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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden is due to hold his first in-person meeting since winning the election with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday.
The new Democratic president will welcome the top Democrats in the House and Senate to his makeshift transitional headquarters in a theater in downtown Wilmington, Delaware. Their discussion should be private, although the immediate challenges they face are no secret.
The new leadership team is already facing intense pressure to approve another COVID-19 relief bill, come up with a clear plan to distribute millions of doses of a potential vaccine, and Biden is within days of unveiling the first of his Cabinet choices, which are subject to Senate confirmation.
The president-elect has also vowed to work closely with Republicans in Congress to carry out his government agenda, but so far he has focused his outreach in Congress on his key Democratic allies.
The meeting comes two days after House Democrats named Pelosi as the speaker who will guide them again next year as Biden becomes president, although she appeared to suggest it would be his last two years as president. direction. The California Democrat, the first woman to speak, has already served six years in the post, but the next two appear to be the most difficult.
President Donald Trump continues to block a smooth transition of power to the next president, refusing to allow his administration to cooperate with Biden’s transition team. Specifically, the Trump administration is denying Biden access to detailed briefings on national security and pandemic planning that leaders on both sides see as important in preparing Biden for government immediately following his inauguration on January 20.
Trying to bypass the Trump administration entirely, Biden met virtually on Thursday with a collection of leading Republican and Democratic governors.
“Unfortunately my administration has not been able to get everything we need,” Biden told the National Governors Association leadership team, vowing to rise above the policy in a unified front against the virus. “There is a real desire for real partnership between the states and the federal government.”
The Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told CBS “This Morning” on Friday that Biden’s accusation that the transition delays cost Americans their lives is “absolutely incorrect.”
“Every aspect of what we do is completely transparent – no data or secret knowledge,” Azar said.
Trump, meanwhile, steps up brazen attempts to cast doubt on election results. The incumbent president’s unprecedented campaign to spread disinformation now includes pressure on Michigan officials to block certification of their state’s election results.
Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, a margin 15 times that of Trump when he won the state four years ago.
Election law experts view Trump’s push as the last dying gasp of his campaign and say Biden is certain to enter the Oval Office in January. But it is of great concern that Trump’s efforts are actually damaging public confidence in the integrity of the U.S. election.
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