White House News (白宮消息) | Nov. 24, 2020

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PBS NewsHour full episode, Nov. 23, 2020
Nov. 24, 2020
Monday on the NewsHour, President-elect Joe Biden announced several top cabinet positions, and the General Services Administration opened up the transition process. Also, Thanksgiving gatherings could put families at risk for COVID-19, Central America continues to reel after two powerful hurricanes, and Tamara Keith and Amy Walter talk politics.

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that he is giving the head of the GSA his approval to begin the presidential transition.   © Reuters
US election latest: Trump greenlights presidential transition

Biden picks Yellen for treasury secretary and announces foreign policy team

Monday, Nov. 23 (6:25 pm ET) - The head of the U.S. general services administration, Emily Murphy, sends President-elect Joe Biden a letter saying the presidential transition can begin. This authorization gives Biden access to government buildings as well as $7.3 million in transition funds. President Donald Trump said he had given Murphy the go-ahead despite plans to continue legal challenges.

"I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused -- and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA," Trump said in a tweet. "Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good ... fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same," he said.     source


More on the U.S. election -- and the Asian angle:

-- Biden says US needs to align with democracies after RCEP signing
-- Three ways Biden will immediately shift US policy on Asia
-- Biden affirms security treaty applies to Senkaku Islands in Suga call
-- Analysis: Biden's old friend Xi is not the man he once was
-- What a Biden victory means for China

Antony Blinken is a longtime Biden confidant who served as No 2 at the state department and as deputy national security adviser in Barack Obama’s administration.
Joe Biden to nominate Antony Blinken as US secretary of state
Two other internationalists, Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Jake Sullivan, also tipped for top jobs

Nov. 24 - Joe Biden will nominate two veteran diplomats to the top US roles on the world stage – Antony Blinken as secretary of state and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as ambassador to the UN – in a move aimed at sending a message to Americans and allies that the new administration will mark a return to competence and experience.

Jake Sullivan, another Democratic insider, will be the new national security adviser, reflecting Biden’s approach of choosing professionals from the foreign policy establishment in preference to business executives and politicians, who were a hallmark of the Trump administration.

Blinken was Biden’s national security adviser when Biden was vice-president, and then served as the deputy secretary of state in the last two years of the Obama administration. Sullivan was an adviser to Hillary Clinton, took part in secret talks with Iran that led up to the 2015 nuclear deal, and then succeeded Blinken as Biden’s national security adviser in the Obama White House.

Thomas-Greenfield comes from the diplomatic corps, with a career stretching back to Reagan, and rose to become assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Obama administration. The country’s most senior black diplomat was quickly fired by Donald Trump and his team, who distrusted diplomats, seeing them as part of an amorphous “deep state”.     continue to read

White House News (白宮消息) | Nov. 23, 2020

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Trump faces pressure from Republicans to drop 'corrosive' fight to overturn election
John Bolton: Trump is ‘throwing rocks through windows’

HR McMaster: Trump’s actions sowing doubt among electorate

Nov. 22 - Donald Trump faced growing pressure from Republicans on Sunday to drop his chaotic, last-ditch fight to overturn the US presidential election, as victor Joe Biden prepared to start naming his cabinet and a Pennsylvania judge compared Trump’s legal case there to “Frankenstein’s monster”.

Despite Republican leadership in Washington standing behind the president’s claims that the 3 November election was stolen from him by nationwide voter fraud, other prominent figures, including two of his former national security advisers, were blunt.

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said that Biden would be sworn in in January and added: “The real question is how much damage Trump can do before that happens.”

The president’s efforts were designed mainly to sow chaos and confusion, he told CNN’s State of the Union show, as a demonstration more of “raw political power” than a genuine legal exercise.     continue to read

A Biden supporter walks past a happy face sign outside the White House.

Joe Biden

US election: what happens between now and inauguration day?
Joe Biden has won, but a few more things have to take place before it becomes official
November, 2020
Although Democratic nominee Joe Biden is now president-elect Joe Biden, there are still quite a few steps left in the US electoral process. He is projected to win, but a few more things have to take place before it becomes official. Here’s what happens now, and when it has to be done by.

When American citizens vote for a presidential candidate, they really are voting for electors in their state. Those electors in most cases are committed to support the voters’ candidate of choice. The number of electors is equal to the number of electoral votes held by each state.

8 December: this is the deadline for resolving election disputes at the state level. All state recounts and court contests over presidential election results are to be completed by this date.

