Trump announces new impeachment legal team
The former president's trial is scheduled to start the week of Feb. 8.
This is Day 12 of the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Biden withdraws Trump freeze to some government program funding
President Joe Biden is again undoing actions undertaken by the Trump administration. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Sunday, Biden announced he was withdrawing 73 proposed rescissions previously sent to Congress by former President Donald Trump on Jan. 14.
The action would unfreeze $27.4 billion in cuts to previously approved funding for government programming.
"The withdrawals are for the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, the Interior, Justice, Labor, State, and the Treasury, as well as the African Development Foundation, the Commission of Fine Arts, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the District of Columbia, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Inter-American Foundation, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the Peace Corps, the Presidio Trust, the United States Agency for International Development, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Legislative Branch," according to a statement from the Biden administration.
-ABC News' Molly Nagle
Trump announces new impeachment legal team
A day after all five of former President Donald Trump's impeachment legal team quit, a new team has been selected.
Trial lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor, Jr. will lead his impeachment defense team, according to a statement from Trump Sunday.
“It is an honor to represent the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, and the United States Constitution,” Schoen said in a statement.
“I consider it a privilege to represent the 45th President. The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient," Castor added. "A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always.”
Trump's former team, which was led by South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers, resigned in part because of disagreements over how to mount Trump’s defense, sources told ABC News. The lawyers had planned to argue the constitutionality of holding a trial given Trump is now a former president.
The Senate trial is scheduled to begin on the week of Feb. 8.
'We may end up seeing a president eating his words' on bipartisan COVID-19 bill: Vega
Unity was the focus of Biden's campaign, but absent gaining even one Republican vote for his coronavirus relief package, what does that mean going forward, ABC's "This Week" Co-anchor Martha Raddatz asked Senior White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega.
"It's something we've heard almost every day since he's been in office for the last few days. He said that there would be this epiphany by Republicans if Donald Trump left. He also, on a conference call, told supporters at one point that he would -- could end up eating his words but that he believed Republicans essentially would come around," Vega said Sunday. "Martha, we may end up seeing the president eating his words on this."
"The Biden team is at a crossroads right now. They've got to decide whether it is bipartisanship and unity that prevails or whether they're going to potentially go at it alone and just forego this effort of unity," Vega continued. "It is looking more and more like they're going to end up going at it alone."
Do Democrats have a shot at flipping retiring Ohio Sen. Rob Portman's seat?
Ohio's Sen. Rob Portman's decision to retire opened a major new battleground in the fight for Senate control in 2022. But after former President Donald Trump easily carried the buckeye state last November, do Democrats have a shot at flipping the seat?
FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver gave ABC's "This Week" an early forecast.
"Democrats have a chance, it's just not a very good chance … it probably depends on the GOP having a really weak candidate or Democrats, a very strong one," he said Sunday.
Biden’s top COVID-19 advisers hold 1st joint public briefing
Biden's top coronavirus advisers -- including Chief Medical Adviser on COVID-19 Dr. Anthony Fauci, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients -- have wrapped their first public briefing on the White House's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In contrast with the Trump administration, the Biden administration has pledged to aim for three virtual, public briefings with health experts each week in an effort to be more transparent in their response. Biden is also branding his COVID-19 response team an "equity" task force, chaired by Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.
In another change promised by the Biden White House, an American Sign Langauge interpreter was also present for the briefing.
After a bit of a rocky start, with Fauci and other speakers having microphone issues, the briefing proceeded for nearly an hour and focused largely on vaccine distribution.
The president's advisers wouldn't entertain questions on what they will do if Congress doesn't give them the money they need -- insisting it is absolutely critical.
Unlike the predictions given by former President Donald Trump, theirs were not rosy, citing death forecasts that could climb past half a million next month and vaccines still in short supply even as the daily numbers of shots have climbed to 1.6 million.
"It will be months before everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one," said Andy Slavitt, another Biden adviser. "Any stockpile that may have existed previously, no longer exists."