Category: Joe Biden

Trump’s Attempts to Overturn the Election Are Unparalleled in U.S. History

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The president’s push to prevent states from certifying electors and get legislators to override voters’ will eclipse even the bitter 1876 election as an audacious use of brute political force.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election are unprecedented in American history and an even more audacious use of brute political force to gain the White House than when Congress gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency during Reconstruction.

Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding are somewhere between remote and impossible, and a sign of his desperation after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by nearly six million popular votes and counting, as well as a clear Electoral College margin. Yet the fact that Mr. Trump is even trying has set off widespread alarms, not least in Mr. Biden’s camp.

“I’m confident he knows he hasn’t won,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Wilmington, Del., on Thursday, before adding, “It’s just outrageous what he’s doing.” Although Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Trump’s behavior as embarrassing, he acknowledged that “incredibly damaging messages are being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions.” Continue reading.

Democrats demand briefing from GSA chief on delay in ascertaining Biden’s win

Administrator Emily Murphy has delayed the relatively routine step as President Donald Trump contests the election results.

Four senior House Democrats are demanding that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy brief them Monday on the reason she has yet to ascertain Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election, warning that her answers will determine whether they intend to haul her to Capitol Hill for a public hearing, along with other senior General Services Administration officials.

“We have been extremely patient, but we can wait no longer,” said House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, in a four-page letter joined by Reps. Gerry Connolly and Mike Quigley.

Biden’s team can’t begin accessing federal resources to aid the transition until Murphy makes an official “ascertainment” of his victory, a relatively routine step based on the unofficial but clear results of a presidential election. As Trump has contested the election results, Murphy has withheld a decision despite enormous pressure from Democrats to begin the process. Trump recently praised her on Twitter, saying she’s doing a “great job. Continue reading.

Biden maintains lead in Georgia after completion of hand recount

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President-elect Joe Biden held onto his lead over President Trump in Georgia on Thursday after the state completed a days-long hand recount of nearly 5 million votes.

With all of the state’s 59 counties reporting their results, Biden holds a 12,284-vote edge over Trump, only slightly narrower than the roughly 14,000-vote lead the president-elect held in the initial vote tally.

“Georgia’s historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state’s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a statement Thursday. “This is a credit to the hard work of our county and local elections officials who moved quickly to undertake and complete such a momentous task in a short period of time.” Continue reading.

Rubio Threatens Senate Blockade Of Biden Cabinet Picks

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said on Wednesday that the Senate should stop the tradition of granting deference to Cabinet nominees offered by President-elect Joe Biden. Rubio justified his position by claiming that Democrats “have been just so unfair” to Donald Trump.

“There’ll be a lot less deference given to presidential appointments because there was zero deference given to President Trump’s appointments,” Rubio told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Rubio added, “There’s just no way that Biden’s nominations are going to be treated like they traditionally have been treated under previous presidents, simply because the atmosphere in the Senate has changed.” Continue reading.

The Trump campaign was not denied access to Philadelphia’s ballot count

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“They didn’t even allow Republican Observers into the building to watch. A terrible insult to our Constitution!”

— President Trump, in a tweet, Nov. 18, 2020

Trump is in overdrive, tweeting one absurd falsehood after another to delegitimize the election he lost.

One repeated theme is that Republican observers were not allowed inside the room as election workers counted mail ballots in Philadelphia. Fraud thrives under cover of darkness, Trump warns.

But, in fact, Trump’s own lawyers have attested in court that his campaign was granted access and observed the process, both in Philadelphia and in other cities, and has found no evidence of fraud. Continue reading.

Farm support holds for Trump, but Biden may find inroads

End to aid payments in 2021 could cut deeply into incomes

President Donald Trump tenaciously courted farmers and ranchers with an anti-regulatory agenda and a confrontational trade approach that opened some markets.

But he also relied on billions in federal aid to compensate them for retaliatory tariffs and a pandemic that took a deep gouge out of the economy.

Despite the mixed performance, Trump’s policies on trade, regulation and other areas maintained his popularity in rural and farm communities, winning their support in the Nov. 3 election. Continue reading.

Republicans seek to stymie Biden with final Trump nominees

The Senate GOP is working to stock the government with conservative appointments in the lame duck.

Two months before Joe Biden assumes the presidency, Senate Republicans are racing to install a series of conservative nominees that will outlast Donald Trump.

While Trump still refuses to concede the election, the Senate GOP is moving quickly to ensure that the president’s stamp sticks to the Federal Elections Commission, Federal Reserve Board, the federal judiciary and beyond.

The effort played out in dramatic fashion this week, as Senate Republicans tried to muscle Judy Shelton onto the Fed by the narrowest of margins but fell short amid senators’ absences from the coronavirus. They’re also plotting a confirmation vote for Christopher Waller, Trump’s less controversial Fed pick. Continue reading.

The first big test of Trump’s attempt to steal the electoral college was a failure

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Local Republicans dipped their toe into it and, amid widespread backlash, pulled back

His legal challenges to overturn election results have gone nowhere, so President Trump has floated another way to get around his loss: persuade Republican legislatures in swing states to change state law on how to appoint electors and give them to him rather than President-elect Joe Biden.

It’s a legally dubious long shot. Pulling it off would depend on a chain reaction of events that start with local election officials all raising the specter of election chaos, which is exactly what happened in Detroit on Tuesday night before it fizzled

Two Republican election officials in Detroit initially refused to certify the largely Black county’s election results. After blowback, they reversed themselves. Continue reading.

Democratic anger rises over Trump obstacles to Biden transition

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Democrats and public health officials are furious at President Trump for obstructing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition to the White House, warning that the Trump administration is endangering lives and threatening national security by refusing to cooperate with the incoming administration. 

The president-elect has warned that “more people may die” because he’s been blocked from coordinating the coronavirus vaccine rollout and other public health measures with Trump’s team, which is moving ahead on its own.

Biden aides routinely point to the 9/11 Commission report to warn that national security is at risk as the president-elect continues to be shut out of government intelligence briefings. The 9/11 report determined that the drawn out legal battle between former President George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election left a temporary power vacuum that al Qaeda was able to exploit in planning its terror attack against the U.S. Continue reading.

Biden says it’s a good thing his ‘colleague’ Kamala Harris is still on the Senate Intelligence Committee

But warns ‘more people may die’ if Trump administration doesn’t coordinate on vaccine

President-elect Joe Biden said Monday that perhaps it was less of a concern that he was not getting top secret intelligence as part of the stalled presidential transition because his vice president-elect is still on the Intelligence Committee.

“The good news here is my colleague is still on the Intelligence Committee, so she gets the intelligence briefings I don’t any more,” Biden said in Wilmington, Del., after a meeting with business executives and labor leaders focused on the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic response. “I am hopeful that the president will be mildly more enlightened before we get to January 20.”

Biden’s penchant for Senate-speak aside, his remarks point to the curious reality of the moment: Vice president-elect Kamala Harris may know more about emerging threats to America than the next commander-in-chief. Continue reading.