Senator: There Is 'Zero Chance' of Confirming Biden Pick

President-elect Joe Biden confirmed Monday that he plans to nominate Neera Tanden to lead the influential Office of Management and Budget in his administration—but she faces strong opposition from both Republicans and progressives. A spokesman for GOP Sen. John Cornyn said Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress liberal think tank, has "zero chance" of being confirmed by the Senate because of her "endless stream of disparaging comments" about Republican senators "whose votes she’ll need," the Hill reports. And Brianna Joy Gray, former press secretary for Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign, tweeted that Tanden had been "openly disdainful" of Sanders and his coalition. reports NBC.

Tanden was also strongly criticized by former colleagues including Intercept journalist Ali Gharib, who said Tanden had been a "very bad organizational leader" when he worked at news website, ThinkProgress, which was a CAP project, Business Insider reports. In 2018, CAP sources told BuzzFeed that Tanden "outed the victim in front of the entire organization" when an all-staff meeting had been called to address alleged failure to address sexual harassment complaints. In a profile of Tanden last year, a source told the New York Times that she had punched then-ThinkProgress editor Faiz Shakir after he asked Hillary Clinton about her support for the Iraq war. "I didn’t slug him, I pushed him," Tanden told the Times. (More Biden administration stories.)