The United States presidential election remains unresolved three weeks after the vote, drastically undermining perceptions regarding the quality of their political system.

Three weeks after the US presidential election there is still no clear winner. However, incumbent Donald Trump has now permitted the government agency which handles presidential transitions to begin working with Democrat Joe Biden, and key swing states have just certified the election in favor of Biden.

Recent polls from top media such as The Economist reveal that nearly half the country wants Trump to litigate, believes fraud swung the vote in Biden’s favor, and views Biden’s victory as illegitimate. Trump has still not spoken publicly on the subject, only communicating his refusal to concede via Twitter, repeatedly. The fact of America’s intense division still remains, and many wonder how and if the nation can be united.

Even though the election was on November 3rd, many urban areas are still boarded up and resemble war zones. The political chaos continues to feed concerns that the violent protests and rebellions from earlier in the year will return.

Biden is starting to unveil his cabinet, which was described by the mainstream media site Politico, as a “team of careerists”, because not since George Bush the first have so many key positions been handed to personal loyalists and longtime Washington insiders. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party and other party factions have been almost totally excluded.

For Secretary of State Biden has tapped Antony Blinken, viewed as the architect of Barack Obama’s interventionist foreign policy and the longtime advisor to Biden who persuaded him to vote for the second war on Iraq. Blinken was a major proponent of US involvement in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, the Saudi-led war on Yemen, and is considered a major hawk on Russia. He is expected to push the US to try and rejoin the JCPOA agreement on Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Source: Presstv

The campaign of US President Donald Trump has distanced itself from Sidney Powell, after the lawyer was widely ridiculed for alleging baseless conspiracy theories related to the disputed November 3 election.

Trump, who has not conceded defeat after the media declared his rival Joe Biden the winner of the election, had tweeted on November 14 that Powell would be a member of his legal team, alongside his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis.

However, in a statement on Sunday, Giuliani and Ellis said, “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” adding, “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”

In an interview with Newsmax, Powell said that Dominion Voting Systems “has a long history of rigging elections” and that this is “what it was created to do to begin with.”

The statement comes just days after an extraordinary 90-minute press conference at the Republican National Committee in Washington, during which legal team members argued that a broad “national conspiracy” to deny Trump reelection was underway.

The team has mounted multiple legal challenges to reverse the results in several key states. However, the efforts have so far met with little success in the courtroom or on the ground.

Powell said that Trump had beaten Biden in a landslide, despite the fact that Biden won the state-by-state Electoral College votes, which decide who takes the White House, by 306 to 232.

Biden is also set to win the popular vote by more than six million votes.

Source: Presstv

A US federal judge has dealt a new blow to President Donald Trump’s long-shot bid to reverse the results of the disputed presidential election held on November 3.

US District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport, Pennsylvania on Saturday dismissed a lawsuit which sought to overturn the results in the state, calling Trump’s legal claim a “Frankenstein’s Monster.”

Trump, a Republican, has refused to concede defeat in the election and mounted multiple legal challenges to reverse the results in several key states. His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, was declared the projected winner.

However, his campaign’s efforts have so far met with little success in the courtroom or on the ground.

The court decision paves the way for Pennsylvania to certify Biden’s victory there, which is scheduled to take place Monday.

Brann described the case as “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations,” adding, “This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together.”

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” Brann wrote.

“Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.”

In response, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said in a statement he was disappointed with the ruling, adding, “Today’s decision turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the US Supreme Court.”

Biden won the state-by-state Electoral College votes, which decide who takes the White House, by 306 to 232, according to media reports.

The Electoral College is set to formally vote on December 14, with certifications to occur beforehand.

States’ certification of results of their popular votes is normally routine following a presidential election in the United States.

However, Trump’s refusal to concede has complicated the process and raised concerns that he could cause long-term damage to American voters’ trust in their voting system.

