New tensions emerge between Biden’s transition team and Trump administration over Pentagon access

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team has new issues with the Trump administration, latest in a series of clashes between them. There is disagreement over access to the Pentagon, according to CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe.

Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller said his team and the president-elect’s office had mutually agreed to postpone some meetings scheduled for Friday after the recess. However, Yohannes Abraham, executive director of the Biden-Harris transition, told reporters on Friday that the deal had not been reached.

He said Mr Biden’s team continued to face “isolated resistance” from people appointed by Department of Defense policies and similar problems at a few other agencies he refused to address. appoint.

Miller said the Pentagon responded to hundreds of staff interview requests and handed over thousands of pages of documents. The Pentagon has also announced that it will suspend daily security briefings for the rest of the year, for what it calls a “vacation.”

The rift comes as the president-elect is set to announce more historic Cabinet appointments.

He should appoint a congresswoman from New Mexico Deb Haaland to serve as head of the interior department, the first Native American woman in the role. The Home Office oversees about a fifth of the country’s land, including federally controlled tribal areas.

Mr Biden also plans to appoint Michael Regan, North Carolina’s top environmental official, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Regan would be the first black man to lead the EPA.

Meanwhile, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is traveling to Georgia on Monday to campaign for Democratic Senate second-round candidates Jon Ossoff and Reverend Rafael Warnock. First daughter Ivanka Trump will be there the same day to campaign with Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

The president-elect’s aides have yet to say whether he could return to Georgia before the January 5 run-off.

Mr Biden and Dr Jill Biden are ready to keep their promise to publicly take the Covid-19 vaccine On Monday. Harris and her husband will take the vaccine the following week.