White House advisers have warned President Trump of his narrow chances in any legal fight. The Biden team turned its focus to the transition. And world leaders offered their congratulations to the president-elect.
Biden’s Plans for Day 1 in the White House
As the Trump campaign continued to pursue long-shot legal challenges and top Republicans remained split on whether to congratulate President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on his projected victory, Democrats took steps on Sunday toward planning for a Biden administration.
Mr. Biden unveiled his official transition website as he prepared to unleash a series of executive actions on his first day in the Oval Office aimed at unwinding Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda and signaling a wholesale shift in the United States’ place in the world.
On the website, buildbackbetter.com, Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris pledged to be ready on Day 1 to tackle four main priorities for the new, Democratic administration after four years under Mr. Trump: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.
“A Biden-Harris administration, propelled by the foundation laid by the transition, will lead a just and equitable recovery that rebuilds a strong, inclusive middle class and builds an economy for the future,” they said on the website.
In the first hours after he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, Mr. Biden has said, he will send a letter to the United Nations indicating that the country will rejoin the global effort to combat climate change, reversing Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord with more than 174 countries.
He has also vowed that on Day 1 he will move rapidly to confront the coronavirus pandemic by appointing a “national supply chain commander” and establishing a “pandemic testing board,” similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime production panel.
He has said he will restore the rights of government workers to unionize. He has promised to order a new fight against homelessness and resettle more refugees who are fleeing war. He has pledged to abandon Mr. Trump’s travel ban on mostly Muslim countries and to begin calling foreign leaders in an attempt to restore trust among the United States’ closest allies.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Biden repeatedly said that he was campaigning as a Democrat but would govern “as an American.” But he and members of his party are eager to systematically erase what they view as destructive policies that the president pursued on the environment, immigration, health care, gay rights, trade, tax cuts, civil rights, abortion, race relations, military spending and more.
Some of that will require cooperation with Congress, which may remain divided next year. But Mr. Biden may be able to achieve some of his goals with nothing more than the stroke of a pen.
He has signaled that his top priority will be demonstrating a much more muscular federal approach to the pandemic than Mr. Trump’s leave-it-to-the-states strategy.
Aides said he would use the power of his office to invoke the Defense Production Act — the Korean War-era law that allows the president to order businesses to manufacture products necessary for national defense — to build up supplies more aggressively than Mr. Trump had. He has also said that he will require masks on all federal property and on “all interstate transportation.”
The president-elect has also repeatedly derided Mr. Trump’s lack of ethical standards, accusing him of waging an extensive assault on Washington’s norms and traditions. Mr. Biden’s response to that will probably take the form of an ethics pledge to impose tough new requirements on the people who serve in his government.
Mr. Biden has also made it clear that he will immediately begin using the levers of executive authority to re-establish former President Barack Obama’s agenda of environmental regulations that Mr. Trump systematically shredded during his tenure.
Former President Bush Congratulates Biden
As top Republicans remained divided Sunday over congratulating President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and declaring the election over, President Trump’s closest advisers continue to brief him on possible “legal remedies,” according to a White House official.
That path has been encouraged most strongly by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, while most other Trump advisers have said privately that the chances of changing the results of the election through various court challenges are exceedingly slim.
Mr. Trump’s campaign announced on Sunday that Representative Doug Collins of Georgia will lead its recount team in the state, where the effort will begin as soon as the canvassing of ballots has concluded.
Some within the Republican Party have made it clear that it was time for the president to concede. On Sunday, former President George W. Bush became the highest-profile Republican to publicly declare the election over in defiance of Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the results.
“I extended my warm congratulations” to Mr. Biden “and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night,” Mr. Bush said in a statement released after he spoke with Mr. Biden by telephone. “I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency. Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country.”
Although Mr. Bush said Mr. Trump had “the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges,” his statement made clear that he did not think those efforts would succeed. Mr. Bush’s position could encourage other Republicans to speak out and increase pressure on Mr. Trump to stop fighting the results with unsubstantiated claims.
“The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair,” Mr. Bush said. “Its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”
Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that the election was stolen without any evidence, leaving his party in the awkward position of following a president refusing to accept the reality that other Republicans have, even if they do not say so out loud.
Republican leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky have refused to publicly acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory without necessarily embracing Mr. Trump’s wild claims. Many of them have either remained silent or have straddled the line with statements calling for all legal votes to be counted, suggesting that the president should be permitted to file any lawsuits or call for any recounts allowed under the law.
Only a few well-known Republicans, like Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have congratulated Mr. Biden.
Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota lashed out at Democrats and the news media on the ABC program “This Week,” insisting that “computer glitches” and reports of “dead people voting in Pennsylvania” were examples of widespread fraud.
“When you break the process on which we elect our leaders, you will break America forever,” Ms. Noem said, even though voting went smoothly and it is Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede that flouts the normal process.
Senator Roy Blunt, the Republican from Missouri who will oversee planning for the inauguration at the Capitol on Jan. 20, referred to Mr. Biden as the former vice president, not the president-elect, and insisted that preparations are underway to make sure “that the person who is sworn in on inaugural day sees it as a great day.”
Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican and a friend of Mr. Trump’s, said on ABC that his party’s reluctance to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory was a result of the president’s behavior.
Mr. Christie urged Republicans to embrace the message he had delivered to Mr. Trump: “If your basis for not conceding is that there was voter fraud, then show us. Show us. Because if you can’t show us, we can’t do this. We can’t back you blindly without evidence.”
Trump, Allies Continue to Raise Baseless Claims
President Trump and his allies continued to raise baseless claims of fraud and irregularities in the election as they pushed ahead on Sunday with an aggressive fund-raising, media and legal campaign, which proceeded with no apparent recognition of his successor’s efforts to start planning a smooth transition.
From midnight until noon on Sunday — after President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s victory speech on Saturday night — the Trump campaign sent out a flurry of solicitations to supporters asking for money to fund its legal battles. The emails went out at the rate of almost one every hour, reflecting the growing desperation among the president and his close aides and associates as they refuse to concede defeat.
The emails contained the same bellicose language and unsubstantiated charges that the president has used, and called on Trump supporters to come to his defense. “We need YOU to step up,” one email demanded.
The occasional digital message remained the only way the president has communication with the public since news organizations called the race for Mr. Biden on Saturday morning.
Mr. Trump continued to get pushback Sunday on his preferred medium, Twitter, which flagged several of his messages as factually disputed. One of Mr. Trump’s tweets cited Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who was the former Republican speaker of the House, as saying of Democrats, “These people are thieves.”
Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory was especially sweet for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who served as a national co-chair of his campaign and was on Mr. Biden’s short list for vice president. Four years after voting for Donald Trump, her state gave Mr. Biden a win. With most of the votes counted on Sunday, the president-elect had a lead of more than 145,000.
Ms. Whitmer talked with The New York Times about the path to the presidency and her hopes for the new administration.
What are your thoughts on Mr. Biden’s win?
I have two daughters and the fact that for eight years of their life, we had Barack Obama as our president and now watching Kamala Harris, on the national stage, these are things that I never saw as a young woman and the incredible change and optimism really gets you in the gut.
What was the difference in Michigan?
I always said the road to the White House runs through the state of Michigan. And you can’t get on this road without going through the city of Detroit. And I loved how Joe Biden last night acknowledged how important African-American voters were in this election. And how Kamala Harris recognized how important female voters were in this election. This was a coalition that I think came together because of the personal stake every one of us has come to appreciate we have in this moment.
How do you keep Michigan blue?
Joe Biden is a very experienced leader. He has worked with people on both sides of the aisle. He understands the challenge ahead of us in terms of Covid-19 and our economy, the climate crisis, the health care crisis, so he is the perfect person at this moment in American history. I believe that they will be able to get some very important things done because of the experience he brings to the table.
How do you avoid overreaching with a progressive agenda?
The most important thing our leaders can do is to have an agenda that really addresses the dinner table issues for the people they serve. Whether it is infrastructure, which Joe Biden cares a great deal about, which is wonderful news for us, or it’s health care, or it’s the pandemic that is threatening our lives and our livelihood, these are the dinner table issues of 2020. And I do believe by staying focused there, you meet the needs of the majority of people on both sides of the aisle.
Views from Abroad: Europe Welcomes a Biden Presidency
In the “America First” landscape that President Trump created, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was an outdated romantic trans-Atlanticist. So there is relief in Europe about having a well-disposed friend in the White House who is more likely to support than to berate, harangue and insult.
A former French ambassador to Washington, Gérard Araud, said that “every single European leader has had an appalling conversation with Trump.” Referring to the German chancellor and the former British prime minister, Mr. Araud said: “He insulted Angela Merkel, he insulted Theresa May. He attacked them. It was surreal. And it’s over.”
Civility will be restored, with Biden planning to rejoin the Paris climate accord and to remain in the World Health Organization. He will offer warm words about NATO and US. allies, and probably embark on early visits to Germany and possibly to Brussels, analysts close to the Biden campaign suggested. There will be less confrontation on trade, fewer punitive tariffs and an early effort, Mr. Biden himself has said, to create a kind of “global summit for democracy” — especially in the face of a rising China that is promoting its authoritarian capitalism — as well as a more unified stance against Russia.
David O’Sullivan, former European Union ambassador to the United States, said he looked forward to a renewal of American leadership — if not the hegemony of the past, then at least “America’s role as the convening nation” for multilateral initiatives and institutions.
But there will still be wariness among European leaders — about what Mr. Biden may ask of them, especially with the knowledge that he may be a one-term president and that the populist impulse that animated Trumpism has hardly gone away.
“What is difficult to repair is the fear that this could happen again,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian ambassador to NATO. “If you worry about a one-term presidency, you hold back a lot, which is why Congress will matter. If a Republican Senate tries, as under Obama, to block everything Biden does, Europeans will say, ‘OK, Biden’s fine, but let’s be careful.”
SOURCE: The New York Times