GOP Sen. Lankford says he will step in if Trump administration doesn’t give Biden intelligence briefings by Friday
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said Wednesday he will intervene if the Trump administration doesn’t start providing Biden with daily intelligence briefings by Friday as part of the transfer of power to the new administration.
“There is no loss from him getting the briefings and to be able to do that,” Lankford told Tulsa radio station KRMG in an interview. “And if that’s not occurring by Friday, I will step in as well and be able to push and to say, ‘This needs to occur so that regardless of the outcome of the election, whichever way that it goes, people can be ready for that actual task.’ ”
The Trump-appointed administrator of the General Services Administration has not yet signed the paperwork recognizing Biden as the election winner and allowing his transition team to begin its work, which includes accessing classified information. The move, usually completed within a day or two of the election, also turns over millions of dollars and grants access to government officials, office space in agencies and equipment.
Lankford, a member of the Homeland Security Committee, noted that when the results of the 2000 election were being contested in court, the Clinton administration gave George W. Bush access to intelligence briefings.
“There’s nothing wrong with vice president Biden getting the briefings to be able to prepare himself so he can be ready,” Lankford said. He added that Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, giving her “all the clearances that she needs” to review the briefings as well.
Trump endorses RNC chairwoman to retain role
Trump tweeted that Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, should stay in the role, seeming to give her some credit for his vote count in the presidential election, which he still claims he has won.
“I am pleased to announce that I have given my full support and endorsement to Ronna McDaniel to continue heading the Republican National Committee (RNC). With 72 MILLION votes, we received more votes than any sitting President in U.S. history - and we will win!” Trump tweeted.
Biden received close to 77 million votes.
The president tweeted intermittently throughout the day, sharing a debunked video alleging to show voter fraud at a ballot drop box, complaining about polling that showed him badly losing before the election and falsely claiming that he won Michigan and Pennsylvania — states he won in 2016 but Biden flipped this year with higher margins of victory than Trump had four years ago.
The McDaniel tweet appears to be in response to CNN reporting that Donald Trump Jr. was angling to take over the RNC. Trump Jr. tweeted Tuesday denying that was true.
"‘LOL #fakenews as usual... Zero interest in a role at the RNC, I’ll leave that to @GOPChairwoman,’ Trump Jr. tweeted. ‘If anyone believes that i want to sit in an office in DC and make fundraising calls for 18 hours a day they clearly have never met me.’
Arizona’s Republican attorney general defends state’s election process
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich defended the state’s election process Wednesday, saying his office had found no evidence of fraud.
Brnovich, a Republican, told Fox Business that his office had investigated more than 1,000 complaints related to claims that ballots marked with Sharpie pens were being disqualified and found none that were credible.
“We looked into that. We were able to determine that it did not affect anyone’s vote,” he said. A randomized audit also showed there weren’t “any statistical anomalies or errors,” he said.
He also said it “does appear that Joe Biden will win Arizona.”
Trump is trailing Biden in Arizona by more than 12,000 votes, with about 47,000 ballots left to be counted. To capture the state, the president would have to win about 64 percent of the remaining votes, according to The Washington Post’s tracking — an outcome that appears unlikely.
Brnovich also addressed a lawsuit by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee alleging problems with vote tabulation in Maricopa County.
“We are literally talking about less than 200 votes that are in question and doubt,” he said of the litigation. “Even if it was possible that those votes flipped, those 200 votes, I do not think it will make a difference in Arizona.”
“We need to deal in facts and evidence,” Brnovich added. “If there’s a problem or you think there’s a potential problem, the answer is, you don’t wait until it’s done to file a lawsuit. If you have problems with people on the voter rolls, other issues, you need to address those problems prospectively instead of reactively.”
Brnovich dismissed claims that there was “some great conspiracy” to deny Trump votes, noting that down-ballot Republicans had prevailed in other races, including in places where Democrats appeared favored to win.
“What really happened, it came down to, people split their ticket,” he said. “Just because that happened, it doesn’t mean it’s fraud.”
How independents, Latino voters and Catholics shifted from 2016 and swung states for Biden and Trump
The contours of a reshaped and expanded electorate are coming into focus, with network exit poll results providing an early look at which groups shifted the most from the 2016 to 2020 presidential elections.
