Celebration in New York City as the victory of Joe Biden in the US Presidential election is announced (Todd Heisler/New York Times)
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UPDATE, 1125 GMT:
The Biden transition team says that, on his first day in office, President Joe Biden will:
- Rejoin the Paris Accords on climate
- Reverse Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization
- Repeal Trump’s ban on immigration from Muslim-majority countries
- Reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, protecting almost 700,000 “Dreamers” — the children of undocumented immigrants — from the deportation threatened by the Trump Administration
All of those actions can be pursued through executive order, in the event that GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell and Republican senators try to block any Administration policies.
UPDATE, 1115 GMT:
Naomi Biden, the granddaughter of Joe Biden, posts a photo of the moment that the family learned of his victory.
Walking in the garden, the President-elect and his wife Jill heard applause and went into the house to be greeted by their grandchildren.
11.07.20 pic.twitter.com/HHVJMmIoAW
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) November 7, 2020
And a reminder of the significance of Kamala Harris as Vice President-elect:
Madame Vice President. pic.twitter.com/Ed1ihLa8Fh
— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) November 7, 2020
ORIGINAL ENTRY: President-elect Joe Biden and his Vice Presidential running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, have pledged a Presidency for all Americans, seeking an end to division and effective action against the Coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 237,000 people in the US.
Biden spoke on Saturday night, hours after he clinched victory with triumph in Pennsylvania, before a drive-in audience in Wilmington, Delaware.
Joe Biden Will Be The 46th President of the USA
“Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now,” Biden appealed. He continued:
For all those of you who voted for President Trump, I understand the disappointment tonight. I’ve lost a couple times myself. But now, let’s give each other a chance. It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again.
This is the time to heal in America.
The two Democrats focused on a message of practical steps to approach the public health, economic, and social challenges and on “decency”.
Harris invoked her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who came to the United States from India at the age of 19, and said Americans had chosen “hope and unity, decency, science and, yes, truth”.
The first woman, Black American, and Asian American to hold the Vice Presidency, she paid tribute to the women “who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight”.
While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.
Biden echoed: “What is our mandate? I believe it’s this: Americans have called upon us to marshal the forces of decency, the forces of fairness, to marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time.”
Harris said simply, “You delivered a clear message. You chose hope.”
I knew we’d be happy but I didn’t realize we’d be spontaneous dance parties in the street happy. What a moment pic.twitter.com/8NsGheybEU
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) November 8, 2020
A Task Force on Coronavirus
During the campaign, Biden and Harris prepared for immediate action on Coronavirus as soon as they are inaugurated on January 20, with briefing from the medical and public health experts pushed away by the Trump Administration.
Biden said in his Saturday night speech, “Our work begins with getting Covid under control.”
His staff indicated that the three co-chairs of the 12-member panel will be former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a Yale University professor.
On Saturday, the US recorded more than 100,000 Coronavirus cases for the fourth straight day. The 121,013 new infections raised the total to 9,860,958.
The death toll reached 237,113, with 1,014 fatalities. For the first time since August 11-15, there were more than 1,000 deaths for the fifth straight day.
Biden pledged, “I will spare no effort, none, or any commitment to turn around this pandemic.”
The Biden-Harris team have convened an internal group of about two dozen health policy and technology experts. They are pursuing the development and delivery of a vaccine, improvement of health data, and the securing of supply chains.
With Donald Trump denying the threat of the virus, the White House Coronavirus Task Force is all but dormant. It meets only once a week, and the chair, Vice President Mike Pence, has not attended a meeting for almost two months.
The Government’s top Coronavirus expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been vilified as a “disaster” by Trump and his inner circle, and Trump has called scientists “idiots”. Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Task Force, has been ignored even as she warns of a winter surge of the virus.
On Wednesday, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, four other White House aides, and a Trump campaign worker tested positive for the virus.
See Coronavirus — Another US Daily Record as White House Chief of Staff Tests Positive
The Guardian admits that the election has not been decided: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/07/joe-biden-donald-trump-us-election-lawsuits-recount-supreme-court
“Once a candidate is projected as the president-elect, it is highly unlikely the organization behind that projection would withdraw it. As a matter of law, however, state results are not official until they go through a statewide certification process. Each state sets its own deadline for finishing that process. On 14 December, the electors chosen by their respective parties will all meet and cast their votes for president. The electors are chosen based on the certified winner of the popular vote.”
