposition, business, the mainstream media, and Democrats in Congress are behaving differently. Its as if hes the president of a completely different country than the one that existed in 2009.

This is not because the present crisis is more severe. Just the opposite: The deepest and darkest moment of the contraction has passed, and the question before the economy now is how rapidly it can return to health. A dozen years ago, the economy was plunging so rapidly nobody could even measure the speed of the collapse, let alone discern a bottom.

Americans in 2009 had been conditioned to treat budget deficits as their greatest threat. This began when Ronald Reagan created the modern era of large deficits, which thrust Democrats into the role of fiscal stewards. In part this reflected economic conditions that were once very real. Inflation in the 1980s, while lower than the previous decade, remained high, and periodically threatened to spiral when the deficit peaked. Alan Greenspan informed incoming president Bill Clinton that his economy depended on persuading the bond market he had a serious plan to reduce the deficit, and he was not necessarily wrong interest rates did seem to threaten to choke off the economy.

The focus on deficits spread beyond Washington and Wall Street, becoming a national obsession. Ross Perot created a national populist movement by making deficits a symbol of national decline. The fantasy of who could cut through partisan rancor and solve this singular crisis was often reflected in popular culture. A 1992 Saturday Night Live skit imagined the Founding Fathers returning to the future through a time machine, telling the country, as we studied your problems, we kept coming back to one overriding concern: the crippling federal deficit. The 1993 movie Dave centered on Kevin Kline as an ordinary person who becomes president through a deus ex machina, and brings in his common-sense accountant friend to comb through the budget and find the necessary savings. A 2000 Simpsons episode, later made famous for obvious reasons, depicted Lisa Simpson growing up to become president, only to declare, Weve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.

And so when Obama took office, the news media treated the deficit, not the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression, as the primary crisis. If combined with the gigantic stimulus package of tax cuts and new spending that Obama is preparing, which could amount to nearly $800 billion over two years, the shortfall this year could hit $1.6 trillion, reported the New York Times on January 7, But Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress said they were more determined than ever to pass a stimulus package. Obamas desire to increase the deficit in the face of already-large deficits was frequently treated as completely perverse.

Republicans embraced the idea that deficit spending could only worsen the economic crisis. When Obama invited House Republicans to meet with him, 82-year-old Roscoe Bartlett became a brief sensation by instructing Obama he was there during Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, and government programs didnt work then. A deeply weird revisionist history of the New Deal by Amity Shlaes was held up by Republicans as proof positive that Bartletts youthful memories (he was 5 when Roosevelt took office) were correct.

Throughout most of Obamas presidency, reporters judged his success by a simple metric: Could he join with Republicans to forge a deal to reduce the deficit? The ends (deficit reduction) and the means (bipartisan cooperation) were linked together so tightly that journalists considered it almost axiomatic that if he could cooperate with Republicans, the deal would be over deficits. When Bob Woodward chronicled the failure of a deal to emerge in 2013, he lamented, They did not get that a genuine deal would send multiple messages to the world, establishing some economic certainty, laying the conditions for a burst of economic growth and providing evidence, sorely lacking for years, that Democrats and Republicans could work together for the common good. The endless demands that Obama spend more time drinking with Mitch McConnell or golfing with John Boehner reflected the press corps inability to imagine any other avenue for domestic success.

In the intervening years, the assumptions that produced this atmosphere have all collapsed one by one.

The rise of Donald Trump is the largest single cause of the transformation. It was obvious to some of us all along that Republican claims to have a passionate concern for fiscal probity were insincere. Trump has made it impossible to ignore. The beliefs that sincerely animated reporters and officials in Washington during the Obama era that the Tea Party was a reaction to debt levels, that Republican leaders were willing or able to deal with Obama were turned into a running joke by a Republican president who won the nomination in part because he never fooled himself into believing any of these things. Trumps ability to blow out the budget deficit and wantonly pick winners and losers without any shame or meaningful Republican blowback destroyed the whole premise.

