Joe Biden’s team is pressing forward with preparations to take over the federal government when his term starts despite virtually no help from Donald Trump’s outgoing administration.
The president-elect faces choices that will either please or anger the bickering wings of his party as leftists and centrists vie to set the direction of the incoming Democratic administration. The process also sends a clear message to the Republican party and Trump: Biden won and will be sitting in the White House come January.
“The truth is the Trump administration can file whatever it wants to the federal register, can do whatever executive orders it wants until noon on January 20th, and at that moment they can no longer do it and the Biden people get to stop whatever they had in the pipeline and put whatever they want in their own pipeline,” said Tevi Troy, who helped run the transition to the second Bush-Cheney term in 2004. Troy also authored Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump.
The Biden team, Troy added, “know the things they want to stop from happening and they’re just going to go do it”.
On Wednesday night Biden took his most significant step yet, naming Ron Klain, a longtime aide, as his chief of staff. The move underscored that even as Biden vows to fill out his administration with figures spanning all wings of the Democratic party, he also plans to include hands familiar with the conventional levers of Washington DC.
“He wants people who are super capable … part of what you want to do is restore faith in government, in public service and the way that career folks are treated,” said Lisa Brown, a former staff secretary for Barack Obama’s administration who worked on the 2008 presidential transition.
Brown noted that Biden’s team was focused on diversity. “A lot of what he wants to do if we don’t get the Senate back is going to be harder and so one of the things he’s got control over is the people that he wants to appoint. So you can show people you’re representing America even if you’re not able to get through Congress some of the initiatives.”
Klain’s appointment comes at a moment of high political tension in Washington. Despite losing the popular vote and electoral college, Trump has not conceded the race, and the General Services Administration, the federal agency in charge of supporting other agencies, has not yet given the Biden team the normal designation a victorious presidential campaign gets.
A sign-off from the administrator of the GSA is required for an incoming administration to get some essential transition resources – such as access to classified briefings – and take steps for background checks on cabinet appointees. In past elections, the GSA has recognized the results much faster.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