14 December: electors vote by paper ballot in their respective state capitols and also in the District of Columbia, which while it is the seat of the US government, is not actually a state. Thirty-three states and DC have laws or party regulations requiring electors to vote the same way the popular vote goes in the state. In some states, electors can even be replaced or subjected to penalties if they do not toe the line. An elector who doesn’t vote according to who won the popular vote is known as a “faithless elector”. The votes for president and vice-president are counted and the electors sign six “certificates of the vote”. The certificates, along with other official papers, are sent by registered mail to various officials, including the president of the Senate.

23 December: the certificates must be delivered to the designated officials.

6 January 2021: the House and Senate hold a joint session to count the electoral votes. If one ticket has received 270 or more electoral votes, the president of the Senate, currently vice-president Mike Pence, announces the results.

If neither presidential candidate wins at least 270 electoral votes, the House can decide the election, based on the 12th amendment to the US constitution. If required, it would elect the president. That is not going to happen in 2021 – Joe Biden will easily clear the 270 threshold.

20 January 2021: the president-elect is sworn into office on inauguration day. The outgoing president welcomes the president-elect to the White House. Then in a ceremony traditionally attended by all living former presidents, the new president swears the oath of office. This is presided over by the chief justice of the supreme court, which is currently John Roberts.     more details

White House News (白宮消息) | Nov. 22, 2020

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2020 Campaign
Trump Loses Biggest Remaining Election Case

Nov. 21 - “A lawsuit brought by President Trump’s campaign that sought to block the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results was dismissed by a federal judge on Saturday evening,” the Washington Post reports.

Rick Hasen: “In a total loss the the Trump campaign, a federal district court in Pennsylvania has dismissed the most serious case brought by the campaign and denied the campaign a motion to file an amended complaint.”

“The judge just excoriates this suit, which those of us in the field have called ridiculous from the start.”     source

Wisconsin officials: Trump observers obstructing recount

Nov. 22, MILWAUKEE (AP) — Election officials in Wisconsin’s largest county accused observers for President Donald Trump on Saturday of seeking to obstruct a recount of the presidential results, in some instances by objecting to every ballot tabulators pulled to count.

Trump requested the recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both heavily liberal, in hopes of undoing Democrat Joe Biden's victory by about 20,600 votes. With no precedent for a recount reversing such a large margin, Trump's strategy is widely seen as aimed at an eventual court challenge, part of a push in key states to undo his election loss.

A steady stream of Republican complaints in Milwaukee was putting the recount far behind schedule, county clerk George Christenson said. He said many Trump observers were breaking rules by constantly interrupting vote counters with questions and comments.     continue to read

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Donald Trump Jr tests positive for coronavirus – as it happened

• President’s son is fourth member of Trump family to contract Covid
• US records highest number of daily coronavirus deaths since May
• First Americans may get vaccine in December if US approves request
• Republican officials finally forced into action on Covid
• Pfizer asks to allow emergency use of its vaccine
• Sign up to receive First Thing – our daily briefing by email

NOVEMBER 21, 2020
President Trump Departs White House
President Trump departed the White House and traveled by motorcade to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

White House News (白宮消息) | Nov. 21, 2020

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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks after touring a Bridgestone golfball manufacturing facility Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020, in Covington, Ga.
Gov. Brian Kemp: Georgia law requires me to formalize election certification

Nov. 20 - Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Friday that state law requires him to formalize the secretary of state’s certification of the 2020 election results, which showed a narrow win for presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden over President Trump.

Mr. Kemp, a Republican, decried voting discrepancies that were discovered in a statewide audit but said he was bound by law to affirm the certification from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

“State law now requires the governor’s office to formalize the certification,” he said. “As governor, I have a solemn responsibility to follow the law and that is what I will continue to do.”      continue to read

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Campaign 2020
Georgia Governor Kemp Statement on Election Results Certification
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) delivered a statement on the state’s presidential election results and certification.

Georgia governor calls for audit after state certifies election results

Nov. 20 - Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp certified the state's election results Friday, saying that now that the results are certified, the Trump campaign can pursue other legal options to call for a recount. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, told reporters Friday morning that President-elect Biden had definitively won the state, after the state's hand recount was completed Thursday.

But Kemp didn't endorse the results, instead calling for another full hand recount. Kemp, who served as Georgia secretary of state before Raffensperger, has not publicly defended the state's election process from accusations from the president and his campaign. He alleged Friday that the audit revealed significant errors made in several counties, including Floyd, Douglas and Walton. 

Kemp said the audit only looked at ballots, not the signatures on the absentee applications or the signatures on the ballot envelopes. He called for Raffensperger to "consider addressing these concerns" and conduct a "sample of audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes and compare those to the signatures on applications and on file that the secretary of state's office."

