WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the state of Georgia, while Trump won North Carolina, Edison Research projected on Friday as it called the final two states in the U.S. presidential race.
Edison Research said Biden had won 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232. Biden had surpassed the 270 Electoral College votes needed to capture the presidency on Saturday.
(Writing by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
By Tom Hals and Makini Brice
(Reuters) – A Michigan state court rejected on Friday a request by supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump to block the certification of votes and appoint an independent auditor in Detroit, which voted heavily in favor of Democratic President-elect Joe Biden.
The ruling is a setback for Trump and Republicans who have been trying to overturn Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election by preventing officials from certifying election results.
“It would be an unprecedented exercise of judicial activism for this Court to stop the certification process of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers,” wrote Timothy Kenny, chief judge of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan, referring to the county that includes Detroit.
The lawsuit alleged fraud and voting irregularities, which Wayne County has denied.
The judge rejected those allegations, writing: “Plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”
He noted that allegations, such as city workers encouraging voters to cast their ballot for Democrats, were not backed up by details, such as locations or times when such events allegedly took place.
The judge also said that one witness who had filed an affidavit had posted on Facebook before the election that he speculated that Democrats were using the pandemic as cover for election fraud, undermining his testimony and credibility.
On Wednesday, the Trump campaign filed a similar lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Michigan, alleging harassment of Republican poll challengers and a requirement they adhere to six-foot distancing rules that was not equally enforced against Democratic poll challengers.
Michigan is due to certify its election results on Nov. 23.
The campaign and Republicans have also sued in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin seeking to block the certification of election results.
Also on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision before the election that a former Pennsylvania congressional candidate and four individual voters lacked standing to sue over the state’s decision to allow “no excuses” absentee ballots and to extend mail-ballot deadlines due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Makini Brice in Washington; Editing by Louise Heavens and Alistair Bell)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Election security officials have no evidence that ballots were deleted or lost by voting systems in this month’s U.S. election, two security groups said in a statement released on Thursday by the lead U.S. cybersecurity agency.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” the groups said about the Nov. 3 election won by Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Republican President Donald Trump has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud and has yet to concede.
The groups, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee (GCC) and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC), said the election was the most secure in U.S. history.
“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections and you should too,” the groups said in the statement released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CISA has drawn the ire of the Trump White House over a website it runs dubbed “Rumor Control” which debunks misinformation about the election, according to the three people familiar with the matter.
Top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, who worked on protecting the election from hackers, has told associates he expects to be fired, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
White House officials have asked for content to be edited or removed that pushed back against numerous false claims about the election, including that Democrats are behind a mass election fraud scheme. CISA officials have chosen not to delete accurate information.
The security groups said all the states with close results in the race have paper records of each vote, which can be counted if necessary.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
By Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of Democratic U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s coronavirus advisory board said on Friday there was no plan to shut the country down and that the new administration’s approach will be targeted at specific areas.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, a former U.S. surgeon general tapped to lead the board, said doctors have learned a lot about how the virus spreads and what steps to reduce risk are effective.
“We’re not in a place where we’re saying shut the whole country down. We got to be more targeted,” Murthy said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Another member of Biden’s COVID team, Dr. Michael Osterholm, suggested in a Yahoo Finance interview on Wednesday that the country could cover individual companies’ and local governments’ losses for a four- to six-week lockdown to drive numbers down.
Osterholm clarified in an interview with ABC on Thursday that he did not discuss a lockdown with anyone on the advisory board and he did not think there was a national consensus for it. “Nobody’s going to support it,” he said.
Neither Murthy nor Dr. Celine Gounder, another Biden adviser, who appeared on CNN on Friday, embraced the idea of a national lockdown.
“Right now the way we should be thinking about this is more like a series of restrictions that we dial up or down depending on how bad spread is taking place in a specific region,” Murthy said.
Murthy cited New York City as an example where health officials are targeting COVID interventions “down to the ZIP code.”
In his failed campaign for re-election, Republican President Donald Trump warned without evidence that Biden would seek to lock down the country. The Trump administration pushed hard for the country’s economy to reopen. Coronavirus cases spiked over the summer and are increasing again now around the country.
The current rise has been accompanied by increasing hospitalizations and surges in the rate of COVID-19 tests coming back positive. The onset of winter, with people more likely to congregate indoors, will only worsen those trends, experts say.
Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, on Thursday issued a monthlong stay-at-home advisory, and Detroit’s public schools called a halt to in-person instruction as more than a dozen U.S. states reported a doubling of new COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks.
Murthy said the Biden team’s priority will be to stop the spread of the virus and focus on hard-hit populations like nursing homes and prisons. Increasing testing capacity will be key to those efforts.
