Tag: Biden transition

‘A real mess’: Trump is leaving behind crises and undermining Biden before he takes office

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When President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office on Jan. 20, the list of crises he will face includes a massive cyber intrusion, a still-raging global pandemic, a slowing economic recovery and a lingering reckoning over the nation’s racial tensions.

President Trump is not making his job any easier and, in several ways, appears to be actively making it harder — going to extraordinary lengths to disrupt and undermine the traditional transition from one administration to another despite the nation’s many crises.

Trump has sought to play down or even deny the still-expanding cybersecurity breach that many experts blame on Russia, even as its impact has spread to a growing number of federal agencies. The delayed and turbulent transition process could complicate the Biden administration’s ability to address the challenge and shore up the nation’s cyber defenses. Continue reading.

Biden team expresses concern over ‘abrupt halt’ in cooperation with Pentagon

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President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team expressed concern Friday about what it described as an “abrupt halt” in cooperation with the Defense Department.

The Pentagon had said it was rescheduling meetings with the transition team originally planned for Friday until after the new year, but insisted the change was part of a “mutually agreed” pause for the holiday season.

“Our agency review teams continue making progress on a shortened timeline, and we’ve benefited from constructive cooperation within many departments and agencies, but we have met isolated resistance in some corners, including from political appointees within the Department of Defense,” Biden transition executive director Yohannes Abraham said in a briefing Friday. Continue reading.

Scoop: Pentagon halts Biden transition briefings

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Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered a Pentagon-wide halt to cooperation with the transition of President-elect Biden, shocking officials across the Defense Department, senior administration officials tell Axios.

The latest: Biden transition director Yohannes Abraham contradicted the Pentagon’s official response to this story on Friday afternoon, telling reporters, “Let me be clear: there was no mutually agreed upon holiday break.”

  • “In fact, we think it’s important that briefings and other engagements continue during this period as there’s no time to spare, and that’s particularly true in the aftermath of ascertainment delay,” Abraham continued, referring to the Trump administration’s delay in recognizing Biden as president-elect. Continue reading.

How Biden’s Team Is Building Back Government, Better

With the Biden-Harris transition in full gear, I can’t help but be reminded of my time working on the Obama-Biden transition in late 2008 and early 2009. A quote from the mega-hit musical “Hamilton” keeps popping into my head. There’s a scene in which Alexander Hamilton and George Washington are going back and forth during a Cabinet meeting, and Washington says to Hamilton, “Ah, winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder.”

President Barack Obama had just won a decisive electoral victory, but we were now faced with governing a country that was experiencing the greatest recession in 100 years, two wars abroad, a broken health care system, and a Republican Party whose No. 1 priority was making sure we failed.

As head of personnel for the transition, it was my job to make sure we had qualified people ready to go on Day 1. It was no easy task then, and now, with a pandemic raging, it’s an even harder job. Continue reading.