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Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford says he will “step in” if Joe Biden doesn’t receive intelligence reports by Friday. In the United States, it is common practice for presidents-elect to be briefed by the secret services prior to their inauguration. However, Biden and his transition team will only have access to these briefings and government buildings if they are granted permission by the General Services Administration. The head of this authority appointed by Trump so far has refused to do this.
James lankford
(Photo: AP)
Lankford sits on a Senate committee that oversees the general service administration. Authorities have already begun investigating the matter, the senator said. If nothing happens by Friday, he will push for Biden and his team to prepare for their future assignments.
Lankford wants to stay out of the dispute over recognition of the elections, as the “New York Times” reports. “I’m going to stay out,” said the senator. Understand why Biden started the transition process after being named the winner of the election. But Trump has the right to have the election result legally verified. So far, very few Republicans have acknowledged Biden’s election victory.
+++ 06:04 Trump administration does not send letters to Biden +++
A lot of congratulations for Joe Biden is in the US State Department, which refuses to send the letters to the winner of the election. CNN reports this, citing State Department employees. Generally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is responsible for communication between the “president-elect”, the president-elect but not yet sworn in, and other nations. Therefore, Biden could not see “dozens of messages” from him. The talks that Biden had already had with heads of state and government like Chancellor Merkel were carried out without the support of the State Department. US Secretary of State Pompeo said Tuesday there would be a “smooth transition” to “a second Trump administration.”
+++ 05:14 Scholz: With Biden, the digital tax is coming +++
Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz sees greater possibilities for an international deal on a digital tax after Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) should implement the plan to significantly tax US corporations like Google and Facebook in Europe before the end of the year. But then, last June, the US declared a “break” in the negotiations and justified it with the corona pandemic. With Biden there is now “a new willingness to negotiate different interests cooperatively,” Scholz told the Germany publishing network. Blueprints for a digital tax deal are already on the table, the SPD man said. He is confident that an agreement will be reached by the summer.
+++ 04:18 Trump-friendly Prime Minister of Australia congratulates Biden +++
Just over a week after the election, other US allies congratulated Joe Biden on his victory. On Wednesday night, the Democrat held talks with the heads of state and government of Japan, Australia and South Korea. “There are no closer friends or closer allies than Australia and the United States,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wrote after switching to Biden on Twitter. This is remarkable in the sense that critics in the past have accused him of near-unconditional loyalty to Trump. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga took office just two months ago and Biden praised the smooth running of the government in Tokyo. An equally simple transfer of power is currently out of the question in Washington.
+++ 03:26 Trump complains: media does not report on blocked election observers +++
As Joe Biden rallies his staff, Donald Trump scolds the media on Twitter. No one wants to report that Republican election watchers in Pennsylvania and Michigan stayed away from their work, complains the current president. Hundreds of thousands of votes were illegally counted, otherwise he would have won a huge leap. Oh good. Perhaps Trump does not read about the alleged large-scale electoral fraud in the news simply because there is no evidence of it yet.
+++ 02:20 Biden appoints Ronald Klain chief of staff, for the second time +++
President-elect Joe Biden has decided who will be his future chief of staff in the White House. The choice fell on his longtime confidant, Ronald Klain, Biden’s team explained. “His deep and diverse experience and his ability to work with people from across the political spectrum is exactly what I need from a White House chief of staff as we face this time of crisis and bring the country back together,” said Biden. Klain has a lot of experience: The 59-year-old was already Vice President Biden’s Chief of Staff between 2009 and 2011. During the crown pandemic, Klain stood out as a critic of President Donald Trump. A video in the spring explaining what a Biden administration would have done differently in the pandemic and what it wants to do in the future attracted a lot of attention.
*Data Protection
+++ 01:33 Georgia: Republican Interior Minister sees no signs of electoral fraud +++
A manual recount of the votes is supposed to show large-scale electoral fraud in the state of Georgia, or so the Trump camp hopes. The state’s Interior Minister Brad Raffensperger has to disappoint the skeptics: So far, there has been no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud, the Republican told CNN. Therefore, he considers it highly unlikely that more than 10,000 votes were assigned incorrectly: “We believe that the ballots were accurately recorded by the counting machines.” Due to the tight outcome of the Georgia elections, Raffensperger had ordered a recount by hand. Joe Biden is in Georgia with currently about 14,000 votes ahead of incumbent Donald Trump. The count must be completed by November 20.