“We still don’t have adequate testing so that anyone who wants a test can get one and get results quickly,” he said.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Democrats in the U.S. Congress on Thursday urged renewed negotiations over a multitrillion-dollar coronavirus aid proposal, but the top Republican immediately rejected their approach as too expensive, continuing a months-long impasse.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer ticked off a litany of grim data about the spread of the coronavirus in the United States, with eight straight days of over 100,000 new coronavirus cases being reported each day.
“It’s like the house is burning down and they just refuse to throw water on it,” Pelosi said of Republicans.
She and Schumer told a news conference that President-elect Joe Biden’s victory strengthened the Democratic position, which is to spend at least $2.2 trillion on another round of coronavirus aid, on top of the $3 trillion Congress has approved since the pandemic began. Republican President Donald Trump has not conceded to Biden.
“We’re willing to sit down and talk; they haven’t wanted to talk,” Schumer said, referring to the post-election session of Congress that lasts until the end of the year.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking to reporters in a hallway a few minutes later, said he preferred previous Republican proposals in the range of $500 billion, which he said would be aimed at the “residual problems.”
“I gather she (Pelosi) and the Democratic leader in the Senate still are looking at something dramatically larger. That’s not a place I think we’re willing to go,” McConnell said.
“But I do think there needs to another package,” the Republican said. “Hopefully we can get past the impasse.”
A senior official in Trump’s administration said it was leaving any negotiations about a coronavirus relief package to McConnell and Pelosi for the time being. But there was no sign such talks were imminent. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin negotiated unsuccessfully with Pelosi for several weeks earlier in the fall.
Pelosi and Schumer spoke with Biden on Thursday by phone and the three “discussed the urgent need for the Congress to come together in the lame duck session on a bipartisan basis” to pass more coronavirus relief, a statement from Biden’s transition team said.
The bill should include resources to fight the pandemic, relief for working families and small businesses, support for state and local governments, expanded unemployment insurance, and affordable healthcare for millions of families, the statement said.
The Democratic-majority House in May approved an additional $3.4 trillion in coronavirus aid, but it went nowhere in McConnell’s Senate, where Schumer’s Democrats blocked less expensive Republican proposals from floor action.
The longest-serving Republican in Congress, 87-year-old Representative Don Young, announced on Thursday that he had been infected with coronavirus, the latest of over 20 members of Congress to have been infected.
(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Aurora Ellis)
By Pete Schroeder, Michelle Price and Katanga Johnson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s team has tapped a mix of progressives and centrist policy experts, including former derivatives market regulator Gary Gensler, to work on a transition plan for financial industry oversight.
Here is how staffing could shake out at some of the key financial regulators, according to nearly two dozen lobbyists, officials and policy experts in Democratic circles.
CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU (CFPB)
The CFPB director is a critical role for progressives such as Senator Elizabeth Warren who believe the agency can help tackle wealth inequality and racial injustice. A June Supreme Court ruling handed Biden the power to fire Republican President Donald Trump’s CFPB director, Kathy Kraninger, and many policy experts expect him to quickly replace her after he takes office on Jan. 20.
Potential candidates for the role include Warren’s protégée, U.S. Representative Katie Porter; Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra; Bharat Ramamurti, Warren’s former aide who sits on a pandemic congressional oversight panel; and Patrice Ficklin, the CFPB’s fair lending director who has been at the agency since its inception in 2011.
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC)
Biden is also expected to quickly staff up the SEC, which under Chair Jay Clayton, a Trump appointee, has pursued many rule changes opposed by Democrats and investor advocates.
Clayton, whose role is based in Washington, has said he wants to return home to New York and is expected to resign well before his term ends in June. That would position senior Democratic SEC Commissioner Allison Lee as acting chair until a new chair is sworn in.
Progressives are keen on former Democratic SEC Commissioner Kara Stein for chair, although Rob Jackson, also a former Democratic commissioner who currently teaches at New York University School of Law, is preferred by moderates. Gensler is also a contender, the sources said.
BANKING REGULATORS
There will be a handful of banking regulator roles to fill, with the first likely to be comptroller of the currency. That is because current Comptroller Brian Brooks is serving in an acting capacity, allowing Biden to replace him quickly. Amy Friend, formerly senior deputy comptroller and chief counsel at the agency under Obama, is seen as a leading candidate.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chair Jelena McWilliams cannot be removed by Biden and has said she wants to serve out her term, which ends in 2023. But Biden can still tilt the agency’s five-seat board, which passes rules via majority vote, by quickly appointing the heads of the CFPB and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency who always hold seats on the FDIC board too. Obama-era holdover and former FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg already has a seat.
If McWilliams resigns, Michael Barr, professor at the University of Michigan Law School and former Obama administration Treasury official is seen as a contender for that or another banking slot, as is Graham Steele, a director at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and former Federal Reserve staffer. Barr is advising the transition team.
COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION (CFTC)
Current Republican CFTC Chair Heath Tarbert is expected to resign from the chairman’s role, putting senior Democratic Commissioner Rostin Behnam in line for acting chair. But the sources said Dan Berkovitz, the other Democratic CFTC commissioner and formerly general counsel to Gensler when he led the agency, is the front-runner for the permanent chairman’s role.
FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY (FHFA)
The FHFA is led by libertarian Mark Calabria who has said he is committed to overhauling the country’s housing finance market before his term ends in 2024. He is unlikely to resign, the sources said, and cannot currently be fired. That could change, however, pending a Supreme Court challenge to the agency’s structure, which could find the director can be removed.
If so, Biden, for whom affordable housing is a key policy, is likely to replace him. Potential contenders for his job include Eric Stein, who was special adviser to Democratic FHFA Director Mel Watt from 2014 to 2019, and Diane Yentel, chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Stein is also advising the transition team.
All those named above, or their representatives, declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment, other than Ficklin and Clayton. While Ficklin would not comment on whether she was in contention for a role, she said she would be honored to serve. A spokeswoman for Clayton said there are a number of items on his agenda “that he intends to move forward in the upcoming months.”
(Reporting by Michelle Price, Pete Schroeder and Katanga Johnson; Editing by Peter Cooney and Alistair Bell)
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday named longtime adviser Ron Klain as his White House chief of staff, his first major appointment, as he builds his administration regardless of whether President Donald Trump accepts the election results.
Klain, 59, served as Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president under President Barack Obama and had been widely expected to be named to the post.
He also has experience battling a public health crisis, as he worked as Obama’s “Ebola Czar” in 2014 during an outbreak of that virus in Africa. A fierce critic of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Klain is expected to be a key figure in Biden’s response to the health crisis.
As Biden moved toward assuming office, Trump’s campaign filed a federal lawsuit in Michigan as it continued its long-shot legal strategy of trying to overturn the election results in key states.
All week, Biden has paid little public attention to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, instead focusing on transition issues as he prepares to be sworn in on Jan. 20.
Biden clinched victory last Saturday as he won a series of battleground states to exceed the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines who wins the presidency. Biden also was winning the national popular vote by more than 5 million ballots with a few states still counting votes.
Trump has refused to concede, and his administration has resisted cooperating with transition efforts.
Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of aiming to undermine public trust in the U.S. electoral system and delegitimize Biden’s victory through unproven and anecdotal claims of voter fraud as Trump, the first U.S. president to lose a re-election bid since 1992, desperately tries to cling to power.
In Klain, Biden brings in a trusted and experienced operative who also served as Vice President Al Gore’s top aide during Bill Clinton’s administration. He served as an outside adviser to Biden during the campaign and the two have a relationship dating back to Biden’s years as a U.S. senator from Delaware.
As Biden’s chief of staff during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Klain helped oversee the implementation of the $787 billion Recovery Act that boosted the cratering economy.
In 2014, he earned plaudits from public health experts as the government’s Ebola response coordinator.
“Ron has been invaluable to me over the many years that we have worked together, including as we rescued the American economy from one of the worst downturns in our history in 2009 and later overcame a daunting public health emergency in 2014,” Biden said in a statement.
“His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff.”
NO SURRENDER
Trump’s new lawsuit in Michigan appeared unlikely to alter the outcome in a state he won in 2016 but was losing by roughly 148,000 votes, or 2.6 percentage points, in unofficial Michigan vote totals, according to Edison Research.
The lawsuit made allegations of voting misconduct, with the focus on the Democratic stronghold of Wayne County, which includes Detroit. Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, said the Trump campaign was promoting false claims to erode public confidence in the election.
“It does not change the truth: Michigan’s elections were conducted fairly, securely, transparently, and the results are an accurate reflection of the will of the people,” Rollow said in a statement.
Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a hand recount of all ballots cast in the state’s 159 counties. He said it was expected to begin this week and would be finished in time to certify the results by a Nov. 20 deadline.
Biden became the election winner even without Georgia factored in. He held a lead of just over 14,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage point, in Georgia, a Southern state that Democrats have not carried in a presidential election since 1992.
Judges have tossed out several Trump lawsuits, and legal experts say the litigation has scant chance of changing the outcome.
The lawsuits are part of a broader effort to find evidence to back up Trump’s fraud allegations and forge a case that could end up at the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority including three justices appointed by him.
One Republican strategist with ties to the White House said the legal maneuvers and push for recounts were aimed at coming up with support for Trump’s claims.
The strategist, like many others close to the effort, acknowledged the Trump campaign faced an uphill struggle.
