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WASHINGTON: President-elect Joe Biden consolidated his electoral victory in the United States by capturing the battlefield state of Arizona late Thursday (November 12), but the official transition to his administration remains stalled as President Donald Trump refuses to accept defeat.
Biden was projected to win Arizona after more than a week of counting the votes of the Nov. 3 election, Edison Research said. He becomes the second Democratic presidential candidate in seven decades to win traditionally Republican status.
Biden’s victory in Arizona earns him 290 electoral votes in the state-by-state Electoral College determining the winner.
Biden had already passed the 270-vote threshold to win the election, putting him on track to be sworn in on January 20. Arizona’s 11 additional electoral votes put any risky challenge from Trump even further out of reach.
Biden also has an advantage of more than 14,000 votes in the unnamed state of Georgia, almost certain to survive a manual recount. Nationally, Biden is winning the popular vote by more than 5.3 million votes, or 3.4 percentage points.
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Trump, a Republican, has claimed without evidence that he was duped by widespread election fraud, but his legal challenges failed in court and state election officials did not report serious wrongdoing.
To stay in office for a second term, Trump would have to reverse Biden’s leadership in at least three states, as he could not find evidence that he could do so in any of them.
States face a “safe harbor” deadline of December 8 to certify their elections and elect voters to the Electoral College, which will officially select the new president on December 14.
Trump’s refusal to accept defeat has stalled the process of transition to a new administration. The federal agency providing funding to an incoming president-elect, the General Services Administration, has yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory.
Biden’s election as White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told MSNBC on Thursday that starting the transition is particularly crucial now, as the Biden administration will inherit a coronavirus vaccination campaign as soon as he takes office. .
“The sooner we can bring our transition experts together with people who are planning a vaccination campaign, the smoother the transition to a Biden presidency from a Trump presidency will be,” Klain said.
Regardless of impediments, Biden will sign a “stack” of executive orders and send high-priority legislation to Congress on his first day in office, Klain said.
“It’s going to have a very, very busy day,” Klain said, citing the return of the Paris agreement on climate change, immigration reform, the strengthening of the “Obamacare” health law and environmental protection as issues that Biden would board on January 20. .
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REPUBLICANS DIVIDED
Biden was scheduled to meet with transition advisers again on Friday as he charts his approach to the pandemic and prepares to appoint his top appointees, including members of the cabinet.
Most Republicans have publicly endorsed Trump’s right to challenge court and have refused to recognize Biden as the winner. But more signs of dissent began to emerge on Thursday.
Party figures like Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, and Karl Rove, one of former President George W. Bush’s top advisers, said that Biden should be treated as president-elect.
Meanwhile, several Republican senators said the Trump administration should allow Biden to receive classified intelligence reports, although they fell short of explicitly calling him the winner.
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The incoming commander-in-chief usually receives briefings to ensure that national security is not compromised during the transition.
“I don’t see it as a high-stakes proposition. I just think it’s part of the transition. And, if he does indeed win in the end, I think they should be able to get going,” the Senator said. John Cornyn told reporters.
The top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, opposed the idea, suggesting that Trump could still prevail.
“He’s not president right now,” McCarthy said of Biden. “I don’t know if he will be president on January 20.”
Democrats have attacked Trump and the Republicans who have covered him for undermining the country’s institutions. In an interview to air Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes”, former President Barack Obama said Republicans were walking a “dangerous path” by backing Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
Biden has taken a measured approach, saying this week that he sees Trump’s claims as “embarrassing” but insisting he is not concerned about the impact on his transition to the White House. His legal advisers have dismissed Trump’s lawsuits as political theater.
