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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s increasingly tenuous efforts to reverse his electoral defeat to President-elect Joe Biden could take a lethal blow on Monday, when Biden takes on the task of building his cabinet. .
Michigan is ready to certify its results Monday, and Pennsylvania is likely to get one step closer to doing so.
Trump, a Republican, lost both states on the battlefield in the Nov.3 election, but refused to admit defeat, instead launching a legal battle to nullify the results there and in other races across the country. .
Trump’s hopes of preventing Democrat Biden from taking office on January 20 will likely be doomed if Michigan and Pennsylvania certify their results, confirming Biden as the winner of 36 electoral votes combined. Biden won 306 electoral votes, 36 over the threshold of 270 needed to win the White House.
It is unclear if the process in Michigan will work as state law dictates. Michigan’s canvassing board, which is split evenly between two Democrats and two Republicans, will meet Monday to decide whether to certify the results.
Biden defeated Trump in Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, and the law requires the board to validate the count.
But a Republican board member, Norman Shinkle, has suggested in recent media interviews that he favors delaying the certification due to technical irregularities. County officials noted wrongdoing that may have hit a few hundred votes, and the Trump campaign has suggested it points to widespread fraud.
A stalemate in progress with certification would likely force the matter to go to state appeals courts, where an order would be sought to force the board to perform its function. If the members refused, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D, has the authority to replace them.
Monday is also the Pennsylvania deadline for counties to report their certified accounts to Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat. Boockvar is likely to certify the results on behalf of the state within days. Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.
Trump’s push to delay certification in several states failed, most recently on Saturday, when a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit, saying it was not in the power of the court to violate the Constitution.
BIDEN CABINET
Biden, who works in his home state of Delaware, has gone ahead with his transition plans despite a lack of cooperation from the current administration. Ron Klain, the incoming White House head of state, said Sunday that Biden will announce his first cabinet elections on Tuesday.
Joe Biden will elect Antony Blinken as US secretary of state, a person close to the president-elect’s transition said Sunday, raising one of his most experienced and trusted aides as he prepares to undo the foreign policy of “America First. “from Trump.
Blinken’s appointment makes another former Biden aide with foreign policy experience, Jake Sullivan, the leading candidate to be the United States’ national security adviser.
The president-elect chose another veteran diplomat, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who held a senior diplomatic post in the administration of former President Barack Obama, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, news reports said Sunday.
Biden said last week that he had chosen a Secretary of the Treasury and would announce the winner around Thanksgiving, Nov. 26. The former head of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, is said to be the top candidate.
MORE ACCOUNTS, AUDITS TO COME
Meanwhile, Trump’s focus remains on his quixotic quest to overturn the election.
Trump’s push to delay certification in several states failed, most recently on Saturday, when a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit, saying it was not in the power of the court to violate the Constitution.
Ahead of Monday’s vote for Michigan’s canvassing board, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, a Trump ally, and Michigan Republican Party Chair Laura Cox, wrote a letter urging the board to conduct an audit. before certification.
The Trump campaign has also filed a petition for another recount in Georgia, which on Friday certified results showing that Biden had narrowly won that state, a long-standing Republican stronghold in the presidential election.
While most Republicans continue to publicly endorse Trump’s efforts or remain silent, an ever-growing chorus pleads with him to grant the election and help with the transition to the Biden administration.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski tweeted Sunday that “it is time to begin the full and formal transition process,” noting that the courts had so far found that Trump’s legal claims were without merit and that the lobbying campaign on lawmakers state “is not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process.”
Voters in each state will meet as a so-called “Electoral College” on December 14 to formally select the next president.
(Reporting by James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Edited by Paul Simao and Christopher Cushing)
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