The Daily 202: Xavier Becerra’s bet pays off as Biden picks him for HHS secretary

After Kamala Harris won her Senate seat in 2016, Becerra angled for then-Gov. Jerry Brown to select him as her replacement as California attorney general. Some of Becerra’s closest allies privately warned him against giving up the chairmanship of the House Democratic Caucus and all the chits he had built up in Washington. 

But the detour to Sacramento proved savvy. On Monday, President-elect Joe Biden, 78, announced his intention to nominate Becerra, 62, as secretary of health and human services, a particularly high-profile post amid a pandemic that killed another 1,111 Americans on Sunday. Assuming he is confirmed, Becerra will oversee key elements of the government’s coronavirus response, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Meanwhile, Pelosi, now 80, will hold her gavel for at least two more years – and maybe more. The No. 2 and No. 3 in Democratic leadership, fellow octogenarians Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, also refuse to step aside so that a new guard can ascend.

Becerra is part of a sizable club of whippersnappers who have laid the groundwork to become speaker but given up during Pelosi’s 18-year reign. Others in this fraternity include Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who left Congress to become Obama’s first chief of staff and then mayor of Chicago. Reps. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Ben Ray Luján (N.M.) and Bob Menendez (N.J.) each opted to run for Senate rather than wait out Pelosi. Others who had ambitions for the top job, such as Steve Israel (N.Y.), retired. And Rep. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), who was No. 4 in leadership, lost unexpectedly in 2018 to primary challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

A similar story could be told about Senate Republicans during Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s 14-year reign. Since the Kentuckian took over his conference, four men have held the No. 2 slot as whip: Trent Lott (2007), Jon Kyl (2008 to 2012), John Cornyn (2013 to 2018), and John Thune (2019 to now). My colleague Paul Kane notes that Lott is on his fourth lobbying firm since retiring from the Senate, and McConnell shows no signs of going anywhere. In the time McConnell has been in charge, Kyl retired, returned to the Senate to fill the vacancy opened by John McCain’s death and then left again to go back to his lobbying firm. Assuming McConnell tries to remain leader all the way through the six-year term he just won, Thune will be term limited out at the end of 2024 under GOP rules. Another John, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, would then become Republican whip. 

As the attorney general in the most populous state, Becerra grew his national profile by suing President Trump and his administration more than 100 times, on topics ranging from abortion and criminal justice to the environment and worker’s rights. He emerged as the leader of the coalition defending the Affordable Care Act in court against an effort by Republican attorneys general and the Trump administration to invalidate the 2010 law in its entirety. (Becerra delivered the Spanish-language Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union last year.)

Biden placing Becerra in this job is something of a surprise. He has been discussed as a finalist to lead the Justice Department, and he has a somewhat unorthodox background to lead HHS.

“The job running the sprawling department often has gone to governors, and public health officials have been urging the Biden transition team to select someone with expertise in medicine. But Biden had also been under pressure to select more Latinos in his Cabinet,” Amy Goldstein and Seung Min Kim report. “Becerra’s selection is also a break from a pattern in which the president-elect is selecting people as his right-hand advisers who have lengthy working relationships with him from earlier in his career. … A senior Republican aide on Capitol Hill said Sunday night that the GOP plans to focus on Becerra’s support for Medicare-for-all and whether he truly has expertise in health-care policy.”

Becerra is the son of Mexican immigrants and the first in his family to graduate from college. He is not a medical doctor, though he is married to one: Carolina Reyes was his college sweetheart at Stanford, where he graduated in 1980 and then stayed for law school. She was a year behind him and then went East for Harvard Medical School. After he got his J.D., Becerra followed her to Massachusetts. He worked as a lawyer at the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts. Then they returned to California. He got a staff job for a state senator, worked as a prosecutor for the agency he now leads and spent a term in the state assembly before winning his Los Angeles congressional seat in 1992. 

Allies note that Becerra had a perch on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, including as a senior member of the health subcommittee, which has significant jurisdiction over federal programs he would oversee in this new role. 

“In Congress, I helped pass the Affordable Care Act,” Becerra tweeted on Monday. “As California’s Attorney General, I defended it. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, I will build on our progress and ensure every American has access to quality, affordable health care—through this pandemic and beyond.” 

Becerra’s nomination is great news for California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). He already gets to choose Vice President-elect Harris’s replacement in the Senate. Now he is poised to be able to pick Becerra’s successor, as well. If Newsom picks Secretary of State Alex Padilla (D) for the Senate seat – a longtime friend and a perceived finalist – then the governor could also pick Padilla’s replacement.