Democrats in Congress also learned an important lesson from the Obama era. Many moderate Democrats shared a belief with the mainstream media that bipartisanship was both possible and necessary. Democrats in Congress squandered much of their time pursuing fruitless negotiations with Republicans, chasing a deal they were sure lay just around the corner. Only in retrospect did they realize that Republicans were stringing them along to allow opposition to build while they ran out the clock.

One of the biggest obstacles Obama faced in 2009 was the excessive confidence of his putative congressional allies that they could strike an agreement with Republicans. Bidens congressional allies have fewer illusions about the incentives of their Republican counterparts.

Economic thinking itself has changed in important ways over the last decade. Economists previously feared that the federal government floating trillions of dollars in additional debt would cause interest rates to rise. (Indeed, this seems like a straightforward application of supply and demand.) Instead, interest rates have failed to budge, eliminating the austerity pressure that exerted such a powerful impact in the 1980s and 1990s.

A 2010 paper by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt estimated that once a countrys debt hit a threshold of 90 percent of its gross domestic product, its growth rate sharply fell. This finding, backed by unimpeachable sources, inspired a huge amount of civic and business lobbying to reduce the long-term debt. But in 2013, a graduate student found that its principle conclusion was based on simple errors.

Economists have likewise changed their view of unemployment. The Federal Reserve has historically tried to balance between unemployment and inflation, keeping interest rates at a level that would maintain a growth rate neither too fast nor too slow. But the evidence has grown increasingly clear that its calibrations have been off. The level of unemployment central bankers thought would be low enough to set off inflation has not made prices budge.

The Trump era produced the strongest evidence of all. In 2018 and 2019, unemployment dropped below what had been previously assumed to be full employment. And yet, contrary to theory, inflation did not rise. Indeed, unemployment just kept falling, until the pandemic artificially halted the recovery.

Many economists on the right as well as the left are eager to resume the experiment and find out just how low unemployment can actually be brought. The fears of hyperinflation that circulated freely during Obamas first term have been completely forgotten.

It is ironic that Trump created the conditions to allow Biden to succeed. First by exposing his party as disingenuous, then by disproving its economic nostrums, he set the stage for his successor to implement a smarter and better version of his experiment in running the economy hot.

The left has stewed for a dozen years over Obamas inability to secure more fiscal stimulus. And while he might perhaps have gotten a bit more out of Congress with more clever design, ultimately the most important constraints came from outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Obamas economic-recovery push came in an atmosphere of pure hysteria, in which media and business elites joined by many members of his own party believed the United States stood on the precipice of hyperinflation and a public-debt crisis, the resolution of which had willing partners across the aisle. All those myths now lay in tatters. After hard experience, the path to a fast recovery and an era of prosperity is now open for Biden.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

Link:
The Forces That Stopped Obamas Recovery Will Not Stop Bidens - New York Magazine

CNN's What Matters newsletter talked to CNN reporter Kevin Liptak, who has covered the White House since the Obama administration, about what's changed so far -- and what effect we've seen the presidency take on the man who just took the oath of office.

The conversation, conducted by email, is below.

WHAT MATTERS: We've all read about how President Joe Biden is essentially trying to undo what President Donald Trump did -- or at least to appear to be doing so. What are the immediate changes for journalists under a Biden administration?

LIPTAK: The return of the daily White House briefing, which began hours after Biden was sworn into office, is the most concrete change and seemed to have been done to overtly signal a return to a more "normal" relationship with the press corps.

That has extended to the hours of briefing calls and reams of fact sheets the White House has distributed on its daily executive actions. It's all a return to how press relations was done under administrations before Trump, whose era in the White House was defined by open hostility to reporters.

Of course, it was also marked by rampant leaking and almost radical insight into the presidential psyche, via Twitter and his unguarded press conferences. So for what we've gained in civility and professionalism I think we probably have lost in knowing what the President is thinking at any given moment.

Obama vs. Trump vs. Biden?

WHAT MATTERS: You also covered Barack Obama as President. How has the day to day has been different under these three men?

LIPTAK: Covering the start of any administration is busier and more exciting than the middle or end. So covering Biden has been busy. But it's far more predictable than covering Trump when late-night firings became regular, and his tweets could end up taking over a weekend or holiday.

Biden's aides have developed a pretty regular routine where they brief on his actions ahead of time, he unveils them midday and then there's another briefing thrown in there. The evenings are quiet, unlike Trump, who enjoyed tweeting along to his television shows at night. Biden's pattern is more similar to the Obama administration, which also briefed during the day.

The one difference so far is the lack of travel; Obama was on the road every week, but so far Biden has remained in Washington.

A changed Biden?

WHAT MATTERS: Have you already noticed anything different about how Biden acts as President compared to how he acted as vice president? He seems less "Uncle Joe" to me.

LIPTAK: The nature of Biden's appearances so far has been much less conducive to the avuncular style he once was known for. That seemed to start on the campaign trail, maybe to give voters the impression he could adopt a more commanding attitude if elected President.

Now we see him for a few minutes every day, usually standing at a podium announcing new executive actions and then signing them. It's all very stage-managed. He has answered a few tossed questions and my colleague Kaitlan Collins was able to catch him in a West Wing hallway.

But the side of Biden we're more familiar with -- the backslapping guy who knows your grandma -- seems for now to be kept under wraps.

Who is most accessible?

WHAT MATTERS: Has Biden been more or less accessible than Obama so far? Trump?

LIPTAK: I don't think any president will be as accessible as Trump. The unfiltered window into what he was feeling or doing -- whether on Twitter, his press availabilities or leaks -- was unparalleled. Much of it was dishonest, he lied rampantly and used his platform to incite violence. But there was rarely a moment when we didn't know where he stood.

Whether that hurt or helped him I guess is debatable, but he lost the election in part because voters didn't believe he was up to managing a crisis, an impression fueled by his many unguarded appearances.

Biden so far has been much more calculating in how he interacts with the press, which follows the pattern set by Obama. He does seem willing to answer shouted questions, even jokingly, which Obama didn't always do.

The permanent effect of Trump

WHAT MATTERS: We've all read stories about how Trump changed the presidency forever. I think I might have written some of those stories, even. What's the assessment a week in of the new guy?

LIPTAK: If anything, Biden and his team are trying to demonstrate the presidency can return to what it was before Trump. I think that's an active goal of theirs rather than just a side effect of how they're approaching the job. But it's going to take a lot more than a return to regular order at the White House to restore the faith in institutions that Trump actively sought to erode during his presidency.

Biden inherited a job that became smaller under Trump -- people no longer looked to the Oval Office for a role model or a leadership figure -- and in a country so polarized it remains to be seen whether, once it's gone, that's something that can be easily restored.

What kind of President will Biden be?

WHAT MATTERS: Obama was transformative as the first Black President. Trump was reflexive, promising to restore what Obama ended. What does Biden represent so far?

LIPTAK: Biden has been unashamed to frame his presidency around undoing what Trump did during his four years in office. That was his pitch to voters, even as other candidates offered something more visionary. And that has animated his first week in office, which is all about dismantling Trump's agenda.

But I also think he sees himself as a bridge to the next generation of political leaders. He's tried to stock his Cabinet and staff with diverse picks who he believes can be propelled to bigger things by serving under him. So I think it's a combination of repairing Trump's damage and ushering in a new era -- both items he's been explicit about -- which makes him something of a transitional figure.

Fitting the presidency around Covid safety

WHAT MATTERS: You ask questions for a living. What should I have asked but didn't?

LIPTAK: One thing that's struck me in covering Biden is the way his team is approaching Covid at the White House itself. Trump's team famously downplayed the pandemic and most of them caught it (including Trump himself). Biden's aides have gone in the complete opposite direction, limiting numbers of people in the West Wing and mandating testing and masks.

It will be the first chance we see whether the presidency can operate effectively without much traveling or meeting in person. Trump seemed to think it couldn't and determined his work was too important to shut down. But Biden's entire stock-in-trade is his personal relationships and I wonder how that will work going forward.

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Covering Obama, then Trump, now Biden: What's changed? - CNN

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden promised after Novembers election that he and Vice President Kamala Harris would govern as a simpatico team. In their first days at the White House, the two are crafting a partnership that recalls Bidens own service as former President Barack Obamas No. 2.

FILE PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Senator and Democratic candidate for Vice President Kamala Harris celebrate after Joe Biden accepted the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination during the 4th and final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, as participants from across the country are hosted over video links from the originally planned site of the convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. August 20, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

It starts most days with a White House briefing by the national security adviser. At nearly everyone of Bidens public events, Harris stands prominently nearby. Behind closed doors, they are briefed on the coronavirus pandemic and other issues together.

Nobody knows better than President Biden how important it is and valuable it is to have a vice president who can serve as an all-around, last-person-in-the-room adviser, said Jay Carney, Bidens former communications director and later Obamas press secretary.

Harris, 56, is seen as an obvious contender for the Democratic Partys 2024 presidential nomination should Biden, 78, decide not to seek a second term. Harris has not weighed in publicly on such speculation.

As with all vice presidents, the question is whether Harris proximity translates into influence, and whether the honeymoon can last.

Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump enjoyed close alliances with their deputies, Dick Cheney and Mike Pence, before the relationships soured as they ended their terms. Obama and Biden, who were initially not very close, took pride in what became a relationship of trust as well as family ties.

Aides say Biden and Harris are both, for now, focused on the pandemic, scrambling to bring it under control by getting more people vaccinated while working on new measures to help stimulate the economy.

Harris broke away from the West Wing on Tuesday to receive her second dose of the coronavirus vaccine, bringing in cameras to record the arm jab as a way to reassure Americans that the vaccine is safe.

A former California attorney general, Harris is also using her contacts with state governors and city mayors to help speed the distribution of vaccines.

As a former U.S. senator from California and now the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate, Harris is expected to use her influence on Capitol Hill to help advance the Biden agenda.

Aides expect Harris will also help Biden push some of his other priorities, including a firmer government response to economic weakness, racial disparities and climate change.

Joel K. Goldstein, a scholar of the vice presidency at the Saint Louis University School of Law, said that now that she was in office, Harris appeared to be following a model developed by Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carters vice president, as an all-around troubleshooter.

At the beginning it makes sense to be at the meetings. Shes hearing what the president is hearing, shes developing the relationship with the president, which is the most important relationship in her political life, Goldstein said.

Obama tasked Biden with overseeing the massive stimulus package passed in response to the 2007-2009 financial crisis and made him the point man on Eastern Europe and Central America, two areas that remain important today because of the threat posed by Russia and the migrant crisis.

Many of Bidens aides were initially wary of Harris - she drew sparks with Biden during the Democratic Party debates - and they picked a team to manage the running mates affairs even before she was formally chosen, including a chief of staff, Karine Jean-Pierre.

Harris opted to rely on other aides and after the inauguration did not retain Jean-Pierre, who is now principal deputy press secretary at the White House.

Harris has drawn more attention than most of her predecessors. She is the first woman vice president, the highest-ranking woman elected in U.S. history, and the first Black and Asian-American vice president.

Jill Habig, who served as an adviser to Harriss attorney generals office in California and U.S. Senate campaign, said she recognizes Harris approach to her new job.

Shes a data gatherer. She tends to immerse herself at the beginning of any project. She tends to be really visceral, being everywhere, meeting everyone she can and absorbing as much information as she can, Habig said.

Reporting by Steve Holland, Nandita Bose, and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons and Howard Goller

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A partnership: Biden-Harris model their White House on Obama-Biden - Reuters