“They’re looking at throwing up a hundred Hail Marys,” he said, using a football term referring to a desperation pass at the end of a game.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel, Andy Sullivan, Tim Reid, Noeleen Walder, Jarrett Renshaw, Steve Holland, Susan Heavey, Julia Harte, Jan Wolfe, Jason Lange and Tim Ahmann; Writing by Daniel Trotta, Paul Simao and James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone, Will Dunham and Peter Cooney)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday Republicans have no legal case in challenging the results of the U.S. presidential election that was called for Democrat Joe Biden over the weekend.
“So many Republicans today seem to be backing the president on his lawsuit,” Schumer told reporters. “This is not one state where there’s a 597 vote difference. These are many states where there are tens of thousands of votes (difference), and the Republicans have no legal case. They are politically distraught. But that’s not going to create any, any success for them in the courts.”
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Franklin Paul)
By Matt Spetalnick and Pete Schroeder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration told Congress on Tuesday it had approved the U.S. sale of more than $23 billion in advanced weapons systems, including F-35 fighter jets and armed drones, to the United Arab Emirates, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
The formal notification followed a U.S.-brokered agreement in September in which the UAE agreed to normalize relations with Israel, becoming the first of three Arab states to make such a move in recent months.
“This is in recognition of our deepening relationship and the UAE’s need for advanced defense capabilities to deter and defend itself against heightened threats from Iran,” Pompeo said in a statement.
The $23.37 billion package includes up to 50 F-35 Lighting II aircraft, up to 18 MQ-9B Unmanned Aerial Systems and a package of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, the State Department said.
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations and House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committees – whose members have criticized UAE’s role in civilian deaths in Yemen’s civil war – review major weapons sales before the State Department sends its formal notification to the legislative branch.
Any deal the United States makes to sell weapons in the Middle East must satisfy decades of agreement with Israel that it must not impair Israel’s “qualitative military edge” over its neighbors.
The announcement came just days after Democratic challenger Joe Biden won enough states needed to take the presidency from Trump, a Republican who made pro-Israel policies part of his re-election campaign.
Israel initially balked at the prospective sale of F-35 warplanes, valued at $10.4 billion, but dropped its opposition after what it described as U.S. guarantees that Israel’s regional military superiority would be preserved.
The UAE, one of Washington’s closest Middle East allies, has long wanted the stealthy jets and was promised a chance to buy them in a side deal when it agreed to normalize relations with Israel, part of a strategic regional realignment against Iran.
In the past, the F-35 has been denied to Arab states while Israel has about 24 of the jets. Israel is currently slated to purchase 50 of the fighters.
“The proposed sale will make the UAE even more capable and interoperable with U.S. partners in a manner fully consistent with America’s longstanding commitment to ensuring Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge,” Pompeo said.
The $2.97 billon sale of armed drones would mark the first such export since the Trump administration reinterpreted a Cold War-era arms agreement between 34 nations to allow U.S. defense contractors to sell more drones to allies.
(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Pete Schroeder; additional reporting by Mike Stone; Editing by David Gregorio and Paul Simao)
By Simon Lewis and Tim Reid
WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is considering legal action over a federal agency’s delay in recognizing the Democrat’s victory over President Donald Trump in last week’s election, a Biden official said on Monday.
The General Services Administration (GSA) normally recognizes a presidential candidate when it becomes clear who has won an election so that a transition of power can begin.
That has not yet happened despite U.S. television and news networks declaring Biden the winner on Saturday after he secured enough electoral votes to secure the presidency.
The law does not clearly spell out when the GSA must act, but Biden transition officials say their victory is clear and a delay is not justified, even as Trump refuses to concede defeat.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that there was widespread voting fraud and has filed a raft of lawsuits to challenge the results.
Election officials across the country say there has been no evidence of significant fraud, and legal experts say Trump’s efforts are unlikely to succeed.
GSA Administrator Emily Murphy, appointed by Trump in 2017, has not yet determined that “a winner is clear,” a spokeswoman said. A source close to Murphy said she was a thorough professional who would take her time making a careful decision.
A Biden transition official told reporters on a call that it was time for the GSA’s administration to grant what is known as an ascertainment recognizing the president-elect, and said the transition team would consider legal action if it was not granted.
“Legal action is certainly a possibility, but there are other options as well that we’re considering,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declining to outline other options.
The delay is costing the Biden team access to millions of dollars in federal funding and the ability to meet with officials at intelligence agencies and other departments
The transition team needs to be recognized to access funds for salaries, consultants and travel, as well as access to classified information, the official said.
In addition, the team has no access to the State Department, which usually facilitates calls between foreign leaders and the president-elect, the official said.
A senior administration official said the agency did not approve the start of a formal transition process in 2000 for five weeks while Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore battled over an election that came down to just hundreds of votes in Florida.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Tim Reid; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Kim Coghill and Peter Cooney)