So far, a limited number of Republicans have recognized Biden as the winner. On Saturday and following the ruling, Pat Toomey, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, said that Biden “won the 2020 election and will become the 46th president of the United States.”

“President Trump should accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process,” Toomey said in a statement that congratulated Biden.

The ruling came hours after Republicans also asked for a delay in certification in Michigan, another battleground.

In a letter that repeated claims of irregularities in the state which Biden won by 155,000 votes, the Republicans called for a delay of two weeks to allow for a full audit of results in Wayne County.

Republican Party national committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and the party’s Michigan chair Laura Cox called on the board to “adjourn for 14 days to allow for a full audit and investigation into those anomalies and irregularities.”

Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has, however, said that audits cannot be carried out until after certification as officials do not have legal access to the documents needed until then.

On Saturday, she posted on Twitter that there had been “no evidence” to put into question the result of the election.

“In a nutshell: 5.5m Michigan citizens voted,” she wrote.

“The results of their votes are clear. No evidence has emerged to undermine that.”

Trump has rarely appeared in public after the media declared Biden the winner of the election, but has not given up on his provocative Twitter campaign.

“The proof pouring in is undeniable,” he tweeted Saturday.

“Many more votes than needed. This was a LANDSLIDE!”

Source: Presstv

After a painstaking recount, Georgia officials confirmed on Thursday that President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the battleground state on Nov. 3, further narrowing the president’s dubious effort to overturn the election results.

The result of the six-day hand recount of the state’s 5 million ballots had been widely expected, despite baseless allegations from Trump and his allies that Georgia’s vote tallies were suspect because of widespread fraud.

Amid a series of losses in court, Trump’s re-election campaign has shifted to a new strategy that relies on persuading Republican state legislators in crucial states to ignore the election results and intervene on Trump’s behalf, according to three people familiar with the plan.

The campaign has filed multiple lawsuits to try to challenge the results in battleground states that Biden won, as election officials across the country have affirmed that there is no evidence of major irregularities. Judges in three states delivered new legal setbacks to the campaign on Thursday, rejecting claims of improper vote counting.

Biden, a Democrat, has captured 306 electoral votes to the Republican Trump’s 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the winner of the election, well above the 270 needed for victory.

Georgia’s audit, launched after unofficial results showed Biden leading Trump by about 14,000 votes cast, ended with Biden winning by 12,284, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. The state is expected to certify Biden’s victory on Friday.

Trump and his allies, including Georgia’s Republican U.S. senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who both face runoff elections in January, have accused fellow Republican Raffensperger without evidence of overseeing a flawed election, an allegation Raffensperger has angrily disputed.

In remarks on Thursday after a call with 10 state governors, Biden called Trump’s attempt to reverse the results “totally irresponsible.”

“It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country,” said the president-elect, although he expressed no concern that the gambit would succeed in preventing him from taking office on Jan. 20.

While legal experts see Trump’s last-gasp effort as unlikely to succeed, they say the strategy represents an unprecedented assault on the country’s democratic institutions by a sitting president.

The Trump campaign has already asked a judge in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by 82,000 votes, to declare Trump the winner, allowing the Republican-controlled legislature to choose the state’s 20 Electoral College voters.

Several prominent law firms have pulled out of the campaign’s legal challenges, leaving Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to spearhead the efforts.

Giuliani alleges conspiracy

At a news conference on Thursday, Giuliani said he planned to file more lawsuits and that Democrats had engaged in a “national conspiracy” to manipulate vote totals, although he admitted he did not have any evidence.

Other members of the legal team floated a theory involving Venezuela and George Soros, a bogeyman of conservatives, although they said they would probably not pursue it in court.

Giuliani said accounts of suspicious activity would ultimately overturn the election, which Biden won nationwide by 5.9 million votes. Some of those accounts have already been thrown out of court.

“We cannot allow these crooks – because that’s what they are – to steal this election. They elected Donald Trump. They didn’t elect Joe Biden,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani’s agitated performance, featuring rivulets of hair dye running down his face, was widely mocked by Democrats.  Others expressed alarm.

