Daily US Times: President Joe Biden withdrew the nomination of Neera Tanden to be his budget director after she ran into stiff opposition over tweets that upset lawmakers, in the first Capitol Hill rebuff of one of his nominees.

Biden said in a short statement on Tuesday: “I have accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for director of the Office of Management and Budget.”

The decision to withdraw her nomination reflected the tenuous hold Biden’s Democratic party have on the Senate.

With the Senate split 50-50, Vice President Kamala Harris could have cast a tie-breaking vote in Tanden’s favor. But that was not an option after Joe Manchin, a moderate Democratic Senator, said he would not vote to approve the think tank director.

Manchin’s defection had sent Neera Tanden and the White House – scrambling to find one Republican backer. But they ultimately failed to gain, even after a last-minute meeting with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski on Monday.

Her backers decried what they called a sexist and hypocritical push to punish Tanden for harsh tweets directed at both Republicans and Democrats, after four years of similar language used by Republican former President Donald Trump.

President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Sherrilyn Ifill, tweeted: “Disheartening. For salty tweets. After what we’ve been through for 4 years.”

President Biden said he still planned to have Tanden serve in his administration, but did not say which job she might get.

The 50-year-old Tanden is an Indian American, and she would have been the first woman of color to lead the OMB, which manages the $4 trillion federal budget.

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