President Biden and first lady to debut AIDS Memorial Quilt on the White House South Lawn

(WASHINGTON) — The Democratic Mayors Association will appoint Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb as the organization’s next president during its meeting on Saturday, a source familiar told ABC News.

Representing the new coalition of Democratic up-and-comers, Bibb, who is Black and 37, has been labeled a “homegrown rising star.” He will be succeeding Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego.

“Democratic Mayors are uniquely poised for this moment. We know how to lead, and we know how to get things done. Mayor Bibb is a proven leader of his city, and I know will do a fantastic job at the helm of the Democratic Mayors Association,” Gallego said in a statement to ABC News.

Bibb will be overseeing the group, which reaches as many as 500 current and former mayors, at a time of reflection as the party looks to rebuild and recoup from its election losses and figure out who is best positioned to lead it as Donald Trump begins his second presidential term. The Democratic National Committee is also in the throes of selecting new leadership and will be electing a slate of officers on Feb. 1.

(Martin O’Malley, a former Democratic mayor of Baltimore, is one of the leading candidates for DNC chair.)

As it moves forward, the party as a whole is looking to strike a balance between effectively messaging against Trump and Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, working with the incoming administration on issues key to the Democratic mayors’ cities and reestablishing its brand with key facets of its base who turned to the GOP — or stayed home — last November.

“Over the next four years, Democratic mayors will play a pivotal role in communicating the Democratic Party’s message, combating misinformation — particularly about our cities, which Trump repeatedly attacks – and continuing to deliver results locally, keeping their communities safe and creating and connecting people to opportunity,” a source familiar with the DMA’s plans told ABC News.

In a recent interview with the Ohio-based news site Signal Cleveland, Bibb said he’s uninterested in being part of any formal Trump “resistance.”

“I think Clevelanders and the American people are tired of ‘the resistance,'” Bibb said. “They’re tired of the bickering between Democrats and Republicans. They are tired of this left vs. right debate.”

For his part, Bibb said that despite uncertainty, the DMA, under his leadership, will move forward with “unity.”

“While there is uncertainty and concern on the eve of the Inauguration, the Democratic Mayors Association is clear in its mission,” Bibb said in a statement to ABC News. “We will stand together. We are going to deliver. We are going to move forward with positive action and real results. Our time is now.”

Bibb is currently running for a second term as mayor.

Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who served as a Biden and Harris campaign co-chairman, said the group is lucky to have Bibb at the helm.

“Nobody knows better than Democratic Mayors on how to deliver,” Landrieu said in a statement. “Now is the time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. This work is more important now than ever, and we are lucky to have Mayor Bibb leading the way.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday thanked supporters during a virtual call and vowed that the “fight’s not over” in her first remarks since conceding defeat to President-elect Donald Trump three weeks ago.

“The fight that fueled our campaign, a fight for freedom and opportunity, that did not end on Nov. 5. A fight for the dignity of all people? That did not end on Nov. 5,” Harris said. “A fight for the future, a future in which all people receive the promise of America No. A fight that is about a fight for the ideals of our nation, the ideals that reflect the promise of America That fight’s not over.”

“That fight’s still in us, and it burns strong,” Harris later added. “And I know this is an uncertain time. I’m clear-eyed about that. I know you’re clear-eyed about it, and it feels heavy. And I just have to remind you: Don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you. You have the same power that you did before Nov. 5 and you have the same purpose that you did and you have the same ability to engage and inspire. So don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you.”

The grassroots call came immediately after Harris held a call with her campaign’s finance committee. The finance call was attended by more than 400 donors, according to a source familiar.

On the grassroots call, Harris also briefly discussed the historic sum of money that ran her campaign, though she did not address what went wrong as she and her campaign face intense scrutiny over how they could raise that money and lose to Trump so resolutely.

​​”The outcome of this election, obviously, is not what we wanted. It is not what we work so hard for,” Harris said. “But I am proud of the race we ran. And your role in this was critical. What we did in 107 days was unprecedented.”

Harris said that over the course of those 100-plus days, her campaign raised $1.4 billion, much of which was from grassroot donors: “Nearly 8 million donors contributed an average donation of about $56.”

“You gave all that you could to support our campaign. Because of your efforts — get this — we raised an historic $1.4 billion, almost $1.5 billion from grassroots supporters alone, the most in presidential campaign history,” she said.

“Being involved can make a difference, and that remains true. And that’s one of the pieces that I just want us to please take away — that our fight for freedom and for opportunity and for the promise of America, it included, for example, nearly almost 4 million first-time contributors to our campaign because of the work you did, of helping people know that they can be engaged and that they’re not outside, that they’re inside, that we’re all in this together,” she added.

Harris was joined by her former running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on both calls — a rare appearance from the two, though Harris joined the call from San Francisco and Walz from Minnesota.

Walz on the grassroot donor call also spoke to supporters’ feeling of loss following the election and repeated Harris’ claims that she is not finished with fighting.

“I think all of us saw the possibility, and I know there’s a bit of a feeling of loss because we saw what a real leader looks like,” Walz said.

