Call it a bit of a turkey. At a much diminished White House ceremony earlier today, marking the annual Thanksgiving tradition during which a president pardons a bird from the dinner table ahead of the holiday, Donald Trump seemed to realize his star had already begun to wane, the Guardian’s David Smith writes ... On Tuesday, Biden introduced the brainy grownups of his government-in-waiting at a weighty event with lofty talk of restoring America’s moral leadership and saving the planet from the climate crisis. An hour later, at the White House, a turkey was pardoned by a lame duck discovering how fickle the media circus can be. The gathering in the Rose Garden was naturally diminished by the coronavirus pandemic, but his last Thanksgiving ceremony was a muted affair that also struggled to break through on cable news. “Ladies and gentleman, the president of the United States and Mrs Trump,” said an announcer, the words suddenly elegiac as abnormal administration fades to black. Los Angeles bans restaurant dining and plans stay-at-home order Los Angeles is shutting down restaurant dining and plans to adopt a new stay-at-home order as California faces record Covid-19 infections, a potential shortage of hospital beds and an expected surge in cases tied to the holidays. LA officials announced on Sunday that the county would be prohibiting dining at restaurants for at least three weeks starting on Wednesday, and urged residents not to travel or gather in groups for Thanksgiving this week. With a record of 6,124 new cases reported on Monday in LA and an alarming increase over the last week, the county is expected to launch another lockdown, officials said on Monday. The new restrictions, which will be discussed on Tuesday, are hitting the largest county in the US as the state experiences by far the highest level of Covid spread since the start of the pandemic. California reported a record of more than 15,000 new Covid cases statewide on Saturday, and another 14,000 cases on Sunday. LA county has been a Covid hotspot in the state for months and now has a record surge, with a five-day average of more than 4,500 people reporting new infections each day – a number that has nearly doubled in just two weeks, the LA Times reported. Tomorrow, Biden will deliver a Thanksgiving address, from Wilmington, Delaware, and will “discuss the shared sacrifices Americans are making this holiday season and say that we can and will get through the current crisis together”, per the transition team. It will likely stand in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s turkey pardoning today. Trump thanked healthcare workers and celebrated vaccine development advances, but did not offer condolences for the families of the quarter-million who’ve died of the coronavirus. Joe Biden also said that he wouldn’t “use the Justice Department as my vehicle” to investigate Donald Trump and his allies. In the interview with NBC Nightly News, he told Lester Holt: “There are a number of investigations that I’ve read about that are at a state level. There’s nothing at all I can or cannot do about that.” Biden on NBC: "this is not a third Obama term" “We face a totally different world than we faced in the Obama-Biden administration,” Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt, in the president-elect’s first televised interview since winning the election. He’d like his administration to represent the “spectrum of the American people as well as the spectrum of the Democratic party” Biden added, agreeing that he’d even consider appointing a Republican who voted for Trump. “I want this country to be united,” Biden said. Who are Joe Biden"s top cabinet picks? Anthony Blinken – secretary of state Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of state marks a sharp break with the Trump administration. The former deputy secretary of state is a committed internationalist, who spent some of his childhood in Paris and is fluent in French. He views US engagement with the world, and particularly Europe, as vital. He was a member of Bill Clinton’s White House staff in the 1990s and served under President Barack Obama. In 2019 he expressed strong opinions about Brexit, saying: “This is not just the dog that caught the car, this is the dog that caught the car and the car goes into reverse and runs over the dog. It’s a total mess.” Janet Yellen – treasury secretary The 74-year-old economist was the first woman to chair the US Federal Reserve, and looks set to achieve another first: becoming the country’s first female treasury secretary. Professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, a former assistant professor at Harvard and a lecturer at the London School of Economics, Yellen is an expert in labour markets and has highlighted the economic impact of uneven growth in the jobs market. Donald Trump declined to reappoint her after his election, making her the first central bank chief not to serve two terms since the Carter administration. Alejandro Mayorkas – secretary of homeland security Described by the former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro as “a historic and experienced choice to lead an agency in desperate need of reform”, the Cuban-American lawyer served as the deputy secretary of homeland security for nearly three years under Obama. Formerly Obama’s director of US citizenship and immigration services, if confirmed, the 61-year-old would be the first Latino and the first immigrant to lead the department. Linda Thomas-Greenfield – US ambassador to the United Nations The Louisianian was formerly assistant secretary of state for African affairs under the Obama and Trump administrations. She was also the US ambassador to Liberia under George W Bush and Obama. Of her appointment, Thomas-Greenfield, 68, has said: “My mother taught me to lead with the power of kindness and compassion to make the world a better place. I’ve carried that lesson with me throughout my career in foreign service and, if confirmed, will do the same as ambassador to the United Nations.” Progressive Democrats, including representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, have signed a petition advising against a role for former Biden chief of staff Bruce Reed in the Biden-Harris Administration. “Reed has a history of putting deficit reduction ahead of economic recovery,” the petition reads. “We are extremely concerned by the reports that Reed is a frontrunner to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the Biden administration, given his history of antipathy towards economic security programs that working people rely on.” So far, progressives have lauded Biden’s choice of Janet Yellen for Treasury Secretary, and Ron Klain as chief of staff. After the party united to help Biden defeat Donald Trump, progressives have pushed the president-elect to welcome progressive candidates and policies into his incoming administration. Joe Biden told NBC News’ Lester Holt that the transition “has already begun”. “They’re already working out my ability to get Presidential Daily Briefs,” he told Holt. “We’re already working out meeting with the Covid team in the White House. And how to not only distribute, but get from a vaccine being distributed, to a person being able to get vaccinated. So I think we’re going to not be so far behind the curve, as we thought we might be in the past. And there’s a lot of immediate discussion, and I must say, the outreach has been sincere. There’s has not been begrudging so far. And I don’t expect it to be.” Biden: "We do not want a guarded border" between UK and Ireland Speaking to reporters, Joe Biden said he’d like to avoid seeing a guarded border between the UK and Ireland. “We do not want a guarded border. We want to make sure – we’ve worked too long to get Ireland worked out, and I talked with the British prime minister, I talked with the Taoiseach, I talked with others, I talked to the French. The idea of having a border north and south once again being closed is just not right, we’ve just got to keep the border open,” he told reporters, according to the press pool. Late afternoon summary Another lively few hours in US politics. Joe Biden’s interview with NBC’s Lester Holt is coming up a little later and my California colleague Maanvi Singh will bring you some of that and any other developments. Here are the main events of the day so far: President-elect Joe Biden is reportedly now to receive the president’s daily brief, after Donald Trump has spent almost three weeks withholding permission for the classified intelligence briefing he receives daily to be shared henceforth with his successor. Incoming vice president Kamala Harris hailed the beginnings of a Biden-Harris cabinet that “looks like America” with much greater diversity and representation than the one it will replace. John Kerry, former Democratic presidential nominee (who lost to George W Bush in 2004) and former secretary of state (2013 to 2017 for Barack Obama), declared upon accepting his nomination to a new cabinet position as climate envoy that the international Paris climate accord that the US will re-enter under Biden was not by itself enough to avert climate catastrophe. Joe Biden introduced his new foreign policy and intelligence cabinet choices at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, including his picks for secretary of state and ambassador to the United Nations.