Overall, the network exit poll conducted by Edison Research suggests that despite a massive surge in turnout, many demographic and political groups voted in ways similar to 2016. The survey finds men backed Trump by eight points while women backed Biden, now the president-elect, by 15 points, both similar to how the groups voted four years ago.
Yet the shifts that did occur proved consequential in states decided by narrow margins.
Analysis: Trump lawyers suffer embarrassing rebukes from judges over voter fraud claims
By now, it’s well-established that most of the arguments put forward by Trump’s reelection campaign in its challenge of the results of the 2020 election are baseless and highly speculative.
Even Trump allies, as The Washington Post reported late Tuesday, acknowledge the apparent futility of the effort. Others have reasoned that there’s no harm in going through the motions, with one anonymous GOP official asking, “What’s the downside for humoring him” for a little while?
But as scenes in courtrooms nationwide in recent days have shown, there is indeed a downside for those tasked with pursuing these claims. Repeatedly, they have been rebuked by judges for how thin their arguments have been.
After Trump’s largesse, Israeli leader faces a reset with Biden in the White House
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the rare U.S. ally who gloried in Trump’s unconventional turn as the leader of the free world, collecting political goodies and boasting of his open line to the Oval Office.
That means Biden holds the cards as he attempts to reset the terms of one of the most important American relationships abroad and confront Netanyahu over old grievances such as U.S. engagement with Iran and Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, people advising Biden and other Middle East experts said.
For Netanyahu, Biden’s election takes him down a peg.
Mississippi Republican calls for his state to ‘succeed from the union’ after Biden victory
As the dust settles from the 2020 presidential election, one disappointed Mississippi legislator has a proposition for the Magnolia State. Instead of being governed by Biden, state Rep. Price Wallace (R) reportedly said on Twitter that Mississippi should “succeed” from the rest of the United States and form its own country.
Despite the misspelling, his since-deleted tweet Saturday afternoon, posted hours after the election was called for Biden, appeared to be an overt throwback to the Confederacy — in a part of the Deep South that voted to remove the Confederate battle-flag symbol from its own state flag only earlier this year.
Although a small but growing number of GOP lawmakers have congratulated Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris on their victory, many others — including most of Mississippi’s top Republicans — have backed Trump’s efforts to challenge the results, according to the Mississippi Free Press.
Analysis: Obamacare may be safer than ever. But Biden will struggle to expand it.
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, appears to be on stable ground, after several pivotal Supreme Court justices hinted Tuesday that they won’t strike it down.
Yet that ground is also politically dry for further attempts by Biden to expand the law, as long as Republican power persists in the Senate.
The two-hour Supreme Court hearing gave hope to heath-care advocates and liberals.
The oral arguments in the high-profile lawsuit — which threatens to topple the sweeping 2010 measure — seemed to bode well for those who want former president Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement preserved.
Rubio stumps for Georgia Republicans, with no talk of fraud
MARIETTA, Ga. — Republicans kicked off their double-barreled runoff campaign for both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats with a visit from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who rallied supporters in Atlanta’s suburbs and warned that Democratic control of Congress would allow “crazy things” to happen.
Not mentioned by Rubio or by Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who joined him in Marietta: The recount of the state’s presidential vote, and the demand made by both Loeffler and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign.
“I can’t comment on the circumstances beyond what they said, and say that the state has election laws,” Rubio told reporters after the rally at the Cobb County Republican Party’s headquarters. “When a race is close, and the stakes are this high, that’s when you realize there’s this process that occurs four weeks after an election to get the certified numbers. That happens in every election, all the time. And that’s the process that should be allowed to work forward here.”
Raffensperger had announced earlier Wednesday morning that there would be a hand recount of the presidential race, which wrapped up with Biden leading by 14,112 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. Under pressure from Trump, who has not conceded the election, Loeffler and Perdue have criticized Raffensperger’s handling of the election and urged him to quit, which he rejected out of hand.
Perdue did not attend the rally, and Loeffler didn’t mention the recount in her remarks, using them to criticize her opponent, Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock, for remarks critical of police misconduct and for being part of a church that once invited Fidel Castro to speak there.
“The road to socialism does not run through Georgia,” Loeffler said.
Analysis: Trump’s refusal to begin the transition could damage cybersecurity
The Trump administration’s refusal to concede could leave Biden and his team flat-footed in responding to cyberattacks.