If selected, Padilla would be California’s first-ever Latino senator. But Newsom has faced heavy political pressure from African American leaders in the state to replace Harris with another Black woman. These other vacancies could give the governor a way to nominate an African American for a statewide constitutional office while giving Padilla the Senate seat.

“Even as Trump has been consumed with his waning political fortunes in a desperate attempt to retain power, his administration has accelerated efforts to lock in last-minute policy gains and staffing assignments that it hopes will help cement the president’s legacy and live on past Jan. 20,” David Nakamura, Juliet Eilperin and Lisa Rein report. “Last week, for example, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services adopted a longer and more difficult citizenship test that critics said could further curb legal immigration. The Pentagon named 11 new members, including a pair of prominent former Trump campaign aides, to a Defense Department business advisory board. And the president signed an executive order drafted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy aimed at protecting civil liberties in the use of artificial intelligence by the federal government. …

“In some cases, the moves could make it procedurally or politically challenging for Biden to fulfill campaign pledges to unwind the Trump team’s actions. Administration officials are rushing to auction off drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, slash U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, implement new rules to limit drug prices and create a new personnel category for civil servants in policymaking roles that would strip them of most job protections. The Department of Homeland Security is racing to complete an additional 50 miles of wall barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the State and Treasury departments are preparing additional economic sanctions on China and Iran. Senate Republicans — who may lose their governing majority in January, depending on a pair of runoffs in Georgia — are moving swiftly to confirm Trump’s conservative picks to the federal courts and other nominees whose tenures will extend into the Biden presidency and beyond. … 

“The rush has come despite Trump’s relative inattention to governing since his electoral defeat last month, driven in part by ideologically minded aides, including Cabinet members eager to burnish their own legacies. … At the Environmental Protection Agency, political appointees plan to finalize five major rules before Inauguration Day, two of which will raise the bar for enacting new public health protections. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and other White House officials, however, have questioned the need for one of the rules because it mandates the gradual replacement of lead and copper pipes across the country … EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who has made improving the nation’s water infrastructure a hallmark of his tenure, has nonetheless pressed hard to finalize it.

“The Interior Department also is … moving to justify scaling back protections for the greater sage grouse across 51 million acres out West, which has been blocked in court; and proposing a rule to weaken safeguards for drilling in the Arctic Ocean. … At the Department of Veterans Affairs, Secretary Robert Wilkie is making sweeping changes to outsource to private companies the reviews that determine compensation, health care and other benefits for veterans. And the White House, days after the election, began moving to appoint Republicans to a key commission that next year will review whether some underused VA hospitals should be closed or scaled back, a contentious issue for Democrats who fear the government-run health-care system could shrink.”

• “The Trump administration on Monday rejected setting tougher standards on soot, the nation’s most widespread deadly air pollutant, saying the existing regulations remain sufficient even as some public health experts and environmental justice communities had pleaded for stricter limits,” Eilperin and Brady Dennis report. “The agency locked in current thresholds for fine particle pollution for another five years, despite mounting evidence linking air pollution with illness and death.”
• Attorney General Bill Barr is considering stepping down before Trump’s term ends, and he could announce his departure before the end of the year. Trump refused last week to say whether he still has confidence in Barr. (Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky)
• Mike Pompeo won’t rule out running for governor in 2022. “In an interview at his State Department office, Mr. Pompeo said he and his wife, Susan, aim to return at some point to Kansas to be with friends, family and their church community,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Kansas Republican National Committeeman Mark Kahrs sees Mr. Pompeo as a possible challenger to Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in two years.”

“Loeffler repeatedly declined to say who won the 2020 election during Sunday’s debate,” Cleve Wootson Jr. reports. “Loeffler was asked about Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud in Georgia at least five times and ducked at every turn, highlighting the challenge she faces as she tries to court Trump supporters — and the president — without directly repeating his false claims that hundreds of thousands of votes were tainted by fraud in Georgia. The debate between Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock aired on CNN [and Fox News]. … Loeffler repeatedly attacked Warnock on Sunday with lines familiar to anyone with a television in Georgia. She uttered the phrase ‘radical, liberal Raphael Warnock’ more than a dozen times, cramming it into nearly every one of her answers during the hour-long debate. … Loeffler also tried to connect Warnock with president Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright, saying Warnock’s defense of him proved he was too extreme for Georgia. …

“Warnock contrasted his origin story in the Savannah, Ga., projects with the largesse of his opponent, the richest member of the U.S. Senate. He accused her of using her position for personal gain, saying she sold stocks earlier this year after receiving a coronavirus briefing … Warnock also stressed that his political beliefs were not rooted in socialism and Marxism, but in his Christian faith. … Warnock, who is Black, called Loeffler, who is White, a woman who ‘picked a fight with the Black women on her [WNBA basketball] team.’ … Loeffler retorted that ‘there is not a racist bone in my body.’ …

