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Biden Transition Team Shut Out of Key Funding and Access as Trump Refuses to Concede

HeadlineNov 16, 2020

Over one week after all major networks projected Joe Biden won the presidential election, his team remains shut out of key funding and access normally granted to incoming administrations. On Friday, the two remaining states to project a winner were called, with North Carolina going to Trump and Biden taking the win in Georgia, although that race is now undergoing a hand recount. Biden has won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, and Biden has amassed over 5.5 million more votes in the popular count. In 2016, when Trump won the election with 306 electoral votes, he declared his victory a landslide. But he has yet to concede the race, delaying the transition for Biden’s team and further inflaming Trump’s base of supporters who believe his lies that the election was rigged against him. A Sunday morning tweet by Trump appeared to show he acknowledged Biden’s win, by saying, “He won because the Election was Rigged,” though Trump quickly walked it back by tweeting less than two hours later, “I concede NOTHING!”

Trump’s many legal challenges to alter the outcome of the election continue to falter. On Friday, a judge declined to block the certification of election results in Detroit, Michigan, and Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State said she will not order a recount of votes since Biden’s lead is too wide. On Sunday, the Trump campaign scrapped major parts of its case in Pennsylvania. Several law firms representing the Trump campaign have either withdrawn from lawsuits or said they would not get involved in additional litigation.

Meanwhile, as the fate of the Senate hangs on the two runoffs in Georgia in January, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing to pack the courts with more right-wing judges before Trump leaves office: 12 judicial nominations are currently awaiting a Senate vote, and 23 are awaiting committee hearings.

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