The Georgia Secretary of State's office has said repeatedly that at this point in the process it is not possible to match signatures — which already took place as a part of a two-step signature verification process — because ballots are separated from envelopes to ensure the secrecy of voters' selections.

Kemp's press conference will come after a strange series of events Friday afternoon, starting with Raffensperger issuing a statement saying the results had been certified, then making a corrected statement within a half-hour that they would be certified later Friday. He certified the results around 4 p.m., an hour before Kemp was set to hold his press conference.
 
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump on Friday in tweet accused Kemp and Raffensperger of refusing to "let us look at signatures which would expose hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots" which he alleged would give the "Republican Party and me, David Perdue, and perhaps Kelly Loeffler, a BIG VICTORY."        source

Source from "Wikipedia", date viewed on Nov. 20, 2020

...In 2018, Kemp was a candidate for governor where he faced Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams. Kemp refused to resign as secretary of state while campaigning for governor, a decision that many allege caused a conflict of interest. Kemp's oversight of elections and election data as Secretary of State stirred controversy and accusations of abuse of power. In 2015, Kemp's office erroneously distributed the Social Security numbers and dates of birth of registered Georgia voters. During the 2016 election, Kemp was the only state official to reject help from the Department of Homeland Security to guard against Russian interference. Kemp also encountered criticism from voting rights advocates; from 2012 to 2018, Kemp's office cancelled more than 1.4 million voter registrations, and during the 2018 election, Kemp held up more than 53,000 voter registration applications, with nearly 70% of the voter registrations belonging to African Americans.[3] On the eve of the election, Kemp falsely accused the Georgia Democratic Party of cybercrimes related to the election; a 2020 investigation by the Georgia Attorney General's office concluded that there was no evidence for Kemp's claims.[4]...

White House News (白宮消息) | Nov. 20, 2020

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Georgia recount confirms Biden victory over Trump, says state election official

Nov. 19 - A recount in the battleground state of Georgia has confirmed Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump, another blow to the president who continues to refuse to concede defeat two weeks after election day.
 
Officials in the southern state had announced they were recounting five million of the ballots cast, after a request from the Trump campaign, and after secretary of state Brad Raffensperger initially said the vote was “too close to call”.

Yet though officials spent six days recounting five million of the ballots, there had been widespread anticipation that Mr Biden would hold on to the narrow lead over Mr Trump, and secure the first victory in the Peach State for a Democratic contender since 1992.

As it is, reports suggested that Mr Biden’s lead over Mr Trump will be cut to 12,800 from the previous 14,000. This was because of the discovery of 2,500 ballots in Floyd County that had not been scanned.     continue to read

Trump has reportedly given up on overturning battleground defeats and is trying to delay a final vote count in a desperate bid to throw Biden's victory into doubt

Nov. 19 - President Donald Trump has reportedly abandoned hopes of disqualifying enough mail-in ballots to overturn the election result and is now attempting to delay final vote counts for long enough to throw President-elect Joe Biden's victory into doubt.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Trump team was pinning its hopes on a bid to delay vote certification in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania.     continue to read

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Seriously Disturbing and Unprecedented: Trump Personally Reached Out to Wayne County Canvassers and Then They Attempted to Rescind Their Votes to Certify (After First Refusing to Certify)

Nov. 19 - Getting nowhere in the courts, President Donald Trump’s scattershot effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory is shifting toward obscure election boards that certify the vote as Trump and his allies seek to upend the electoral process, sow chaos and perpetuate unsubstantiated doubts about the count.

The battle is centered in the battleground states that sealed Biden’s win.

In Michigan, two Republican election officials in the state’s largest county initially refused to certify results despite no evidence of fraud, then backtracked and voted to certify and then on Wednesday flipped again and said they “remain opposed to certification.” Some Republicans have called on the GOP statewide canvassers to so the same. In Arizona, officials are balking at signing off on vote tallies in a rural county.     continue to read

NOVEMBER 19, 2020
Michigan Governor Whitmer Coronavirus News Conference
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) held a briefing in Lansing on the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. She addressed the surge in cases and urged the federal government to pass additional COVID-19 relief legislation. Gov. Whitmer was joined by Michigan Health and Human Services chief medical executive as well as several local business owners. 

 

White House News (白宮消息) | Nov. 19, 2020

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A supporter of President-elect Joe Biden holds a sign referring to President Donald Trump outside the Pennsylvania State Capitol.
Borrowing immunity from Trump? It could mean life or death...

