Pelosi elected to 4th term as House speaker
She’s the third speaker in the last 25 years to win with less than 218 votes.
President Donald Trump is slated to hand over control of the White House to President-elect Joe Biden in 17 days.
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Biden takes aim at Trump at briefing with experts on national security and foreign policy
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are participating in a virtual briefing with expert members of their national security and foreign policy agency review teams from the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, and taking the opportunity to draw stark contrasts between Trump's "America First" policy and their incoming White House.
At the top of the briefing, Biden praised the team for their work despite delays in the transition prompted by the Trump administration refusing to recognize Biden's ascertainment as the president-elect for more than two weeks.
"You’ve done it all under incredibly difficult circumstances, dealing with the COVID protocols, delays, delays in the ascertainments, and in a few cases obstruction from the current leadership," Biden said, thanking the group before taking aim at Trump's "go-it-alone approach" of the past four years.
“The truth is, the challenges we face today can't be solved by any one country acting alone. They demand American leadership. They demand cooperation with our allies and our partners. So I’m looking forward to hearing your assessments about the greatest challenges we may inherit and as we restore the principle of American leadership on the global stage -- which we have to and will do," Biden added.
After the briefing, Biden is slated to deliver afternoon remarks on the group's findings.
-ABC News' Molly Nagle
Biden task force member says Biden will use Defense Production Act to increase vaccine supply
Dr. Celine Gounder, a member of Biden’s COVID-19 task force, said Monday morning there is "no question" the country will see a post-holiday surge of coronavirus cases and, to help offset the worsening pandemic, confirmed Biden will invoke the Defense Production Act once in office to increase vaccine supply.
Gounder criticized the Trump administration for moving too slowly on vaccine distribution and said Biden will force manufacturers to step up by invoking the Defense Production Act, which gives the president the power to direct civilian businesses to help meet orders for products necessary for national defense.
“In the last two weeks, we basically averaged about a million doses of vaccine administered per week. We need to be getting to a million doses per day if we're going to reach the president-elect's target of 100 million doses in 100 days," Gounder said. She went on to explain that invoking the act is "to make sure that the personal protective equipment, the test capacity and the raw materials for the vaccines are produced in adequate supply so that those aren't limiting steps in all of this.”
Gounder also claimed the country will see "a major increase" in testing as well as in genetic surveillance to track new variants of the virus with the incoming administration.
-ABC News’ Brian Hartman
Trump to campaign in Georgia on eve of Senate runoff elections
Trump is slated to return to Georgia in one week for a campaign rally on the eve of the Jan. 5 runoff races that are set to determine which party holds power in the U.S. Senate.
Sitting GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are facing off against Democratic contenders Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively, as early voting continues across the state Monday.
Earlier this month Trump stumped for Loeffler and Perdue at his first rally since the November election. There, he assaulted the integrity of Georgia's vote but encouraged GOP turnout in the wake of Biden becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992. Democrats are now hoping to cement its status as a swing state.
Biden, too, has stopped in Georgia since the presidential election to campaign for Warnock and Ossoff as the promise of passing the big ticket legislation he’s hoping for hangs on their races. If Democrats pick up both seats, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will have the power to settle tie-breaker votes in Congress' upper chamber.
Biden transition announces slate of staff for White House Office of Digital Strategy
The Biden-Harris transition team has announced 12 new members of their incoming staff for the Office of Digital Strategy -- which the transition says will be a “robust” team in the Biden White House.
All 12 staffers announced Monday morning previously worked on the Biden-Harris campaign, which relied heavily on digital engagement amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"With much of our lives online, it is critical for this administration’s digital efforts to be inclusive and extensive,” said Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in a joint statement announcing the picks.
-ABC News Molly Nagle
Biden transition hammers DOD, OMB for lack of cooperation on transition
Biden’s transition held its weekly press briefing Wednesday, hammering home the same messaging the president-elect delivered himself earlier this week on transition delays.
The team took aim at the Department of Defense and Office of Management and Budget for their lack of cooperation in the transition and also previewed some of the “day one” policy actions Biden would take once in office.
Transition spokesperson Yohannes Abraham stressed that not working with career OMB officials is hindering and needlessly delaying the team's work on COVID-19.
“There are also health and economic repercussions to this obstruction. OMB is integral to our federal government efficiently and effectively addressing COVID,” Abraham said. “OMB leadership's refusal to fully cooperate impairs our ability to identify opportunities to maximize the relief going out to Americans during the pandemic.”
When pressed on specific types of obstruction the transition was facing, Abraham added that the DOD has not had a meeting with the transition in 11 days, following DOD’s announcement that meetings would cease over the holidays (the DOD said this was a mutual agreement, which the Biden team has denied). Abraham also said DOD held only three meetings with the Biden team after ascertainment and before the holiday break announcement.
Jen Psaki, Biden's pick for White House press secretary, also spoke of some of the policy actions Biden plans to take immediately when he takes office on Jan. 20.
She announced the Biden administration will issue a memo that halts so-called “midnight rules” from the Trump administration, citing a Department of Labor rule the Trump administration is expected to publish in January that would make it easier for businesses to classify workers as independent contractors to circumvent paying overtime, minimum-wage and other protections.
“In addition to the regulatory freeze memo, President-elect Biden has promised to rescind harmful Trump executive orders, and deliver on our promises and the promises he and Vice president-elect Harris made on the campaign trail, including by reinstating protections for dreamers, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, or reversing President Trump's environmental rollbacks that have made our air and water dirtier and protecting and strengthening the Affordable Care Act to lower health care costs and expand access to care,” Psaki said.
-ABC News’ Molly Nagle