In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society on Friday, former Vice President Mike Pence rebuked his one time boss, Donald Trump, decrying the notion that he could have overturned the election results on the 45th president’s behalf.

“Our Founders were deeply suspicious of consolidated power in the nation’s capital and were rightly concerned with foreign interference if presidential elections were decided in the capital,” Pence said. “But there are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes. And I heard this week, President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election’. President Trump is wrong…I had no right to overturn the election.”

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Symone Sanders, the senior adviser and chief spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris, is expected to leave the White House at the end of the year, according to five administration officials familiar with the matter.

It was not immediately clear where Sanders is heading next or when she will be leaving the vice president’s office. Sanders is the highest profile exit and the second high-profile one from the Harris team in the last month. Ashley Etienne, Harris’ communications director, is also set to depart in the coming weeks.

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Pete Buttigieg insists things are good with Kamala Harris.

Asked Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" about recent headlines speculating a rivalry with the vice president, the Transportation secretary emphasized the two make a strong team.

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Vice President Mike Pence called his successor, Kamala Harris, on Thursday to congratulate her ticket's win and to assist the transition, people familiar with the situation confirmed to POLITICO.

The phone call came only six days before Inauguration Day, following a fraught post-election season in which President Donald Trump and his supporters vehemently denied his loss in the 2020 election. Though Trump acknowledged his time in the White House was coming to a close following a violent insurrection by his supporters at the Capitol, the president has yet to fully admit defeat to Biden.

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Key states continue to certify their election results Tuesday, blowing past attempts by President Donald Trump and allies to undermine or overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, announced Tuesday morning that the Pennsylvania Department of State had certified state election results and he had appointed Electoral College electors for President-elect Joe Biden, while Nevada did the same in the early afternoon. The moves finalized the results in a critical battleground that had been a target of Trump’s efforts to change or block results showing Biden winning.

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With the Senate majority hanging in the balance and coronavirus cases spiking, Georgia Democrats have resurrected a hallmark of their pre-pandemic campaigning: knocking on voters' doors.

Democrats largely halted the practice earlier this year, but the party's candidates this week returned to in-person canvassing in the Peach State as they seek to juice turnout in two critical runoff elections on Jan. 5. The new efforts are being coordinated between the two Democratic campaigns and follow strict health guidelines created in consultation with an epidemiologist.

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Ron Klain, President-elect Joe Biden’s chief of staff, said Sunday that the inauguration ceremony will be altered to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as cases continue to spike across the country.

“It's going to definitely have to be changed,” Klain told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on "This Week." “We've started some consultations with House and Senate leadership on that. Obviously this is not going to be the same kind of inauguration we have had in the past.”

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President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede to President-elect Joe Biden has resulted in an unusual national security predicament: how to navigate a presidential transition when the vice president-elect is privy to classified information that she cannot discuss with the future commander-in-chief.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has access to regular classified briefings and documents up to the top-secret level, and can request intelligence briefings on specific topics, said David Priess, a former CIA officer and daily intelligence briefer under the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

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Former first lady Michelle Obama implored Republicans on Monday to acknowledge Joe Biden's electoral victory in a candid Instagram post that touched on her experiences in the 2016 transition.

"The presidency doesn’t belong to any one individual or any one party,” Obama wrote. “To pretend that it does, to play along with these groundless conspiracy theories — whether for personal or political gain—is to put our country’s health and security in danger. This isn’t a game."

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Former President Barack Obama said in a new interview that it “has been disappointing” to see congressional Republicans remain supportive of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and his refusal to concede the 2020 White House race to President-elect Joe Biden.

“There’s damage to this,” Obama said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that is set to air in full this weekend. “Because what happens is that the peaceful transfer of power — the notion that any of us who attain an elected office, whether it’s dog catcher or president, are servants of the people, it’s a temporary job, we’re not above the rules, we’re not above the law — that’s the essence of our democracy.”

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OAKLAND, Calif. — Launching Kamala Harris into the White House as vice president come January has officially kicked off one of Gov. Gavin Newsom's biggest political decisions: appointing California's next U.S. senator.

Many Newsom insiders insist that the governor wants to make a historic choice, making Secretary of State Alex Padilla a leading contender. If picked, Padilla, a longtime Newsom supporter, would become the first Latino senator in the state's 170-year history.

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ATLANTA — Georgia Democrats want Joe Biden’s campaign and donors to do everything they can to help win a pair of Senate races that could shape the success of his presidency.

But there’s one thing they’re not clamoring for: the president-elect himself.

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On the first Monday since Joe Biden clinched the presidency, the presumptive president-elect and President Donald Trump proceeded on parallel tracks.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris started planning to assume control of the government’s battle against the coronavirus. They gathered virtually with a newly announced Covid advisory board and were briefed on the pandemic. Biden then spoke, standing from a podium in front of American flags, and called on the country to “come together,” take precautions and prepare for a potential “dark winter.”

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So many firsts. First woman. First Black vice president. First Black woman vice president. First South Asian American. First South Asian American woman. First VP whose parents come from India and Jamaica. First VP who counts Prince and Bootsy and hip-hop among her musical loves. First VP who’s a stepmom. First VP to be a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. First HBCU grad. First vice president married to a man …

Kamala Harris, who made her acceptance speech Saturday night in suffragette white, may claim more “first evers” than any other politician sworn into national office. And another: She’s the first vice president-elect to do a victory lap to the beat of Mary J. Blige.

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Former President George W. Bush on Sunday congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their election.

“I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night,” Bush said in a statement, referring to his conversation with Biden. “I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency.”

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On election eve, POLITICO looked at a series of key battlegrounds across the electoral map, 21 places that were poised to have a significant impact on the presidential race outcome.

Whether because of population size, voting habits or election history, these were the hotspots that figured to play a disproportionate role in electing the president and they did — though not always in ways that were expected by Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

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THULASENDRAPURAM, India — Waking up to the news of Kamala Harris’ election as U.S. vice president, overjoyed people in her Indian grandfather’s hometown set off firecrackers and offered prayers on Sunday.

Groups gathered at street corners in Thulasendrapuram, a tiny village of 350 people, reading newspapers and chatting about Joe Biden and Harris’ victory before moving to a temple.

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When Kamala Harris takes the oath of office on January 20, 2021, more than one ceiling will shatter: America will have its first female vice president, as well as its first Black and South Asian-American vice president. She will be second in line for the most powerful office in the world.

Once the presidential election was called for Joe Biden on Saturday, social media—and streets—erupted with enthusiasm from people who were even more thrilled about his running mate. These are Americans who now see new doors open for their daughters, their immigrant families, themselves.

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WILMINGTON, Del. — Joe Biden declared late Friday that he’d reclaimed the blue wall of Midwestern states, that he’d broken a record by garnering more than 74 million votes and that he was poised to flip two red states for the first time in more than two decades.

What he couldn’t do was declare victory in the presidential contest. As Biden overtook President Donald Trump in both Pennsylvania and Georgia early in the day, the campaign had planned for a prime-time victory speech. But even as new tranches of votes moved into the Democratic column, networks refused to call the race. It led Biden campaign aides to clash with network representatives behind the scenes, arguing that the math made it just about impossible for Trump to mount a comeback.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants another two-year term running the House, cementing her role — for now — as the most powerful woman in Washington.

The 80-year-old Pelosi is coming off a disappointing Election Day, where her party lost at least five seats so far in the House, but the California Democrat intends to stay in the speaker’s chair during the 117^th Congress, according to letters sent to her colleagues on Friday morning. Pelosi has served as the Democratic leader since 2002, and the vast majority of her colleagues have never known anyone else running their caucus.

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