Joe Biden won the national popular vote by more than 5.6 million votes, or 3.6 percentage points.
WILMINGTON:
President-elect Joe Biden’s senior coronavirus advisers warned on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s blockade of the transition could hamper the country’s pandemic response, as Trump and his allies persist in challenging the November 3 election results .
Trump’s refusal to concede has put Biden’s transition to the White House in limbo, complicating his efforts to tackle a COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 247,000 people in the United States and shows no signs of slowing down .
In a call with reporters, former U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy, who co-chairs Biden’s COVID-19 task force, said preventing Biden’s transition advisers from meeting with government experts could hurt their ability to cope with the pandemic next year.
Several physician and nursing associations issued a letter on Tuesday urging the Trump administration to share critical COVID-19 data, such as equipment inventories, medical supplies and hospital bed capacity, with the ‘Biden team.
Biden, a former Democratic vice president who will take office on January 20, has also been unable to receive the confidential intelligence briefings normally granted to an elected president.
He instead met with his own group of national security experts, several of whom are being considered for high-level foreign policy positions, such as former Deputy State Secretary Antony Blinken, former Deputy Adviser to the national security Avril Haines and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.
“You know I couldn’t get the briefings that would normally have taken place now,” Biden said during a brief preview of the meeting offered to a small group of reporters. “And so I just want to hear from you on what you see coming up.”
Trump, a Republican, has repeatedly claimed without evidence that he was the victim of widespread voter fraud, and his campaign has filed a wave of lawsuits in battlefield states. Election officials from both parties said they saw no evidence of serious irregularities.
Trump on Tuesday sacked senior US cybersecurity official Chris Krebs, who heads the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, accusing him without evidence of making a “ grossly inaccurate ” statement claiming election security American.
Reuters reported last week that Krebs, who worked to protect the election from hackers but angered the White House for his efforts to debunk disinformation, told associates he expected to to be fired.
DELETE WON SUBMISSION
Biden won the national popular vote by more than 5.6 million votes, or 3.6 percentage points, with some ballots still counted. In the state-by-state electoral college that determines the winner, Biden got 306 votes to 232 for Trump.
In Michigan, where Biden leads by more than 145,000 votes, two Republican members of the state’s largest county canvassing council, Wayne, initially voted Tuesday to prevent the county from certifying its results, citing slight inconsistencies in the results. majority constituencies totals. -Black city of Detroit.
But they overturned their decision after more than two hours of angry public commentary and voted to certify Wayne County’s results, with the warning that the Michigan secretary of state is auditing the constituency counts.
During a hearing in federal court in Pennsylvania, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann appeared skeptical of Trump’s demand to prevent officials from certifying Biden’s victory in that state.
“Basically you are asking this tribunal to invalidate 6.8 million votes, thus depriving every voter in the Commonwealth,” Brann said. “Can you tell me how this result can be justified?
A defeat in the Pennsylvania affair would be a blow to Trump’s diminishing chances of overturning the election result. To stay in power, Trump would have to overturn the results of at least three of the closely contested states in an unprecedented way, and apparently has no legal means to do so.
The highest court in the state of Pennsylvania dismissed an appeal from Trump’s campaign in a separate lawsuit, ruling that the Election Council in Philadelphia, the state’s largest city, acted reasonably in keeping observers from Trump’s campaign behind barricades and 4.5m from counting tables.
Trump supporters are also focused on hoping that the recounts might reverse the state’s results, even though experts have said Biden’s margins appear insurmountable.
Georgia itself is undertaking a manual recount. In Wisconsin, the Trump campaign has until Wednesday to decide whether it will pay the $ 7.9 million that the state electoral commission estimated a recount would cost.
Biden spoke on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump ally, as well as the leaders of India, South Africa and Chile. Biden said he has spoken to 13 foreign heads of state so far, telling them, “America is back. And it’s not America alone anymore.”
He has also held several high-level positions in his White House. Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, the first woman to lead a winning Democratic presidential candidacy, will serve as deputy chief of staff in the Biden administration, her transition office said in a statement.
Longtime advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti will join as senior advisor to the president and advisor to the president, respectively. Dana Remus, the campaign’s lead advocate, will be the president’s lawyer.
Another close adviser, Ron Klain, has already been appointed chief of staff.
U.S. Representative Cedric Richmond, who was national co-chair of Biden’s campaign and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, will step down from a House seat in Louisiana to become senior advisor and director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement. The five-term lawmaker has experience bridging gaps between parties, which could help Biden advance his priorities in Congress.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
