A little-know Trump appointee is reportedly “refusing to sign a letter allowing Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week”.
Top Republicans have either amplified Trump’s baseless claims of widespread vote rigging or remained silent, with only a tiny number of moderates following tradition and congratulating Biden.
Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today, though his campaign are expected to file further lawsuits. We’re not expecting any gardening stores to be involved today.
Reuters have a quick snap here that the Kremlin has said it would wait for the official results of the US presidential election before commenting on its outcome, and that it had noted incumbent Donald Trump’s announcement of legal challenges related to the vote.
Vladimir Putin has remained silent on the issue since Democrat Joe Biden clinched the presidency on Saturday. Speaking to reporters on a conference call, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow deemed it was better to wait for the official results before commenting.
Peskov added that Putin had repeatedly said he was ready to work with any US leader and that Russia hoped it could establish dialogue with the new administration and find a way to normalise relations.
Bettina Love, Mahogany L Browne and Mikki Kendall have written for us today on what having Kamala Harris as vice-president elect means to them. In a hard-hitting section Browne says:
I know what it means for your name to be misspelled. I know what it means for your name to be mispronounced in order to mock you. I know what it means to be part of a community that suffers because of the American justice system. Kamala Harris, daughter of the Bay Area of California, we are alike in this way, except my family falls on the other side of the law enforcement fence. You were a California prosecutor; my father has been incarcerated in one of the state’s 35 prisons for 20 years and counting. My uncles, several living and the rest deceased, have all been victims of the mass incarceration system: petty crimes, drug possession, and probation violations kept them behind metal bars as their children graduated, became parents, or were shot and killed. My hopefulness, when thinking of you, returns to your past role. I need to believe you can help to change this unethical and biased justice system.
After celebrating the winning of a Joe Biden presidency, Democrats are waking to the hangover of figuring out how to govern under the shadow of a runaway pandemic and the potential for gridlock imposed by the man who likes to call himself the Grim Reaper, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.
The imagined “blue wave” that was to bring Democratic control over the Senate did not materialize, but Biden’s party has not entirely given up hope. There will be two Senate run-off races in Georgia on 5 January, and if Democrats win both, that will scrape a 50-50 tie in the chamber, allowing Kamala Harris, as vice-president, to cast tie-breaking votes.
McConnell was just reelected in Kentucky by 20 points. Photograph: Timothy D Easley/AP
It is not impossible. Voter registration drives look to have succeeded in turning the state blue in the presidential election for the first time since 1992. But it will be an uphill task, and most Georgia observers expect the parties to emerge from the runoffs with one seat apiece, leaving the Senate split 51-49 in the Republicans’ favor.
In that case, a Biden presidency would have to contend with the veteran senator from Kentucky who relishes the nickname of Grim Reaper for his lethal treatment of almost all Democratic legislation. He said in 2010 that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president”.
McConnell failed in that task but made up for it by killing off mounds of Democratic legislation and Obama nominations for administrative positions. So despite winning more votes than anyone in US political history, Biden will have to share power with the head of a chamber in which Wyoming (population 586,107) has the same clout as California (nearly 40 million).
“Mitch McConnell will force Joe Biden to negotiate every single cabinet secretary, every single district court judge, every single US attorney with him,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy told Politico. “My guess is we’ll have a constitutional crisis pretty immediately.”
A surge in youth voter turnout may have helped propel Biden to victory, writes Poppy Noor:
In an election of many firsts, it appears that surging youth turnout in a number of key states may have helped propel Joe Biden to victory.
Analysis suggests an increase of as much as 10% in youth voter turnout – with particularly high engagement in 11 key battleground states. That may have been game-changing for Joe Biden, who had the support of 61% of people aged 18-29.
“This election feels so much bigger than anything before it,” said 20-year-old Alondra Alvarez, who voted early in Michigan, a state which saw youth voter turnout triple since 2016.
On the University of Pittsburgh campus. Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
“I remember how I felt in 2016 after Trump was elected. It wasn’t good – but it also wasn’t my fault, I didn’t have a say in what the outcome was going to be,” she said.
A number of initiatives look to have made all the difference this year, with same-day registration now allowed in 21 states; and secure ballot drop-off boxes on college campuses in almost every state.
This tedious repetition of the patently false accusation of voter fraud by the peculiar shirt-tucker Rudy Giuliani, who will say literally anything to sustain the next Trump grift which is coming as sure as the sunrise, bears mentioning only because of how long is his list of the states where they got beaten.
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada – oh don’t forget Arizona, that was bad, and Maine, that district in Nebraska …
The Biden selection by the Crooked Media is based on unlawful votes in PA, Mich, GA, Wisc, Nevada et al.
To the genre of the cathartic Trump sayonara, Tim Miller of the conservative anti-Trump Bulwark adds this prize:
On the eve of the 2016 election, the one thing that I most looked forward to was the prospect of never having to consider Donald Trump again. Never having to waste another solitary brain particle on him.
Alas it wasn’t to be then. It certainly hasn’t been the case during this week’s 50+ hour Steve Kornacki Big Board binge fest. Nor will it be going forward. We are not done with Donald Trump as a malignant force in American politics just because he was defeated in his re-election bid. He will still be in office for eleven critical weeks. Then we will have to contend with him for years to come. He may have broken something fundamental in our country that will take a generation to fix. I understand all that.
But those impending threats shouldn’t minimize the enormity of what we accomplished in brushing him back.
And it doesn’t make this next sentence any less sweet.
How is the national healing going? Some prominent Americans on the Biden side are preaching reconciliation:
the first thing I did when the presidency was called is text and call my family members who do not agree and tell them I love them and am here for them. #FamilyFirst. Call your family today. Happy Sunday. ♥️
If someone you love and care about voted the other way, today might be a good day to reach out. Not to talk politics, but to talk about things that will remind them (and yourself) why you love and care about them.
But judging by the replies to those tweets, many people do not see reconciliation as a possibility, and some accuse the tweeters of blindness to the threat Trump represented and the damage he has done.
Financial markets around the world have received a marked boost in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election, with Japanese shares hitting their highest level for nearly three decades and oil prices also climbing.
Stock prices in Europe and New York were also expected to rise sharply on Monday after the president-elect pledged to try to bring unity to the US after four tumultuous years under the Trump administration.
Good morning: It's risk on in Asia! Best so far in USD in 5 days:
The Nikkei index in Tokyo led the way with a rise of 2.3% as traders in Asia Pacific got the first chance to give their verdict on the Biden victory declared over the weekend.
In China, the Shanghai Composite was also up more than 2%, Hong Kong shares rose 1.5% and the ASX200 in Sydney jumped 1.74%.
Biden is planning a series of urgent orders that would roll back some of Trump’s agenda, immediately fulfilling some of his campaign promises.
Vice president Mike Pence will lead a coronavirus taskforce meeting today – the first in weeks after the campaign schedule had halted the meetings.
A little-know Trump appointee is reportedly “refusing to sign a letter allowing Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week”.
Top Republicans either amplified Trump’s baseless claims of widespread vote rigging or remained silent, with only a tiny number of moderates following tradition and congratulating Biden.
Trump has not made any public appearances since the race was called for Biden. Today, he has been posting Fox News clips on Twitter and spreading misinformation and unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.
In about half of the tweets he has posted since Biden became the president-elect, Trump’s messages and videos have required labels from Twitter noting that his allegations are disputed, or messages from the social media site clarifying that mail-in voting is safe and secure.
Trump, who has been golfing this weekend, has no public events scheduled for Monday. Biden is launching his Covid-19 task force and moving forward with transition efforts.
