President-elect Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, met virtually with Black farm organizations and activists on Tuesday, the transition announced.

The meeting comes after his nomination was criticized by many hoping for a more diverse pick and those that hoped Rep. Marcia Fudge, who is now Biden's nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, would be tapped for the role.

Per the transition, the meeting centered on "ensuring fairness and equity for Black farmers as they recover from the devastating effects of the pandemic, providing necessary resources to tackle the ongoing systemic issues they face and expanding access to nutrition for communities across the country." It also touched on the need to address the discrimination Black farmers have faced at the hands of the USDA.

Among the participants in the meeting was Shirley Sherrod, the former head of USDA rural development in Georgia, who was forced out of her job when Vilsack led the department during the Obama administration over a deceptively edited video pushed by right-wing news sites.

Both Vilsack and the White House later apologized for pushing Sherrod out of her job.

-ABC News' John Verhovek

Biden officially announced Tuesday evening that he will nominate Miguel Cardona to be his secretary of education, as reported by ABC News earlier.

"In Miguel Cardona, America will have an experienced and dedicated public school teacher leading the way at the Department of Education -- ensuring that every student is equipped to thrive in the economy of the future, that every educator has the resources they need to do their jobs with dignity and success, and that every school is on track to reopen safely," Biden said in a statement.

Cardona is currently Connecticut's commissioner of education.

-ABC News' John Verhovek

President Donald Trump is now saying he won't sign the COVID-19 relief bill sent for his approval after representatives from the Trump administration worked to get a bill the president was willing to sign.

Trump tweeted Congress should amend the $900 billion stimulus package and send it back to him. In a video, he asks them to amend the $600 direct payments to $2,000 and to get rid of the "wasteful" items before he signs it.

“Send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package. And maybe that administration will be me," the president says in the video.

Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate had debated the relief bill for months along with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. The secretary had even said the direct $600 payments would be coming to Americans starting next week.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was in Georgia Tuesday hoping to observe the signature match audit underway in Cobb County, Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs confirmed to ABC News.

Fuchs said that she didn't allow Meadows to enter the room where this was happening, but allowed him to stand with her in the doorway. She said that when Meadows arrived, the people doing the audit were about to go to lunch anyway, and the supplies and ballot envelopes had been packed away for that.

Still, according to Fuchs, Meadows told her they had "a good meeting" and that whatever information she was able to provide to him, he would report back to President Trump.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Dec. 14 that Cobb County would conduct this audit, saying there was a "specific allegation" that signature matching wasn't done properly in the June primary. A statistically significant number of absentee envelopes (not every ballot) from both the June and November elections are being looked at as part of this audit. Fuchs said the secretary's office is urging the county to finish by Monday.

-ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan and Ben Gittleson.

President-elect Joe Biden is expected to name Miguel Cardona, who currently serves as Connecticut's education commissioner, as his pick for secretary of education, sources familiar with the decision told ABC News on Tuesday.

Throughout his presidential campaign Biden pledged to select a schoolteacher to lead the department, and Cardona fulfills that pledge, having started his career nearly two decades ago as an elementary school teacher in Connecticut, serving 10 years as a school principal and eventually rising through the ranks to become the state's top education official last year.

"First thing, as president of United States -- not a joke -- first thing I will do is make sure that the secretary of education is not Betsy DeVos, [and that] it is a teacher. A teacher. Promise," Biden, who regularly criticized Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, said at a National Education Association forum in July of 2019.

Cardona's background and deep experience in the nation's education system presents a striking contrast with DeVos, a wealthy, long-time Republican donor and political activist who has drawn sustained ire from Democrats and teachers unions throughout her tenure.

Cardona, whose parents moved from Puerto Rico to Connecticut, would be the third Latino, and the first of Puerto Rican heritage, that Biden has named to serve in his Cabinet thus far, following Alejandro Mayorkas named to head the Department of Homeland Security and California Attorney General Xavier Beccera to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

A spokesman for the Biden transition did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News on Cardona's potential nomination.

-ABC News’ John Verhovek and Molly Nagle.