Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

Michigan state court rejects request to block Detroit election certification results

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)

Trump bans U.S. investments in companies linked to Chinese military

By Humeyra Pamuk, Alexandra Alper and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled an executive order prohibiting U.S. investments in Chinese companies that Washington says are owned or controlled by the Chinese military, ramping up pressure on Beijing after the U.S. election.

The order, which was first reported by Reuters, could impact some of China’s biggest companies, including China Telecom Corp Ltd, China Mobile Ltd and surveillance equipment maker Hikvision.

The move is designed to deter U.S. investment firms, pension funds and others from buying shares of 31 Chinese companies that were designated by the Defense Department as backed by the Chinese military earlier this year.

Starting Jan. 11, the order will prohibit purchases by U.S. investors of the securities of those companies. Transactions made to divest ownership in the companies will be permitted until Nov. 11, 2021.

“China is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses,” said the order released by the White House.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a stock exchange filing, China Telecom said it estimated the executive order might impact the price of its shares, which closed down 7.8% in Hong Kong on Friday, and American depository shares, adding that it would “closely monitor” developments.

Another telecom operator, China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd, said companies affected by the order would include its parent, China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd.

China Unicom also said in its filing, it expected an impact on its shares, which fell 6.7% on Friday, and American depository shares, adding it was “considering appropriate steps to protect its and its investors’ lawful rights”.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro estimated that at least half a trillion dollars in market capitalization was represented by the Chinese companies and their subsidiaries.

“This is a sweeping order designed to choke off American capital to China’s militarization,” he told reporters on a call.

The move is the first major policy initiative by President Donald Trump since losing the Nov. 3 election to Democratic rival Joe Biden and indicates that he is seeking to take advantage of the waning months of his administration to crack down on China, even as he has appeared laser-focused on challenging the election result.

Biden has won enough battleground states to surpass the 270 electoral votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the next president, but Republican Trump has so far refused to concede, citing unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud.

Thursday’s action is likely to further weigh on already fraught ties between the world’s top two economies, which are at loggerheads over China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its move to impose security legislation on Hong Kong.

Biden has not laid out a detailed China strategy but all the indications are that he will continue a tough approach to Beijing, with whom Trump has become increasingly confrontational in his last year in office.

WALL STREET INTERESTS

The order echoes a bill filed by Republican senator Marco Rubio last month that sought to block access to U.S. capital markets for Chinese companies that have been blacklisted by Washington, including those added to the Defense Department list.

“Today’s action by the Trump administration is a welcome start to protecting our markets and investors,” said Rubio, a top congressional China hawk. “We can never put the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and Wall Street above American workers and mom and pop investors.”

His comments were echoed by Republican Congressman Jim Banks, who described the order as “one of the wisest and most significant foreign policy decisions President Trump has made since he entered office”.

Rubio’s bill and the order are part of a growing effort by Congress and the administration to thwart Chinese companies that have the backing of U.S. investors but do not comply with U.S. rules faced by American rivals. It also shows a new willingness to antagonize Wall Street in the rivalry with Beijing.

In August, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Treasury officials urged Trump to delist Chinese companies that trade on U.S. exchanges and fail to meet its auditing requirements by January 2022.

Thursday’s move received a cool reception on Wall Street, where shares were already pulling back from recent gains. The iShares China Large-Cap ETF extended falls.

“The market is probably worried that President Trump is going to increase tensions with China and Iran in his last two months as president,” said Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer of the Independent Advisor Alliance.

Still, it was unclear how investors would react. The order bans transactions, which it defined as “purchases,” so investors would technically be able to hold onto current investments.

While the document does not spell out specific penalties for violations, it gives the Treasury Department the ability to invoke “all powers” granted by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which authorizes the use of tough sanctions.

Questions also remain about whether Biden, who is set to take office just nine days after the order goes into effect, would enforce it or simply revoke it. His campaign declined to comment.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Alexandra Alper and Idrees Ali; Additional reporting by Alden Bentley, Meg Shen and Tom Daly; Editing by Chris Sanders, Edward Tobin, Rosalba O’Brien and Barbara Lewis)

Biden moves forward, names longtime adviser chief of staff

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)

Pompeo voices confidence U.S. vote count will lead to ‘second Trump administration’

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday voiced confidence that once every “legal” vote was counted, it would lead to a “second Trump administration,” appearing to reject Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump.

