Asma Khalid

It was a light-hearted moment at the end of the first diplomatic trip abroad for Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.

Before she got on Air Force Two to return to Washington, Harris, who loves to cook, made a quick stop at E. Dehillerin, the iconic purveyor of cookware.

Vice President Kamala Harris is in Paris this week, her third international trip this year. But in contrast to her first two, where she met with individual heads of state and focused on bilateral relationships, this is the first where Harris is the top White House official at a large gathering of world leaders.

President Biden has made a clean break with the policies of his predecessor in many areas. But not when it comes to trade with China.

The Biden administration isn't scrapping a trade deal brokered by former President Donald Trump in the final year of his presidency. Instead, it plans to pressure China for not meeting its promises made under that deal.

The Biden administration also plans to broadly maintain Trump's tariffs on U.S. imports of Chinese goods, though it will reopen an exclusion process to provide exemptions for certain goods.

When President Biden was running for office, he described the steep tariffs on Chinese imports put in place by then-President Donald Trump as hurting U.S. consumers, farmers and manufacturers.

But nine months into his time in the White House, there has been no sign that Biden is preparing to quickly abandon the use of Trump's signature tariffs.

After a lengthy review that has frustrated U.S. business groups, who say the tariffs have been an unfair burden, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai plans to give a major speech on the U.S.-China trade relationship on Monday.

When President Biden looked into the cameras last week and firmly declared that "the war in Afghanistan is now over," his words were, in his view, the culmination of a central campaign promise.

In the summer of 2019, Biden delivered a speech laying out the blueprint for his foreign policy agenda. He argued that it was "past time to end the forever wars, which have cost us untold blood and treasure."

In January 2002, when the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan reopened for the first time since 1989, Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the first member of Congress to visit him in Kabul was the then-senator from Delaware, Joe Biden.

"One of his really great qualities, I thought, was his driving need to see things for himself ... and I just really respected that," Crocker said, pointing out that Biden also visited Iraq many times.

Major automakers and the Biden administration are mapping out a route toward a future where Americans drive a lot more electric vehicles.

President Biden, standing before a display of electric trucks and SUVs and surrounded by union officials and auto executives, signed an executive order Thursday setting a target that half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2030 be zero-emission cars, which would include plug-in hybrids.

Maureen Nicholas says she had no ideal presidential candidate in the last election.

"I voted for Biden, but I didn't want to," the former Republican said as she walked across a Walmart parking lot in Easton, Pa.

Nicholas said that she personally feels lucky, but that the overall economy feels pretty bad these days.

"Price increases — astronomical," she said. "Health care — it just seems like it's out of control."

With voting rights legislation stalled in the Senate because of Republican opposition, Vice President Harris suggested that she has talked to senators about exceptions to the legislative filibuster but said she will not be publicly negotiating an issue that the White House insists is up to lawmakers, she told NPR in an interview Tuesday.

"I believe that of all of the issues that the United States Congress can take up, the right to vote is the right that unlocks all the other rights," Harris said. "And for that reason, it should be one of its highest priorities."

President Biden unveiled a new plan on Friday taking aim at powerful industries where a handful of players have so much market clout that they can drive up prices, depress wages and make it hard for small companies to break in.

"We know we've got a problem, a major problem. We've also got an incredible opportunity," Biden said in remarks before signing the order.

In the last few weeks, the Biden administration began distributing an unprecedented amount of money to states: $195 billion dollars from the American Rescue Plan that congressional Democrats passed in March.

With the sheer scale of dollars at stake, a huge fight has already begun brewing between some GOP-led states and the administration over exactly how to use that money, part of a larger trend of partisan warfare between state capitols and Washington over the past decade.

In their first face-to-face meeting, President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a 21st century version of the historic Atlantic Charter, an attempt to depict their countries as the chief global leaders taking on the world's biggest challenges.

The two leaders pledged to work "closely with all partners who share our democratic values" and to counter "the efforts of those who seek to undermine our alliances and institutions."

The White House on Tuesday announced a plan to manufacture more crucial medicines in the United States through an expanded use of the Defense Production Act, a relic of the Cold War that gives the president the authority to direct industrial production for national defense purposes.

President Biden has proposed a $6 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, part of a plan to overhaul the U.S. economy that would also mean running up deficits of at least $1.3 trillion a year for the rest of the decade despite new tax increases on the wealthy.

For decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have stood by Israel, almost unconditionally, insisting the country has a right to defend itself.

Congress still hasn't reached a deal on a new COVID-19 relief package to help millions of Americans who could fall off an economic cliff by the end of the year when moratoriums on evictions and some unemployment benefits are set to expire. But whether or not Congress agrees on an additional aide package during the lame-duck session, Joe Biden will still inherit a fragile economy and a possibly uncooperative Congress, which raises questions about what — if anything — the next president can do on his own to bolster an economic recovery.

Joe Biden won the presidency by stitching together a broad coalition of voters — Black and white, from young progressives to former Republicans, and across cities and suburbs — united by a singular mission to defeat President Trump.

But once Biden takes office, and without Trump as an adversary, a key test for Biden's presidency will be how he prevents the broad coalition that got him into the White House from splintering once he begins governing.

Staking a claim to the win

Multiple coronavirus vaccines appear to be on the horizon, but the U.S. economy is on shaky footing, and before those vaccines are expected to become widely available, millions of Americans could first fall off an economic cliff.

Updated at 2:02 p.m. ET

President-elect Joe Biden is drawing on a number of senior operatives from his campaign to fill out key top positions in his White House.