The Supreme Court stands ready to invalidate the around 70K ballots that separate Trump from re-election.
Fulton county in Georgia may have 132,000 change of address red flag ballots: https://rfangle.com/election/breaking-132000-ballots-in-georgia-likely-ineligible/
For all those who doubt widespread fraud/errors in this election, the state canvass, audit and recount will result in the invalidation of many ballots.
The Georgia Secretary of State has alluded to it on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GaSecofState/status/1325206123784228865
Biden’s lead may be overturned prior to the recount.
Rastgoo,
Please try to keep up. The Fulton County, Georgia issue was resolved on Saturday — and it wasn’t “132,000 change of address ballots”.
“UPDATE: Fulton County ballot scanning issue affected just 342 votes”
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/issue-reported-with-election-reporting-work-fulton-county/W5OF32LWFRFFXGOHQ365UVQAOA/
S.
That is a separate issue. But how many counties are there in Georgia? 159.
159 * 342 = 54,378 votes could be affected statewide (potentially)
It appears some 300,000 ballots in Wisconsin could be invalidated: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/many-200000-wisconsin-residents-may-have-voted-absentee-without-having
Biden leads Trump by just 20,000 in the state.
Rastgoo,
Thank you for highlighting another example of pro-Trump misinformation (“Just the News” is a propaganda site posing as a news outlet).
The actual story is that the Wisconsin Election Commmission put in procudures, before the election, to allow voters to correct ballots that did not confirm to requirements, for example, if they lacked a witness signature.
Just The News turns this into the myth of “300,000” invalid ballots. Here’s the actual story:
https://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2020/10/wisconsin-voters-cure-rejected-absentee-ballots/
“When Melissa Lemke got a call that her absentee ballot had been rejected, she was convinced there had been some mistake. As an alderwoman in Racine, she knew how important it was to carefully fill out her ballot and envelope, and she’d done so successfully in past elections.
She thought back to the day she submitted her ballot, and remembered being engrossed in conversation with her partner about local politics.
‘I was probably just talking more about the issues than paying attention to the directions,’ she said. Lemke misunderstood the witness address field, and left it blank. The clerk mailed her ballot back, Lemke corrected it and submitted it at an early in-person voting location in Racine.
As the general election approaches, the state is seeing a small number of errors among the 1.3 million absentee ballots that have been returned. Data from the Wisconsin voter database requested by Wisconsin Watch showed that nearly 1,400 ballots were rejected as of Oct. 21.
Without action by the voters, those ballots will not count. But if voters act quickly, they can correct them.”
You fail to understand the problem. It isn’t about witness signatures (although that is an issue):
1. 200,000 citizens were improperly exempted from voter ID rules by allowing them to claim the COVID-19 pandemic caused them to be “indefinitely confined.”
2. The election board failed to purge 130,000 names from outdated voter rolls as required by law.
I suspect that, in the case of the latter, ballots were returned by ineligible voters.
Rastgoo,
I didn’t fail to understand — both those points are unsupported claim from a propaganda site that says “we have seen the documents” and never produces them.
S.
Text of Donal Trump’s statement about contesting the election: https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-11-07/text-of-statement-from-president-donald-trump
“We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed. The simple fact is this election is far from over. Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor. In Pennsylvania, for example, our legal observers were not permitted meaningful access to watch the counting process. Legal votes decide who is president, not the news media.
“Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated. The American People are entitled to an honest election: that means counting all legal ballots, and not counting any illegal ballots. This is the only way to ensure the public has full confidence in our election. It remains shocking that the Biden campaign refuses to agree with this basic principle and wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters. Only a party engaged in wrongdoing would unlawfully keep observers out of the count room – and then fight in court to block their access.
“So what is Biden hiding? I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands.”
Note: No final results have been certified. The counting is still ongoing.
So suddenly Joe Biden is superman. The man failed to do anything substantial in 47 years in Congress.
He had NOT been elected President of the United States. That election happens on Dec 14th.