“In the other Senate runoff race in Georgia, Republican Sen. David Perdue declined to debate Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. Early Sunday evening, Ossoff took questions from panelists while standing next to an empty lectern marking Perdue’s absence. … ‘The reason that we are losing thousands of people per day to this virus is because of the arrogance of politicians like David Perdue,’ Ossoff said. ‘So arrogant that he disregarded public health expertise, and so arrogant that he’s not with us here today to answer questions.’ … Ossoff hammered the incumbent senator on reports about Perdue’s prolific stock trading; Perdue has denied wrongdoing. He also sought to tie Perdue to some of the most controversial policies of the Trump administration, including separating migrant children from their families at the border and attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.”

Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) issued a joint statement on Sunday night in response to a call for a special session of the legislature to overturn Biden’s victory in the state, saying  “doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.” During a two-hour rally in the state on Saturday night, Trump railed against Kemp and encouraged Rep. Doug Collins (R) to challenge him in a 2022 primary. “If I lost, I’d be a very gracious loser,” Trump said, without irony. (Trump is also considering a final Air Force One flight to Florida for a political rally opposite Biden’s inauguration with the goal of creating a split-screen moment, according to Axios.)

“During an interview earlier on Sunday on CNN, Duncan said Trump was fanning the flames of misinformation and called the president’s false claims ‘concerning,’” Felicia Sonmez reports. “Duncan also criticized the president for suggesting the election had been ‘stolen’ from him and warned that his statements could keep Republican voters from the polls in January. ‘The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process; they’re only hurting it,’ he said.” 

“If we lose these two Senate seats, guess who’s casting the deciding vote in this country for our government? It will be Kamala Harris,” said White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Fox News, tacitly acknowledging that Trump lost.

“Senior Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis serves as special counsel to the Thomas More Society, which has filed lawsuits through the newly formed Amistad Project alleging problems with the vote in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” Jon Swaine, Roz Helderman, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger report. “Ellis’s registration with Colorado’s Supreme Court lists her address not at a law office but at the Leesburg, Va., headquarters of ProActive Communications, a public relations company led by veteran Republican operative Mark Serrano. ProActive handles media for the Amistad Project. Last month, it also issued statements on behalf of two Detroit-area Republican officials who sought to rescind their vote to certify the election results in Wayne County. … ProActive has received more than $2.4 million from Trump’s reelection campaign … Separately, Ellis has been paid more than $172,000 by Trump’s campaign … 

“Trump asked Brad Parscale, then his campaign manager, to hire Ellis on a monthly retainer last year after being impressed by how well she defended him in a TV appearance that he saw … Ellis flew with the president on Air Force One and indulged demands from him that some other White House and campaign attorneys judged as unwise, such as filing defamation lawsuits against major news organizations. ‘The president would call her when the other lawyers would tell him no,’ a senior administration official said. … A rambling 46-minute speech about the election that Trump filmed in the White House last week was ‘a Jenna production,’ one of the officials said, adding that communications staff and other offices were not involved.”

Meanwhile, armed protesters alleging voter fraud surrounded the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D). About two dozen protesters dispersed after law enforcement arrived. No arrests were made. (Katie Shepherd) 

“Giuliani, 76, traveled to Michigan, Arizona and Georgia last week and met indoors with state legislators in an effort to persuade them to overturn Biden’s victory,” Sonmez and Dawsey report. “Videos of the appearances showed that Giuliani was not wearing a mask during the meetings. Hours before Trump’s tweet, Giuliani appeared on Fox News’s ‘Sunday Morning Futures,’ where he repeated the president’s false claims of election fraud. Giuliani was being treated at Georgetown University Medical Center … 

“It was unclear why Trump disclosed Giuliani’s condition — or whether he had asked for permission to do so. In a statement that it said it was releasing with Giuliani’s consent, the Trump campaign said Sunday night that Giuliani ‘tested negative twice immediately preceding his trip to Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.’ ‘The Mayor did not experience any symptoms or test positive for covid-19 until more than 48 hours after his return,’ it said. People who are asymptomatic are still able to spread the virus. The Trump campaign also said that no state legislators or members of the media are on its contact-tracing list, based on the CDC guidelines for close contacts. … When he has been around others who have tested positive, Giuliani has not quarantined, including after a news conference last month at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters when his son tested positive.”