“That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history,” tweeted Christopher Krebs, who headed up the U.S. government’s efforts to combat election disinformation until he was fired by Trump earlier this week.

‘No excuse’

Critics say Trump’s refusal to concede has serious implications for national security and the fight against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 250,000 Americans.

Biden is not receiving the classified intelligence due a president-elect, and his transition team has not received the funding, office space and briefings from current government officials normally afforded to an incoming administration.

He warned the delay could cause additional deaths as the pandemic surges to record levels across the country.

“There is no excuse not to share the data and let us begin to plan, because on Day One it’s going to take us time, if we don’t have access to all this data,” he said in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. “It’s going to put us behind the eight ball by a matter of a month or more, and that’s lives.”

The former vice president has focused on preparing his incoming administration, naming senior staff members and getting briefed by his advisers. He said on Thursday he had selected a Treasury secretary and could announce his pick as soon as next week.

Democratic leaders in Congress sent a letter on Thursday to the administrator in charge of releasing transition funds, Emily Murphy, demanding that she explain why she has yet to recognize Biden as president-elect.

Part of the new Trump campaign effort involves trying to delay certification, the normally routine process by which election results are finalized, a senior campaign official said.

In Detroit on Tuesday, Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers refused at first to certify the results, then reversed themselves, then signed affidavits that they wanted to rescind their certification.

One of the members told Reuters that Trump called her after she agreed to certify the results.

Trump’s campaign dropped a federal lawsuit on Thursday challenging the election results in Michigan, citing the Wayne County officials’ affidavits. Officials said the affidavits were too late to stop certification.

Republican legislative leaders from Michigan are scheduled to visit the White House on Friday at Trump’s request, a source in Michigan said, adding the lawmakers planned to hear what the president had to say.

Source: REUTERS

President Donald Trump’s attempts to cling to power appeared more tenuous than ever on Wednesday as election officials in Georgia said a soon-to-be-completed recount was not likely to change President-elect Joe Biden’s victory there.

Georgia is one of several states where Trump’s campaign is contesting election returns, so far without success. Election officials there said recount results due to be announced on Thursday were not likely to overturn Biden’s 14,000-vote victory in the state. They also said the recount would not provide evidence for Trump’s unsupported claims of widespread fraud.

“He’s been misinformed on that front,” Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system manager, told reporters.

Election officials in Wisconsin likewise said that a partial recount requested by the Trump campaign would not reverse the Republican incumbent’s loss in that state, which he won in 2016.

Trump himself has stayed out of the public eye while venting his anger on Twitter. His election-related lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Michigan have met with little courtroom success.

Trump’s refusal to concede the Nov. 3 election is blocking the smooth transition to a new administration and complicating Biden’s response to the coronavirus pandemic when he takes office on Jan. 20.

Opinion polls show Trump’s unfounded claims about the election having been “rigged” have a political benefit, with as many as half of Trump’s fellow Republicans believing them, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Arizona’s top election official, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, said she faced escalating threats of violence and blamed Trump for spreading misinformation to undermine trust in the results.

The president is holding out hope that a manual recount ordered by Georgia can erase Biden’s lead there. The state’s top election official said that was unlikely.

“I don’t believe at the end of the day it’ll change the total results,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, told CNN.

As of Wednesday morning, Biden’s lead over Trump had fallen to 12,781 ballots, down from 14,156 previously, according to Sterling, the state voting system manager. Sterling said he expected the recount to be completed by midnight EST on Wednesday (0500 GMT Thursday) and certified by the state on Friday.

In Wisconsin, the state Elections Commission said it would oversee recounts in two heavily Democratic counties – Milwaukee and Dane, which includes Madison – after the Trump campaign paid $3 million, less than the $7.9 million estimated cost of a statewide recount.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said a recount would start on Friday and finish within days. He said the recount would probably not change the tally significantly. “Certainly nothing anywhere near what would be required for changing the outcomes,” he said.