He spoke as world leaders, including Washington’s close allies Britain and France, already have congratulated President-elect Biden. Trump, a Republican, has so far refused to concede and made baseless claims that fraud was marring the results.

“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference. He later sought to assure the world that America’s post-election transition would be successful.

“We’re going to count all the votes … The world should have every confidence that the transition necessary to make sure that the State Department is … successful today and successful when the president who’s in office on January 20, a minute after noon, will also be successful.”

Biden, due to take office on Jan. 20, 2021, risks a delayed transition as Trump has vowed to push ahead with longshot legal challenges to his election loss. Republican U.S. lawmakers have defended his right to do so.

Asked if Trump’s refusal to concede hampers State Department efforts to promote free and fair elections abroad, Pompeo, a close ally and appointee of Trump’s, said: “This department cares deeply to make sure that elections around the world are safe and secure and free and fair.”

The leading Republican in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has carefully backed Trump, saying that he was “100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities,” without citing any evidence.

And U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee who heads the Justice Department, on Monday told federal prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of irregularities of voting and the counting of ballots.

In his first official travel after the Nov. 3 election, Pompeo is due to travel to France, Turkey, Georgia, Israel, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia between Nov. 13-23. The leaders of some of those countries have already congratulated Biden.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk Susan Heavey and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Howard Goller)

Biden camp considers legal action over agency’s delay in recognizing transition

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)

Iran frees 157 detained during protests as more U.S. sanctions loom

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran has freed 157 people arrested during anti-government demonstrations, the country’s judiciary said on Tuesday, as the United States appeared poised to impose sanctions on Iranians involved in a violent crackdown on the protesters.

Three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday the United States was expected to launch the sanctions as early as next week, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of what may have been the bloodiest repression of protesters in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said the 157 “security detainees” were among 2,301 people freed under a pardon by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as part of events marking the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Mohammad, state media reported.

The 157 detainees had been convicted of “propaganda against the system, (illegal) assembly and collusion, and taking part in riots” after being arrested in anti-government protests in recent years, the judiciary spokesman said.

Human rights groups estimate that thousands were arrested in the 2019 protests, which broke out over gasoline price hikes and quickly turned political, with protesters demanding that top officials step down.

Meanwhile, government spokesman Ali Rabiei said Iranians would stand firm against any sanctions by U.S. President Donald Trump and expressed hope President-elect Joe Biden would change U.S. foreign policy.

“We closely follow the future U.S. administration’s activities and know that Mr. Biden has promised the American people that he will restore multilateralism and legitimacy,” state media quoted Rabiei as saying.

The sources said the new U.S. sanctions had been in the works for months and were the latest in a long series of penalties imposed on Tehran by Trump after he pulled Washington out of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Gareth Jones and Mark Heinrich)

U.S. Supreme Court justices appear unlikely to throw out Obamacare

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday signaled they are unlikely to strike down the Obamacare healthcare law in a legal challenge brought by Texas and 17 other Republican-governed states and joined by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh indicated skepticism during two hours of arguments in the case toward the stance by the Republican challengers that the entire law must fall if a single key provision, called the individual mandate, is deemed unconstitutional.

That provision originally required people to obtain insurance or pay a financial penalty. Trump signed a law in 2017 that erased the penalty, a change that Republicans then argued eliminated the constitutional justification for the provision as permissible under the power of Congress to levy taxes.

Roberts asked questions suggesting that because Congress did not repeal the entire law, formally known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), when it eliminated the penalty, all of Obamacare should not be invalidated due to this one change.

If Roberts and Kavanaugh join the court’s three liberals in the court’s eventual ruling due by the end of June, the bulk of Obamacare would survive.

“It’s hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate was struck down,” said Roberts, who authored 2012 and 2015 rulings that upheld Obamacare in previous Republican legal challenges.