“She did deliver the best of our better angels,” he added. “She delivered a vision where all of us mattered. She did it with grace and dignity and continues to do that every single day. She is still in this fight. She is doing it every single day. She is not done with her current job. She’s not done being part of it with all of you.”

Harris’ and Walz’s remarks follow some postelection analysis from Harris campaign senior officials during an episode of “Pod Save America” that aired on Tuesday, including some reaction to finances.

Harris campaign Chairwoman Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said that during the cycle, the bulk of the campaign’s spending was used to reach out to “very-hard-to-find voters,” including low-propensity and young voters, while investing across all swing states because polling reflected that each was in play.

“We were trying to, yes, spend more resources on digital … because we’re trying to find young people, we’re trying to find these lower-propensity voters that were tuned out to politics,” O’Malley Dillon said.

“We had some unique things that we had to do in this race that I think were really critical to do early and spent a lot of resources at an earlier stage than we would have to,” she added, noting those resources were spent on both advertising and field programming. “We saw, up until the very end, that … every single state was in such a margin of error. There was nothing that told us we couldn’t play in one of these states.”

During the podcast, O’Malley Dillon and senior campaign adviser David Plouffe accused the Trump campaign of coordinating with its super PACs, a practice that is not legal, but noted the Democrats need to take note and do the same.

“We have to stop playing a different game as it relates to super PACs and the Republicans. Love our Democratic lawyers. I’m tired of it, OK? They coordinate more than we do. I think amongst themselves, I think with the presidential campaign, like I’m just sick and tired, OK? So, we cannot be at a disadvantage,” Plouffe said.

“I think our side was completely mismatched when it came to the ecosystem of Trump and his super PACs and ours,” O’Malley Dillon said.

“We had a super PAC that was helpful, very important and necessary for the work that they did because they were the kind of central recipients of a lot of the funding on our side and they staked a strategy and a plan, and we clearly could see it, and we knew what it was [going] to spend, but we did not have the ability to have people come in with us early. And so every ounce of advertising, every ounce of carrying these strategic imperatives, of defining the vice president and trying to bring down Trump’s numbers, all sat with us as a campaign,” O’Malley Dillon added.

Harris has rarely been seen since she delivered her concession speech at Howard University the day after the election. She attended the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery a week later and was seen making her first return to the White House a day after that. The vice president also spent the last week on vacation in Hawaii.

Walz, in the month since the election, has remained almost entirely out of the national spotlight, resuming his duties as the governor of Minnesota.

He delivered his final speech of the 2024 campaign cycle on Nov. 8 from suburban Minneapolis, joining a chorus of fellow Democratic governors who said they would protect their states from threats to reproductive freedoms, citizenship and other things under the Trump administration. The former vice presidential nominee also said he’d work to find common ground with swaths of people who voted “for the other side” on Nov. 5.

Harris and Walz remained mostly separate on the campaign trail in the roughly 15 weeks she had him as her running mate. The governor was present at Harris’ concession speech at Howard University the night after the election but did not speak or publicly interact with her. Before that, the two held a joint rally on Oct. 28 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, their first event together since late August, when they were seen together in Savannah, Georgia, on a bus tour.

Prior to that, their last time at a rally together was in Milwaukee for programming linked to the Democratic National Convention in August.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is compiling a list of agents and other FBI officials from around the country who they believe should be fired or forced to resign in the coming days, several sources told ABC News.

Trump administration officials are especially looking at whether anyone tied in any way to former special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 and classified documents investigations of President Donald Trump should be included in the firings, according to the sources. They are also looking for anyone who may be resistant to carrying out some of the administration’s new initiatives, sources said.

Firings could begin as early as Friday, but a list is expected to be finalized on Monday, sources said.

The list of those who could be fired includes the heads of dozens of field offices across the country and could include scores of agents in the FBI’s Washington, D.C., Field Office alone, sources said.

An FBI spokesperson said in a statement to ABC: “The FBI is declining to comment on any questions regarding FBI personnel matters. We have also instructed the public affairs officers in our field offices to decline to comment as well.”

Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, was pressed Thursday during his confirmation hearing as to whether FBI agents who worked on Smith’s investigations would be protected from “retribution,” should he be confirmed.

“Every FBI employee will be held to the absolute same standard, and no one will be terminated for cases,” Patel said. “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.”

The FBI Agents Association said the actions “contradict the commitments” Patel made to the association ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing, saying Patel said FBI agents “would be afforded appropriate process and review and not face retribution based solely on the cases to which they were assigned.”

“If true, these outrageous actions by acting officials are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents,” the FBI Agents Association added in a statement. “Dismissing potentially hundreds of Agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure.”

In the Oval Office later Friday, Trump was asked by reporters about Justice Department employees who may be fired or forced out in the coming days and he appeared to indicate it could be a “good thing.”

“If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing because they were very bad,” Trump said. “They used the Justice Department to correct their political opponents, which in itself is illegal.”

Asked if he specifically requested any action, Trump denied, “No, but we have some very bad people over there. It was weaponized at a level that nobody’s ever seen before”

ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.

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