Without a formal go-ahead from the General Services Administration to start the transition, Biden’s team won’t be able to get access to classified information about cyberthreats and how the government is addressing them.
That could prove a severe handicap as the president-elect’s team prepares to take office amid a slew of threats from digital adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran.
Chaotic presidential transition brings vulnerability, security risks to nation
Trump’s firing of Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, days after losing the election, and a Pentagon personnel shake-up that has followed have injected uncertainty into the ranks of national security leadership at a vulnerable moment for the United States, adding more turmoil to a period that already carries risk for the nation.
In the week since Election Day, Trump has refused to concede and has publicized spurious claims of fraud to overshadow the result. He also has declined to give Biden resources and daily presidential intelligence briefings to aid the transition to the new administration. The Pentagon turmoil could further jeopardize the prospect of a seamless handover, at what experts say is a sensitive time.
“It is a time of vulnerability, and it’s a time when your enemies can be testing you,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the nonprofit White House Transition Project. “It is the kind of thing that you have to get right.”
Georgia to conduct hand audit of presidential votes
Amid increasing pressure from Trump and Republican officials in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) on Wednesday announced a hand audit of the presidential vote in his state, where Biden leads by more than 14,000 votes.
Election officials will manually verify each of the roughly 5 million votes cast in the presidential election by hand, amid unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud and irregularities in the presidential vote in the state. The goal is to start the audit this week and complete it by Nov. 20, the deadline for the state to certify its results, officials said.
“We’ll be counting every single piece of paper — every single ballot, every single lawfully cast, legal ballot,” Raffensperger said in a news conference Wednesday.
The losing candidate can request a recount of results if the margin is less than 0.5 percent of votes cast. Biden’s narrow lead falls within that margin, meaning Trump can request a recount within two business days of the certification of statewide results. The recount would involve rescanning the ballots, which would have been already hand-audited.
Raffensperger said he made the decision for a manual audit of presidential votes because of the national significance of the state’s results. He and other state election officials have repeatedly said that there is no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularity in the state’s elections and that the vote counting and election administration was a resounding success.
“This has national significance. We get that. We understand that,” he said. “We follow the process and we understand the significance for not just Georgia but for every single American. At the end of the day, we do a hand recount and we can answer the question: What was the final margin in this race?”
Raffensperger also made a pointed statement to those who have questioned the integrity of Georgia’s election, surrounding himself by local election officials and expressing his support and admiration for their work.
“At the end of the day, though, they’re following a process, and what they want is, they never want you to be able to question their integrity. That’s what we want everyone to understand — that we’re following a process. Integrity still matters,” he said.
He added that the election officials’ job is hard. “They executed their responsibilities and they did their job.” He also said he will invite observers from both parties because “the stakes are high.”
He also announced that the Dec. 1 runoff elections in the state will be moved to Jan. 5, to coincide with the U.S. Senate runoff elections in January.
Biden visits Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia, while Trump pays tribute at Arlington National Cemetery
Biden paid a visit Wednesday morning to the Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia, paying tribute to veterans, at the same time Trump was on his way to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, placed a wreath at the memorial in Philadelphia before holding hands and standing in front of it for a few moments. The two wore face masks during their visit.
Trump, meanwhile, arrived at Arlington National Cemetery several minutes later. He was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Pence, among others.
Trump, Pence and Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie stood in the rain in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns as a band played the national anthem. Neither the president nor those standing with him were wearing masks, although the president’s daughter, White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump, was spotted wearing one as she stood some distance away.
The president stood in front of a wreath for several moments, placed his hand on it and then saluted. He and the others stood for several more moments as a trumpeter played “Taps”; they made their way back to the motorcade as rain continued to fall.
How Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change
Biden is poised to embed action on climate change across the breadth of the federal government, from the departments of Agriculture to Treasury to State — expanding it beyond environmental agencies to speed up U.S. efforts to mitigate global warming and to acknowledge that the problem touches many aspects of American life.
The far-reaching strategy is aimed at making significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions even without congressional action, by maximizing executive authority.
“From the very beginning of the campaign, when Biden rolled out his climate plan, he made it clear he sees this as an all-of-government agenda, domestic, economic, foreign policy,” said Stef Feldman, campaign policy director for Biden, a Democrat. “From the very beginning, when he talked about infrastructure, he talked about making sure that it built in climate change, that we are making our communities more resilient to the effects of climate change.”