Even when a vaccine is available, not everyone will respond well to it. For those who don’t get protection from vaccines, antibodies could be their only chance of immunity, so writes Colette Sheridan in her weekly column

Nov. 18 - THE likes of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and the not so famous that have survived Covid-19 could help save people’s lives by donating blood.

The plasma — what remains after red and white blood cells, platelets and other components are removed — of people who have recovered from the disease contains precious antibodies that helped them fight the virus.

They could help others to do the same or even make them temporarily immune, according to the New Scientist magazine.
U.S health official, Anthony Fauci, has said that antibody therapies could act as a “bridge to a vaccine”, allowing us a stop-gap before we get inoculated.

The use of antibody-suffused blood plasma was developed more than 100 years ago to treat diphtheria. With the introduction of antibiotics, it wasn’t used much but was revived in 2002 during the SARS epidemic and has gone on to be used against Ebola.     continue to read

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NOVEMBER 18, 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci Provides Update on Coronavirus.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided the latest update on the coronavirus pandemic during a University of Virginia School of Medicine virtual event. He addressed the recent surge in coronavirus cases in the U.S. and Europe as well as the COVID-19 vaccines announced by Pfizer and Moderna. Dr. Fauci was introduced by University of Virginia Medical School Dean Dr. David Wilkes.

Immunity to Covid-19 may last years, scientists say
Washington, Nov 19 (Prensa Latina) A new study reveals that the number of immune cells that provide defense against Covid-19 could decline at a slow rate.

These cells may persist for a very long time in the body of people who have recovered from the infection, according to a research published on Biorxiv.

Scientists showed that eight months after infection, most people who have recovered had enough immune cells to fend off the new coronavirus.

Survivors of another coronavirus still carry certain immune cells 17 years after recovering, the research suggests.

That amount of memory could prevent the vast majority of people from being hospitalized many years after contagion, the new study notes.

Researchers from the University of Washington suggested that this kind of cell can persist for at least three months in the body.

Another study also found that people who have recovered from Covid-19 have immune cells even when antibodies are not detectable.     source

NOVEMBER 18, 2020
Speaker Pelosi on Leadership Election Results
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the House Democratic leadership team held a news conference at the Capitol on the results of the Democratic caucus' leadership elections. Speaker Pelosi (CA), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD), Majority Whip James Clyburn (SC) and Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (NY) were re-elected by their colleagues and Representative Katherine Clark (MA) was elected as the new assistant speaker. Speaker Pelosi seemed to suggest this would be her last term as speaker, but did not say so definitively. When asked about a term-limit pledge she made during her last speakership bid two years ago, Speaker Pelosi said “whether it passes or not, I will abide by those limits.” The speaker added, “I don’t want to undermine any leverage I may have, but I made the statement.” 

White House News (白宮消息) | Nov. 18, 2020

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NOVEMBER 17, 2020
Senate Minority Leader Schumer Holds News Conference
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer held a news conference on Capitol Hill on the increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases and the Republicans' reaction to the election. He was joined by Tim Kaine of VIrgina and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

Election 2020
Facts on election integrity
Biden Cabinet
How Trump lost
Full election results
Flips from 2016
Opinions
Live updates: Trump fires top election security official; Biden names senior staff

The Post's Sean Sullivan discusses who is in the running for some of President-elect Joe Biden's top appointments.

Nov. 18 - ...President Trump on Tuesday said in a tweet that Chris Krebs, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director, has been “terminated.” The president, who has continued to refuse to accept that he lost the election, said a recent statement by Krebs, in which he called the Nov. 3 election “the most secure in American history,” was “highly inaccurate.” There is no evidence to back Trump’s claims....   continue to read

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TUESDAY

President Donald J. Trump golfs at Trump National Golf Club on Sunday, Nov. 15, in Stering, VA

Trump Grows Increasingly Reclusive As Reality Of Election Loss Sets In

Nov. 17 - President Donald Trump has increasingly receded from sight, even going dark on Twitter Tuesday after GOP plaintiffs dropped lawsuits challenging the election results in key states and allies in Congress acknowledged Biden’s victory.      more details

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PBS NewsHour Weekend Full Episode November 17, 2020
Nov 18, 2020
Tuesday on the NewsHour, social media executives face a barrage of questions on Capitol Hill. Plus: What election workers think of President Trump’s attacks on voting, the latest from the president and his allies, H.R. McMaster on U.S. troop movements, Sen. Chris Coons on the presidential transition, Wuhan a year after the novel coronavirus appeared, abuse in the Boy Scouts and healing movement.