+++ 00:29 Pentagon instead of ambassador to Germany: Trump loyalist Macgregor gets a new job +++
In reality, Douglas Macgregor was supposed to be the new US ambassador to Germany, as Donald Trump wanted. But now it’s different: The former army officer has a new job at the Pentagon. Macgregor will become a senior adviser to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, the Defense Department confirmed. Trump had nominated Macgregor for the post of ambassador to Berlin in late July; now he is apparently needed more urgently in the Ministry of Defense. His appointment was preceded by the removal of former Defense Minister Mark Esper, which Trump announced Monday on Twitter. As a result, other Pentagon executives left their offices on Tuesday. They were full of people who, like Macgregor, are considered loyal to Trump.
+++ 23:43 The Facebook election freeze is extended +++
Political-themed ads haven’t been possible on Facebook for a few weeks, and that won’t change anytime soon. Advertisers should be prepared for the fact that the advertising ban could last up to a month, the world’s largest online network announced. Before the election, Facebook had banned political ads from the site to avoid “confusion or abuse,” as it was called at the time. Among other things, aggressive ad campaigns should be kept off the platform during the hottest phase of the election campaign. Democrats were quick to criticize the extension of the advertising suspension because it would hamper the campaign before the Senate runoff elections in Georgia. There will be two senatorial seats in early January, which will decide by majority in the House of Congress.
+++ 11:01 PM infected on election night? Another case of corona in the White House +++
The White House has another corona case: Political Director Brian Jack tested positive over the weekend, various US media reported. Jack was at the White House on Tuesday of last week to see the announcement of the election results. According to the “New York Times”, the virus was also detected in another presidential adviser, but the newspaper did not mention a name. On the other hand, the infections of Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Construction Minister Ben Carson and David Bossie, the head of the legal team, are already known. They had all spent election night in the White House.
+++ 10:30 pm Trump advisor: what will max give +++
The main US broadcaster NBC reports on its news page that Trump’s advisers believe he will no longer admit defeat. Anonymous sources close to the president are cited. One of these people said, “He’s going to say something like, ‘We can’t trust the results. But I’m not going to do anything about it.’ Someone else said that Trump’s statement would go something like, “I acknowledge the results, but we will never know how accurate they were.” The point has not yet been reached.
+++ 21:56 US Congress Plans New Sanctions for Nord Stream 2 +++
A good example that with Trump all the problems in German-American relations will not disappear is the Nord Stream 2 oil pipeline. The US has already paralyzed its construction with sanctions and new punitive measures are already being planned. As reported by “Bloomberg”, negotiators in the Senate and House of Representatives have included them in a bill for the defense budget. Consequently, insurers and technical certifiers should be targeted. Mind you, this has yet to be officially decided, but in the end it should just be a formality. After all, Nord Stream 2 is one of the few topics that Republicans and Democrats agree on.
+++ 21:23 Micro still open: Fox News host reacts to Trump’s friendly guest +++
In the Trump universe, it has caused irritation that Fox News has also proclaimed Biden the winner of the election. Now in the Trump camp it is said that the election is not decided until all the votes have been counted, which is not bad, but the media has a great experience in counting the likely winner and, by the way, Trump was that too method in 2016 good enough. Now, lawyer Cleta Jones, a friend of Trump, gave a telephone interview with Fox News and spread that same opinion. Moderator Sandra Smith reacted in disbelief and asked her colleague, “What’s going on here? We have declared the end of the race.” Too bad the mic was still open.
+++ 20:48 indigenous people could become Biden’s interior minister +++
Deb Haaland was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018; she and Sharice Davids are the first Native Americans to do so. Now Haaland is in talks to become interior minister under Biden, as the “Huffington Post” reports. Dozens of tribal leaders want to campaign for this. As Home Secretary, Haaland would oversee federally owned lands, which especially in the central United States occupy large areas. If a “Native American” got this post, it would also have a symbolism.
Read what happened on the US election ticker here.