• In Arizona, legislative staff abruptly announced new coronavirus precautions after the Giuliani news broke. The state Senate will be closed in the coming week because of virus concerns. Six days ago, the Arizona GOP posted a picture of maskless lawmakers gathered close to Giuliani for a picture. At least 15 current or future GOP legislators – including U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs – may have been directly exposed to the virus because of Giuliani, per the Arizona Republic.
• In Georgia, Giuliani testified at a packed legislative hearing in the state Capitol on Thursday. At least one Georgia GOP event was canceled following news of his infection, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Georgia Senate staffers who were in the subcommittee meeting with Giuliani were ordered to work from home and get tested. 
• In Michigan, Giuliani and a few state lawmakers didn’t wear masks during a committee hearing in Lansing. At one point in the meeting, Giuliani even asked a witness to remove her mask. A Democrat who serves on the committee, Rep. Darrin Camilleri, said all the lawmakers and staffers who were in the room should get tested before returning to work, per the Detroit News.

Meanwhile, business is booming at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. The owners of the Philadelphia gardening center say they have sold $1.3 million in merchandise since Giuliani held his bizarre news conference last month. Among their most popular products are shirts that say “Make America rake again” and “Lawn and Order.” (Business Insider)

“Most of the research concludes students of color and those in high-poverty communities fell further behind their peers, exacerbating long-standing gaps in American education,” Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson report. “A study being released this week by McKinsey & Co. estimates that the shift to remote school in the spring set White students back by one to three months in math, while students of color lost three to five months. As the coronavirus pandemic persists through this academic year, McKinsey said, losses will escalate. … The McKinsey study echoes a half dozen other national reports released in recent days. …

“And troubling data is emerging about college application rates. Applications for federal student aid were down 16 percent this fall, as were submissions to the Common Application, a portal used by hundreds of colleges. The drop there was larger from Hispanic and low-income students and those whose parents did not attend college. … Experts say high-intensity tutoring and summer school programs both have track records of success, but those would cost tens of billions of dollars to reach all students who will need remediation at a time when school districts are already struggling to pay for basic needs. … Some say the answer is to get more children back to in-person school.” 

“More than two dozen federal stimulus programs crafted to help cash-strapped workers and businesses weather the coronavirus pandemic are set to expire in a matter of weeks, adding urgency to congressional negotiations over a new $908 billion relief package,” Tony Romm reports. “Without the new aid, the end of a series of key stimulus programs threatens to push the country closer to the financial cliff. … Businesses no longer may be able to count on a handful of key tax credits to help their bottom lines, and state and local governments run the risk of having to return millions of dollars they had hoped to spend on the public-health crisis and the financial carnage it has wrought. … Roughly 300 associations — belonging to the Covid Relief Now Coalition — wrote Congress on Friday to call on them to adopt a compromise before the end of the year and build on their progress later, warning the economic consequences of continued inaction could be vast.” Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said: “It would be blatant neglect to allow all these things to expire.”

“Instead of the delivery of 300 million or so doses of vaccine immediately after emergency-use approval and before the end of 2020 as the Trump administration had originally promised, current plans call for availability of around a tenth of that, or 35 to 40 million doses,” Chris Rowland, Lena Sun, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Carolyn Johnson wrote on Sunday’s front page. “Lower-than-anticipated allocations have caused widespread confusion and concern in states, which are beginning to grasp the level of vaccine scarcity they will confront in the early going of the massive vaccination campaign.”

• Moncef Slaoui, chief science adviser to Operation Warp Speed, said he expects independent advisers to the FDA to recommend emergency authorization for the Pfizer vaccine when the panel meets Thursday. The FDA is expected to issue the authorization soon after that. (Paulina Firozi, Jeanne Whalen and Sonmez)
• The 11-month sprint for a vaccine harnessed new technology and scientific breakthroughs, which could turn out to be among the pandemic’s silver linings. (Johnson)
• Shipments of Pfizer’s vaccine were delivered over the weekend to hospitals in Britain. About 800,000 doses will be available, authorities said, starting with a mass-immunization kickoff tomorrow the nation’s top health official has dubbed “V-Day.” Priority is going to the elderly and nursing home caregivers. Two British papers reported that Queen Elizabeth, 94, and her husband, Prince Philip, 99, would publicly announce when they have received the shot to counter online misinformation about the vaccine. (Teo Armus)
• Chinese manufacturer Sinovac Biotech secured $515 million in funding to double production capacity of its covid vaccine as it begins supplying it to developing nations like Indonesia. The company expects to receive data on its vaccine’s effectiveness later this month but claims early to mid-stage clinical trails have shown positive results. Sinovac has expanded supply deals to countries like Brazil and Turkey. (Armus)

Jane Orient, who is skeptical of coronavirus vaccines and promoted the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a covid treatment, is scheduled to be the lead witness at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing Tuesday chaired by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “Orient is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group that opposes government involvement in medicine and views federal vaccine mandates as a violation of human rights,” the Times reports. “Orient, an internist who received her medical degree from Columbia University in New York, resisted being cast as an ‘anti-vaxxer’ and said she would not get a coronavirus vaccine because she had an autoimmune condition. She added that she opposed the government’s push for all Americans to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.” The invitation prompted harsh criticism from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Democrats plan to have a field day if Republicans don’t cancel her.