The case represents the latest Republican legal attack on the 2010 law, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement. Republicans also have failed numerous times to repeal Obamacare in Congress, though Trump’s administration has taken steps to hobble the law.

The justices heard arguments by teleconference in an appeal by a coalition of 20 states including Democratic-governed California and New York and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives hoping to preserve Obamacare. The court, with three Trump appointees including Kavanaugh, has a 6-3 conservative majority.

After the arguments, President-elect Joe Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president, criticized the “right-wing ideologues” who pursued the “simply cruel and needlessly divisive” litigation.

“This argument will determine whether (the) healthcare coverage of more than 20 million Americans who acquired it under the Affordable Care Act will be ripped away in the middle of the nation’s worst pandemic in a century,” Biden told reporters in Delaware.

Citing a “moral obligation to ensure that here in America healthcare is a right for all and not a privilege for a few,” Biden promised to start building on the Affordable Care Act immediately after succeeding Trump on Jan. 20.

Obamacare expanded public healthcare programs and created marketplaces for private insurance. Without Obamacare, Biden noted, insurers could once again refuse to cover people with any pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, cancer, asthma or complications from COVID-19.

Roberts and Kavanaugh appeared to agree that the mandate to obtain insurance can be separated from the rest of the law.

“We ask ourselves whether Congress would want the rest of the law to survive if an unconstitutional provision were severed,” Roberts said.

The fact that Congress in 2017 left the rest of the law intact “seems to be compelling evidence,” Roberts added.

Kavanaugh added that “this is a fairly straightforward case for severability under our precedents, meaning that we would excise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place.”

LEGAL STANDING

The justices – conservatives and liberals alike – raised questions over whether Texas and the other challengers had the proper legal standing to bring the case, worrying about similar scenarios in which someone might be able to sue over some other government mandate when no penalty exists.

Roberts said such a stance “expands standing dramatically” by enabling people to challenge a whole host of laws without experiencing direct harm.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s most recent appointee, asked skeptical questions about legal standing. Democrats, ahead of Barrett’s Senate confirmation last month, focused their opposition to her appointment on the Obamacare case, fearing she would vote to strike down the law. Her questions did not indicate she would.

Trump’s third appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, asked probing questions on standing, though he sounded skeptical about the individual mandate’s constitutionality.

The 2012 ruling authored by Roberts defined the individual mandate’s financial penalty as a tax, thus finding the law permissible under the Constitution’s provision empowering Congress to levy taxes.

The 2017 Republican-backed change eliminating the penalty meant the individual mandate could no longer be interpreted as a tax provision and was therefore unconstitutional, the Republican challengers argued in their lawsuit filed in 2018.

Texas-based U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in 2018 ruled that Obamacare was unconstitutional as currently structured following the elimination of the penalty.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year also found the mandate unconstitutional but stopped short of striking down Obamacare. The Democratic-led states and House then appealed to the Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham

Republicans back Trump’s right to challenge Biden victory

By Steve Holland and Simon Lewis

WASHINGTON/WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will push ahead on Tuesday with longshot legal challenges to his election loss, as Republican U.S. lawmakers and state officials defended his right to do so.

Pennsylvania Republican state lawmakers called for an audit of results in the state that on Saturday enabled Democrat Joe Biden to secure the more than 270 votes in the Electoral College he needed to win the presidency.

Biden, the president-elect due to take office on Jan. 20, 2021, also leads Trump in the popular vote by more than 4.6 million votes, according to the latest count of ballots.

Trump has made baseless claims that fraud was marring the results. The count has been delayed by a surge in mail-in ballots prompted by voters’ desire to avoid infection from the coronavirus pandemic.

Judges have tossed out lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia, and experts say Trump’s legal efforts have little chance of changing the election result.

The leading Republican in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, on Monday carefully backed Trump, saying that he was “100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities,” without citing any evidence.

McConnell’s comments represent the thinking of most Senate Republicans for now, said a senior Senate Republican aide. “The position is tenable until it isn’t and might last for a week or two before it becomes untenable,” the aide said.

The dispute has slowed Biden’s preparations for governing.

A Trump appointee who heads the office charged with recognizing election results has yet to do so, preventing the Biden transition team from moving into federal government office space or accessing funds to hire staff.

The General Services Administrator Emily Murphy, appointed by Trump in 2017, has yet to determine that “a winner is clear,” a spokeswoman said. Biden’s team is considering legal action.

BARR MOVE PROMPTS RESIGNATION

U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Monday told federal prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of irregularities of voting and the counting of ballots.

He also told them that “fanciful or far-fetched claims” should not be a basis for investigation. His letter did not indicate the Justice Department had uncovered voting irregularities affecting the outcome of the election.

Richard Pilger, who for years has served as director of the Election Crimes Branch in the Justice Department, said in an internal email he was resigning from his post after he read “the new policy and its ramifications”.

The previous Justice Department policy, designed to avoid interjecting the federal government into election campaigns, had discouraged overt investigations “until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded.”

Biden’s campaign said Barr was fueling Trump’s far-fetched allegations of fraud.

“Those are the very kind of claims that the president and his lawyers are making unsuccessfully every day, as their lawsuits are laughed out of one court after another,” said Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden.

A bipartisan group of six former U.S. Justice Department officials blasted Barr’s move.

“The voters decide the winner in an election, not the President, and not the Attorney General,” wrote the group, which includes Don Ayer, a deputy attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush.

“We have seen absolutely no evidence of anything that should get in the way of certification of the results, which is something the states handle, not the federal government.”

REPUBLICANS REMAIN LOYAL

Although a few Republicans have urged Trump to concede, the president still had the support of prominent party leaders who had yet to congratulate Biden.

Trump’s campaign on Monday filed a lawsuit to block Pennsylvania officials from certifying Biden’s victory in the battleground state, where the Democrat’s lead grew to more than 45,000 votes, or nearly 0.7 percentage points, with 98% of ballots counted on Tuesday morning.

It alleged the state’s mail-in voting system violated the U.S. Constitution by creating “an illegal two-tiered voting system” where voting in person was subject to more oversight than voting by mail.

“The Trump campaign’s latest filing is another attempt to throw out legal votes,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said on Twitter.

Pennsylvania state Representative Dawn Keefer led a group of Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday in calling for a bipartisan investigation with subpoena powers to see if the “election was conducted fairly and lawfully.”

Asked about any evidence of fraud, Keefer told reporters, “We’ve just gotten a lot of allegations,” adding that “they’re too in the weeds” for her to know more without investigating.

Biden will give a speech on Tuesday defending the Affordable Care Act, the landmark healthcare law popularly known as Obamacare, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on a lawsuit backed by the Trump administration to invalidate it.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Richard Cowan, Jan Wolfe, Sarah N. Lynch and Doina Chiacu in Washington, Simon Lewis in Wilmington, Delaware; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Scott Malone, Angus MacSwan, Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller

Trump says he has fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he had “terminated” Defense Secretary Mark Esper, appearing to use his final months in office after his Nov. 3 election defeat to settle scores within his administration.

Trump, who publicly split with Esper in recent months over a range of issues, said on Twitter that Christopher Miller, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will become acting secretary of defense. The Senate would be highly unlikely to confirm any new nominee before Trump leaves office in January.

“Mark Esper has been terminated,” Trump said on Twitter. “I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately.”

The Pentagon had no immediate comment.

Esper had long been preparing for the prospect of his resignation or dismissal following the Nov. 3 election, particularly if Trump were to win a second term in office, sources said.

Trump has steadfastly refused to acknowledge his election loss.

Esper angered Trump particularly by opposing Trump’s threat to use active duty troops to suppress street protests over racial injustice in the United States during the summer.

Esper also disagreed with Trump’s dismissive attitude toward the NATO alliance, sources said.

(Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Cynthia Osterman)

Biden convenes U.S. pandemic task force, implores Americans to wear masks

By Simon Lewis

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Joe Biden implored Americans on Monday to wear protective masks to combat the coronavirus pandemic, appealing to their patriotism, as he convened a task force to devise a blueprint for tackling the public health crisis.

“We could save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democratic or Republican lives. American lives,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. “I implore you. Wear a mask. Do it for yourself. Do it for your neighbor. A mask is not a political statement.”

The pandemic has killed more than 237,000 Americans and thrown millions out of work. Biden spoke two days after clinching election victory over Donald Trump, though the Republican president has not acknowledged defeat and is pursuing legal challenges to the results while making unfounded claims of fraud.

Biden, set to take office on Jan. 20, conferred by video with his 13-member task force, headed by former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler and Yale University healthcare equity expert Marcella Nunez-Smith.

The president-elect labeled as “great news” Pfizer Inc’s announcement on Monday that its experimental COVID-19 vaccine was more than 90% effective. But Biden said it would be “many more months before there is widespread vaccination” in the United States and underscored the importance of wearing protective masks and social distancing.

The United States has been registering record high infection numbers in recent days. Mask wearing has become a political issue in the United States, with Trump mocking Biden for wearing a mask during the campaign and many conservatives contending masks infringe upon their individual freedom.

“The goal is to get back to normal as fast as possible,” Biden said. “And masks are critical in doing that. It won’t be forever. But that’s how we’ll get our nation back up to speed economically, so we can go back to celebrating birthdays and holidays together, so we can attend sporting events together, so that we can get back to the lives and connections we shared before the pandemic.”

Biden during the campaign accused Trump of panicking and surrendering to the pandemic. Trump promoted unproven medicines, assailed public health experts, failed to signal empathy or compassion as the death toll mounted and disregarded advice on mask wearing and social distancing, ending up hospitalized in October receiving treatments for COVID-19.

Housing Secretary Ben Carson on Monday became the latest close Trump associate to test positive for the virus, his chief of staff said, just days after White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also tested positive.

Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE are the first drugmakers to release successful data from a large-scale clinical trial of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Biden said his team will focus on making rapid COVID-19 testing widely available and building a corps of contact-tracers to track and curb the pathogen’s spread and prioritize vulnerable populations. Biden said his administration would work to get an approved vaccine “distributed as quickly as possible to as many Americans as possible, free of charge.”

The task force will liaise with local and state officials to consider how to safely reopen schools and businesses and tackle racial disparities.

The Biden panel includes Rick Bright, a whistleblower who says he was removed from his Trump administration post for raising concerns about coronavirus preparedness, and Luciana Borio, who specializes in complex public health emergencies.

Vice President Mike Pence is due to meet on Monday with the White House coronavirus task force for the first time since October.

Biden cleared the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency on Saturday, four days after the Nov. 3 election. He beat Trump by more than 4.3 million votes nationwide, with Trump becoming the first U.S. president since 1992 to lose a re-election bid.

TRUMP DOES NOT BUDGE

Trump has often attacked the integrity of the U.S. voting process without offering evidence. Some of his allies have encouraged him to exhaust every recourse for hanging onto power. He has filed an array of lawsuits to press his claims and plans rallies to build support for his election challenge, campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said.

Asked when Trump would concede or call Biden, Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller on Monday told Fox Business Network: “That word’s not even in our vocabulary now. We’re going to pursue all these legal means, all the recount methods.”

Trump has been talking with his advisers about the possibility of running for president in 2024, a source familiar with the discussions said.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien held an all-staff meeting at campaign headquarters on Monday to give the message that Trump is “still in this fight,” a source familiar with the meeting said. The source said the meeting was aimed at bolstering morale given that the last paycheck everyone is to receive is on Nov. 15.

Governments from around the world have congratulated Biden since Saturday, signaling they are turning the page.

Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies have said interfered in the 2016 election to support Trump and then sought to disparage Biden in this year’s race, said on Monday it would wait for the official results before commenting, noting Trump’s legal challenges. China was similarly cautious.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan and Andrea Shalal in Washington and Simon Lewis and Trevor Hunnicutt in Wilmington, Delaware; Additional reporting by Jason Lange, Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Makini Brice, Alexandra Alper and Steve Holland in Washington and Costas Pitas in London; Writing by Will Dunham and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Catherine Evans and Grant McCool)