Biden won Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes to lead Trump 49.5% to 48.8%.

In the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the election winner, Biden captured 306 votes to Trump’s 232. He won the popular vote by more than 5.8 million.

To remain in office, Trump would need to overturn results in at least three large and closely competitive states to reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes. That would be unprecedented.

False claim on Detroit

Trump is also challenging results in Michigan, falsely claiming on Wednesday that the number of votes in Detroit had surpassed the number of residents. The largest city in the state is heavily Democratic.

“In Detroit, there are FAR MORE VOTES THAN PEOPLE. Nothing can be done to cure that giant scam. I win Michigan!” he tweeted.

City records show that 250,138 votes were cast there in the presidential election. That is a little more than a third of the city’s population, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau is 670,031.

The state’s top election official said all counties, including Detroit’s Wayne County, had certified their tallies.

In Pennsylvania, Trump’s campaign sought to reintroduce claims to a lawsuit it dropped three days ago that alleged that Republican observers were not allowed to watch ballot counting. Lawyers said they had dropped the claims because of miscommunication.

Earlier in the day, the state Supreme Court said it would hear an appeal in a separate case challenging thousands of mail-in votes in Philadelphia.

Biden held a virtual meeting on Wednesday with frontline healthcare workers in Delaware who complained about a lack of personal protective equipment and COVID-19 tests for themselves.

He warned that the delay in declaring him the election winner could mean that “soon we’re going to be behind by weeks or months being able to put together the whole initiative” to distribute coronavirus vaccines when they become available.

The General Services Administration agency, run by a Trump appointee, has yet to formally declare an election winner. Biden’s team says that is hindering coordination with the current White House coronavirus task force.

States face a Dec. 8 deadline to certify election results in time for the official Electoral College vote on Dec. 14.

Congress is scheduled to count the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, which is normally a formality. But Trump supporters in the Senate and House of Representatives could object to the results in a final, desperate attempt to deprive Biden of 270 electoral votes and turn the final decision over to the House.

Election officials from both parties, across the United States, have said there is no evidence of vote tampering, and a federal review drew the same conclusion.

Source: REUTERS

US President Donald Trump seems to have implicitly conceded defeat to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, while claims the presidential election was rigged.

Trump took to his official Twitter account on Sunday and said Biden “won” the presidential election on November 3 because the vote was “rigged.”

“He won because the election was rigged. No vote watchers or observers allowed, vote tabulated by a radical left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more!” Trump tweeted.

“All of the mechanical ‘glitches’ that took place on Election Night were really them getting caught trying to steal votes. They succeeded plenty, however, without getting caught,” the president added in a subsequent tweet. “Mail-in elections are a sick joke!”

The tweets, like many of Trump’s recent posts about the election, were flagged by Twitter as containing disputed claims about election fraud.

Reacting to the Republican president’s tweets on Sunday, Biden’s incoming Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the election result was a decision made by the American people and that he accepted the tweets “as a further confirmation of the reality that Joe Biden won the election.”

Klain went on to say that, “He won because he got more votes, in the popular vote by a lot and he won the same number of electoral votes that President Trump called a landslide four years ago.”

President Donald Trump’s supporters gathered in Washington on Saturday for a protest to back his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud as he pushes ahead with a flurry of longshot legal challenges to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.

After night fell in the nation’s capital, demonstrators favouring Trump clashed in the streets with counterprotesters, videos posted on social media showing fistfights, projectiles and clubs. Police arrested at least 20 people on a variety of charges, including assault and weapons possession, officials said. One stabbing was reported, two police officers were injured and several firearms were also recovered by police.

Earlier in the day, Trump made a brief drive-past through the demonstrations in his motorcade as supporters, many waving “MAGA” – or “Make America Great Again” – flags, cheered.

The president smiled at demonstrators shouting, “USA! USA!” from the car window, but he did not step out.