• A New York bar owner, in an attempt to flee arrest after flouting coronavirus restrictions, hit a sheriff’s sergeant with his car – driving about 100 yards with the officer on the hood and leaving him with fractured shinbones. Danny Presti, the owner of Mac’s Public House on Staten Island, was arraigned and released without bond. He’s accused of reckless endangerment, unlawful fleeing and assault with intent to cause physical injury. (Hannah Knowles)
• As hospitals reach capacity, Maryland is launching a central system to find available beds, not only for coronavirus patients but for other sick people who would otherwise languish in the packed emergency rooms. Record-setting numbers of new cases over the past two weeks are expected to send even more patients into hospitals in the coming days. (Erin Cox)
• Nursing home staffers attended a 300-person superspreader wedding in rural Washington state, an event that led to more than a dozen cases, two outbreaks and the deaths of at least six residents. (Andrea Salcedo)

In Brazil, where more people have died of the virus than any other nation except the United States, things could soon become worse than ever. Sick people, unable to get help from the medical system, are again being found dead at home. In Rio de Janeiro, lines stretching into the hundreds are forming for intensive care beds, Terrence McCoy and Heloísa Traiano report. Still, streets and beaches remain full of unmasked people who are either unaware or unbothered by the alarming health warnings.

While many European countries opted for lockdowns in November to bring down soaring numbers, Germany opted for a “lockdown light,” allowing hair salons and most businesses and retail to remain open. These restrictions will be loosened in much of the country over the holiday week. But, as cases in countries like France and Belgium start to drop, Germany‘s number of daily cases has barely budged, hovering at around 20,000 per day, Loveday Morris reports.

• Australian airports may soon get a new tool to detect the virus in international travelers: dogs. Dogs, with their powerful olfactory systems, have shown some success at detecting the virus at airports in Finland. (Armus)
• Sweden abandoned its failed experiment of taking a hands-off approach to the pandemic. Swedes now face restrictions ranging from a ban on large gatherings to curbs on alcohol sales and school closures. (WSJ)

Eight years after Mexican journalist Regina Martínez, who reported on corruption and cartels in her home state of Veracruz, was murdered in her home, a team of reporters from Mexico, Europe and The Washington Post picked up where she left off. The team continued her investigations into two Veracruz governors — Fidel Herrera and Javier Duarte — and examined her homicide inquiry. The team of reporters discovered that law enforcement authorities in Mexico, the United States and Spain had opened inquiries into allegations that Herrera colluded with leaders of the Zeta cartel while he was governor and took money from them for his campaign. The story of Martinez’s death and work will be published in five parts by Forbidden Stories and its partners. (Dana Priest, Paloma de Dinechin, Nina Lakhani and Veronica Espinosa)

A new agreement struck with Chinese officials grants a three-year extension to the stay of the adult giant pandas, Mei Xiang, a female, and Tian Tian, a male, who have been at the zoo for 20 years. But they and their 4-month-old cub, Xiao Qi Ji, a male, are to go to China by the end of the extension on Dec. 8, 2023. “The agreement means the zoo and the adoring public will have the popular black and white animals for three more years. But it leaves the future of the National Zoo’s almost 50-year giant panda program unsettled,” Michael Ruane reports.

• The U.S. is preparing to impose sanctions on at least a dozen Chinese officials over their alleged role in Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong. (Reuters)
• The planet just had its hottest November on record, and 2020 may end up beating 2016 for the title of warmest year. The numbers come from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a program of the European Commission. (Andrew Freedman)
• Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is expected to regain control of the country’s National Assembly as the U.S.-backed opposition urged voters to boycott the country’s legislative election. (Ana Vanessa Herrero)

A Republican state representative in Florida mocked those who worry about a surge in covid cases, but at least 1 in 33 people who live in his county have been infected:

And this may be the perfect Christmas tree ornament for this terrible year:

“Saturday Night Live” tried to help millennials explain to their parents why they can’t come home for the holidays:

For quite a crossover episode, Steve Kornacki brought his magic wall to look at the NFL’s playoff picture: