President-elect Joe Biden tapped Rep. Marcia Fudge to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack to serve as Agriculture Secretary, sources familiar with the decision told NBC News on Tuesday.

If confirmed, Fudge, 68, would be the first Black woman to lead the department in decades. Patricia R. Harris under President Jimmy Carter was the first. Fudge, who has been an advocate for fair labor practices, and civil and human rights, had long been a top contender for the position. However, Fudge, who serves on the House Committee on Agriculture, and her allies were pushing for Agriculture Secretary.

But Vilsack previously served as Agriculture Secretary under President Obama for eight years, which puts a confidant in Biden's cabinet. Vilsack is also expected to bring a source of institutional knowledge to the post.

If confirmed, Vilsack, 69, would lead an agency at a time when American farmers have been hit hard by Trump's trade war with China, but still largely remain loyal to the outgoing president, and as the poorest Americans are struggling with food security during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Biden administration plans to create a position to find common ground with conservatives, said Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement for the president-elect.

“Right now I’m trying to set up the office and I’m actually looking at establishing a position that reaches out to conservatives -- because it’s about moving forward. We cannot stay where we are,” Richmond said during the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council on Monday night.

He said the office’s goal was to forge connections with all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation. “We’re not elected just to help Democrats or urban cities or minorities,” he said. “We were elected to help this entire country and that means reaching out to conservatives, that means reaching out to rural areas, reaching out to people who didn’t vote for us.”

President-elect Joe Biden named Richmond, a campaign co-chair, to head the Office of Public Engagement last month. On Monday, Biden appointed him as one of five co-chairs of his inaugural committee.

"Georgia's probably going to be the first state I'm gonna blow up," Powell said in an interview with the conservative media outlet Newsmax TV on Saturday night.
"We've got tons of evidence. It's so much, it's hard to pull it all together," Powell continued. "Hopefully, this week we will get it ready to file, and it will be biblical."

Jordan Sekulow, another member of Trump's legal team who appeared on Newsmax TV earlier on Saturday, also hinted at a "shocking" lawsuit on its way to Georgia.
"I can't tell you right now what is coming in Georgia, but what is coming in Georgia will be shocking," Sekulow said.


Powell later claimed that Republican Georgia Governer Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were being paid to be part of a conspiracy with Dominion Voting Systems.

"And Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because they're in on the Dominion scam with their last-minute purchase or reward of a contract to Dominion of $100 million," said Powell, alleging that Georgia law enforcement should investigate the claim.

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci.

Now I actually want to go a step farther but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right, I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone -- time to stop playing games. blow it all up, put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right.

Can we talk about Never Trump for a minute?

Its various iterations—The Lincoln Project, Republicans Against Trump—made some fine commercials and a lot of noise. They raised a lot of money, especially TLP, which is now going to morph into a multi-platform media network that likely will become a permanent (and very conservative) factor in elections going forward. Starting from scratch, TLP raised $60 million. Republicans Against Trump got started late, but they hoovered up $10 million. This is nice work if you can get it.

The problem is that, despite their fat bank accounts and some terrific publicity, these people didn't materially affect the presidential race at all. Their entertaining commercials got great run, but they didn't move 10 votes. They certainly didn't materially affect the Republican side. What data we have at the moment indicates that the president* got more of the Republican vote this time than he did in 2016. He certainly got more votes generally than he did four years ago. Take them all in all, and Never Trump is about as relevant to the actual election results this year as are the Whigs or the Free Soil Party. The problem for all the rest of us is that they should be.

Never Trump should have been a haven for Republicans and conservatives revolted by the notion that their party and the government had been appropriated by a vulgar talking yam. As should be obvious, there just aren't that many people like that. Most of the Never Trump movement is on salary to the Never Trump movement. Everybody else is completely With The Program. The president* has utterly subsumed American conservatism in general and the Republican Party in particular and, win or lose, he's not going to go anywhere.

If Joe Biden becomes president, this president* will be the center of resistance to him. He's already established among his followers that any result that produces President Biden is prima facie illegitimate. That feeling will be set in concrete among the president*'s followers by the turn of the New Year. There is no viable counterweight to him within or without the party. Unless he ends up destitute and/or in jail—and neither one is necessarily a longshot—he's going to continue to barge into Republican politics and scatter everything like monkey poo. A well-financed, clever opposition should be viable within the Republican infrastructure and should flourish there, if the Never Trump propaganda is to be believed. Taking the party back should be a saleable pitch.