Source: AFP

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden solidified his election victory on Friday when he won the state of Georgia as President Donald Trump said “time will tell” if another administration takes office soon, the closest he has come to acknowledging that Biden could succeed him.

Edison Research, which made the Georgia call, also projected that North Carolina, the only other battleground state with an outstanding vote count, would go to Trump, finalising the electoral vote tally at 306 for Biden to 232 for Trump.

The numbers gave Biden, a Democrat, a resounding defeat over Trump in the Electoral College, equal to the 306 votes Trump, a Republican, won to defeat Hillary Clinton, a 2016 victory that Trump called a “landslide.”

At a White House event where he predicted a coronavirus vaccine would be available for the whole population by April, Trump came the closest he has yet to acknowledging that he might leave the White House in January, but said that “time will tell.”

“This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the, uh, whatever happens in the future – who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell,” Trump said in his first public remarks in more than a week after losing to Biden.

Trump did not take questions after the event.

Trump, a Republican, has claimed without evidence that he was cheated by widespread election fraud and has refused to concede. State election officials report no serious irregularities, and several of his legal challenges have failed in court.

While Trump had yet to concede, Biden officials reiterated they were moving ahead with transition efforts regardless.

Although the national popular vote does not determine the election outcome, Biden was ahead by more than 5.3 million votes, or 3.4 percentage points. His share of the popular vote, at 50.8%, was slightly higher than Ronald Reagan’s share of the vote in 1980 when he defeated Jimmy Carter.

To win a second term, Trump would need to overturn Biden’s lead in at least three states, but he has so far failed to produce evidence that he could do so in any of them. States face a Dec. 8 “safe harbor” deadline to certify their elections and choose electors for the Electoral College, which will officially select the new president on Dec. 14.

Biden’s legal team in Georgia said on Friday they do not expect a hand recount of votes in the state to change the results there.

A Michigan state court rejected on Friday a request by Trump’s supporters to block the certification of votes in Detroit, which went heavily in favor of Biden. And lawyers for Trump’s campaign dropped a lawsuit in Arizona after the final vote count rendered it moot.

Federal election security officials have found no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, “or was in any way compromised,” two security groups said in a statement released on Thursday by the lead U.S. cybersecurity agency.

Trump was set on Friday afternoon to make his first public remarks since Biden was projected as the election’s winner on Nov. 7. The White House said he would address the nation on the efforts by the government and drugmakers to develop effective treatments for the coronavirus pandemic.

Transition talk

Biden officials said on Friday they would press forward with the transition, identifying legislative priorities, reviewing federal agency policies and preparing to fill thousands of jobs in the new administration.

“We’re charging ahead with the transition,” Jen Psaki, a senior adviser to Biden’s transition team, said on a conference call on Friday, while stressing that Biden still needs “real-time information” from the Trump administration to deal with the resurgent pandemic and national security threats.

Psaki urged Trump’s White House to allow Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to receive daily intelligence briefings on potential threats around the world.

“With every day that passes on, it becomes more concerning that our national security team and the president-elect and the vice president-elect don’t have access to those threat assessments, intelligence briefings, real-time information about our engagements around the world,” Psaki said. “Because, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know.”

Biden will be briefed by his own group of national-security experts next week, she said. He met with transition advisers again on Friday at his Delaware beach house where he is mapping out his approach to the pandemic and prepares to name his top appointees, including Cabinet members.

Trump’s refusal to accept defeat has stalled the official transition. The federal agency that releases funding to an incoming president-elect, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognize Biden’s victory, denying him access to federal office space and resources.

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, a Trump confidant, said he had spoken to the president by phone on Friday and that Trump had given him the impression that he would follow the U.S. Constitution and surrender his office after every vote was counted.

“He told me he’s a realist. He told me he would do the right thing,” Rivera said in an interview with Fox. “I got no impression that he was plotting the overthrow of the elected government. He just wants a fair fight.”

Source: REUTERS

Tensions and divisions continue to mount in the United States, which still has two self-declared presidents. That’s even though vote counts remain unfinished, in a very tight race and in a uniquely-conducted vote which was preceded by months of controversy.

For the past week there has been enormous grassroots pressure, mainly coming from conservatives, that confidence in the electoral system has been so repeatedly undermined that a rush to judgment is not acceptable to many.

The state of Georgia announced they need to recount every ballot by hand, and lawsuits may force several other states to do the same. Democrats and seemingly all of the mainstream media are demanding President Donald Trump concede, with challenger Joe Biden maintaining a slight lead.

Top Republicans have refused to acknowledge Biden as the president-elect and thrown their support behind Trump to not concede. Many have insisted that Trump is within his rights to look into charges of “irregularities” in last week’s election.

Three of the past six presidential elections are now disputed. Many warn that massive alienation, instability and possibly violence could result if a large minority refuses to accept any final vote results which are not subjected to the check and balance of a judicial review.

Support for judicial review of the electoral process mainly falls along party lines. For decades the US has had endemic low voter turnout, but those who do vote have become extremely polarized, with the disputed election of the year 2000 often cited as a primary reason.

Without a concession, tensions and legal battles are likely to mount for weeks. On December 6 the Electoral College meets – the US does not decide their president by direct vote – and that institution has become increasingly unpopular due the 2016 disputed election.

One week after they went to vote, the US has become even more bitterly divided regarding their executive branch and electoral system.

Source: Presstv

The Trump administration threw the presidential transition into tumult on Monday, Attorney General William Barr authorizing the Justice Department to probe allegations of voter fraud and President Donald Trump firing the Pentagon chief and blocking government officials from cooperating with President-elect Joe Biden’s team.

Despite little evidence of fraud, Barr signed off on investigations into the unsubstantiated claims made repeatedly by Trump. Even as Biden began assembling experts to face the surging pandemic, the federal agency that needs to green light the beginnings of the transition of power held off on taking that step. And the White House moved to crack down on those not deemed sufficiently loyal as Trump continued to refuse to concede the race.

Top Republicans largely refused to put widespread pressure on Trump to accept his election loss. He remained out of sight at the White House, conversations ongoing about how the defeated president would spend the coming days and weeks as he challenged the people’s verdict.

The ouster of Defense Secretary Mark Esper was expected by some aides to be the first of several firings by Trump, now freed from having to face voters again and angry at those in his administration perceived to be insufficiently loyal. Others believed to be vulnerable: FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA head Gina Haspel and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Out of sight but not unheard, Trump took to Twitter to again dispute the result of the election, making baseless accusations of widespread “unthinkable and illegal” activity in the vote.

Trump is not expected to formally concede but is likely to grudgingly vacate the White House at the end of his term, according to several people around him. He was in discussion with top allies about the possibility of more campaign-style rallies as he tries to keep his supporters fired up despite his defeat. It was possible they would feature his family and top supporters but not the president himself.

The president was given cover to keep fighting by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, seen by many in the GOP as the one who may eventually need to nudge Trump to the exit.

“Our institutions are actually built for this,” McConnell said as he opened the Senate on Monday. “We have the system in place to consider concerns and President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer countered that the Republicans’ refusal to accept the election results was “extremely dangerous, extremely poisonous to our democracy.”

“Joe Biden won the election fair and square,” Schumer said.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said it was time for the transition to proceed unimpeded. “At this stage, I think the transition should be underway, even though it’s not finalized,” he said. “We want to make sure that the interests of national security and smooth transition” are carried out.

A few other GOP senators sent tepid nods toward a transition. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska offered congratulations to Biden, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine noted the Democrat’s “apparent victory.” But many Republican lawmakers were reluctant to speak up about the election, seeing little political incentive to take a firm stance on Trump’s transition from the White House.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have been hesitant to push Trump to concede to Biden, knowing it would anger their base of Trump’s most devoted supporters. Most were also not overtly encouraging the president’s unfounded claims of fraud, while allowing baseless questions about the election process to linger.

Adding to the sense of uncertainty, the General Services Administration held off on formally beginning the transition, preventing Biden’s teams from gaining access to federal agencies. An agency spokesperson said late Monday that an “ascertainment” on the winner of the election had not yet been made. Citing what the agency did during the extended 2000 electoral recount, it signaled that it may not do so until Trump concedes or the Electoral College meets next month.

Across government, there were signs of a slowdown.

In weekly Monday morning all-hands phone calls for Midwest-based employees of the Environmental Protection Agency, mid-level administrators responded to questions about the transition by telling staffers they had no information yet, said Nicole Cantello, an agency employee and president of the Chicago local of a union representing EPA workers.

Up to Friday, at least, EPA employees told agency retirees that the agency’s political appointees were refusing to discuss any transition, saying they were sure Trump would be reelected.

A senior administration official said presidential personnel director John McEntee, the president’s former personal aide, has sent word to departments that they should terminate any political appointees seeking new work for now. Another official said the warning was not seen as likely to result in any firings but rather meant to reinforce to staff that they should not act counter to Trump while he refuses to concede. Those officials and others who were not authorized to discuss internal policies or describe private discussions requested anonymity.

At the U.S. Agency for International Development, which already underwent an abrupt post-election change in leadership, staffers were instructed not to begin acting on transition planning until the GSA approved it, according to officials familiar with the matter.

But some elements of the federal government already were mobilizing to prepare for Biden to assume power. The U.S. Secret Service and Federal Aviation Administration extended a flight restriction over Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home through Inauguration Day. Biden’s security detail has been bolstered with agents from the Presidential Protective Division.

And despite Trump’s public stance, there was a growing realization in his inner circle that the election result would be impossible to overturn.

Legal challenges already have been dismissed in battleground states like Georgia and Wisconsin. And Trump’s legal challenge was dealt another blow Monday when campaign adviser David Bossie, tasked with leading the effort, tested positive for the coronavirus.

Bossie had been at the indoor White House election night party now being perceived as a possible superspreader event after other attendees — including chief of staff Mark Meadows, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and other aides — contracted the virus.

Some senior officials have tried to make the case that Trump should turn his efforts to cementing his legacy, but they are wary of being labeled disloyal for even thinking it.

At the White House, attendance among aides had dropped off since election night — partly because of the result and partly because a number are in quarantine after contracting or being exposed to people who came down with COVID-19. And Vice President Mike Pence was slated to depart Tuesday for a vacation in Florida.

In the closing days of the election, Trump repeatedly described campaigning as “my job,” and it steadily crowded out his official duties.

Trump’s public schedule hasn’t included an intelligence briefing since Oct. 1. The White House hasn’t provided a “readout” of any call between the president and a foreign leader in weeks. He hasn’t met with members of the White House coronavirus task force in months. He also offered no public comment on Tropical Storm Eta lashing the Florida Keys.

The drawn-out resolution to the election has only added to the culture of suspicion that has permeated the hollowed-out West Wing.

Aides said there were two camps at the White House: those who have already accepted the outcome and those who are still working through it and pushing Trump to keep fighting. Staffers don’t know in which camp their officemates reside and those who are looking ahead to new work are fearful of being branded as disloyal.

The Trump campaign has claimed there has been a widespread, multi-state conspiracy by Democrats to skew the vote tally in Biden’s favor, without hard evidence to back it up. There would need to be proof of illegally cast votes or improperly counted ballots on a massive, organized scale in order to throw out enough ballots to overcome Biden’s sizable lead across multiple states. And that just hasn’t emerged. In fact, election officials from both political parties have publicly stated the election went well.

But in every election, there are problems: voting machines break, long lines force some people away, ballots are miscast and lost. And 2020 has been no exception.

Source: AP