As Trump refuses to concede, his agencies prepare for a Biden transition

-

 

As Donald Trump's refusal to accept the election results continues, agency officials in the Trump administration put in charge of the transition are in the awkward place of effectively twiddling their thumbs until the General Services Administration, an agency led by a Trump appointee, signs off on the election results -- a process that is normally not an issue.

Cabinet leaders, meanwhile, have suggested there will be a second Trump term, playing into Trump's fantasies that he hasn't lost to President-elect Joe Biden.

But that doesn't mean the agencies aren't making some preparations for the inevitable. 

One Department of Energy division is starting to quietly prepare for the incoming Biden administration even though no official connection has been made, according to one staffer in the department.

State Department officials are growing anxious and frustrated as they are prevented from interacting with Biden's transition team. "It is frustrating on one hand, but on another it is also damaging to the morale at the department," said one current official familiar with the pause that has been put in place.

The preparations, which career diplomats carry out, as required by law, are already done. The office spaces for the transition teams --- both the State Department career officials assigned to the job by the department and the Biden State Department team -- are sitting vacant.

"They have done everything they can do. Now they just wait," said a source familiar with the process.

While department officials realize they have no other option but to remain patient, recognizing that they will eventually get to work with the incoming team, they also believe the department needs a tremendous amount of attention and would like the Biden team to get in as soon as possible.
"I am worried they are going to open up the hood, and it is going to be a lot worse than they expected," said a second State Department official.

A Treasury staffer said the Treasury Department has been "running through a standard transition process," which began a month out from the election. That process is ongoing, the source said, though there has been no communication regarding landing teams from the Biden transition yet.

Inside the Department of Homeland Security, Mark Koumans, a longtime DHS official who is leading the transition effort for the department, recently reminded staff that until there is a declaration certifying the election, personnel should refrain from speaking directly with members of the Biden team and continue to go through the department's transition office, a department official said.

Democratic congressional aides who regularly deal with agencies say their contacts have gone silent since the election, with one suspecting concerns about losing their jobs or being the target of a hunt for leaks -- particularly after the administration's personnel chief spread word throughout the administration on Monday that if he heard of anyone looking for another job they would be fired, according to a senior official.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chicago Police release footage of officer fatally shooting 13-year-old boy

-
Image
Police Bodycam footage of a 13-year-old boy being shot dead by police in Chicago shows the youth appearing to drop a handgun and raising his hands less than a second before an officer kills him. A still frame taken from Officer Eric Stillman’s body camera footage shows that Adam Toledo was empty handed had his hands up when Officer Stillman shot him once in the chest at about 3am on 29 March. Police, who were responding to reports of shots fired in the area, say the boy had a handgun on him before the shooting. Officer Stillman’s footage shows him shining a light on a handgun on the ground near Adam after he shot him.    The release of the footage and other investigation materials comes at a sensitive time, with the ongoing trial in Minneapolis of former Officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd and the recent police killing of another black man, Daunte Wright, in one of that city’s suburbs. Before the Civilian Office of Police Accountability posted the material on it...
Read more

Israel destroys nature reserve, uproots 10,000 trees

-
Image
The Israeli army destroyed a natural reserve and uprooted at least 10,000 trees in a military campaign in the northern West Bank in a move that Palestinians termed a "crime". Moataz Bisharat, who is responsible for monitoring Israeli settlement activity in the Jordan Valley, told Anadolu Agency that the occupation army pushed military vehicles and dozens of soldiers into the Ainun area in Tubas city in the morning and destroyed a nature reserve built on an area of about 400 dunums (98 acres). The occupation army "chopped down and destroyed about 10,000 forest trees and about 300 olive trees," he said. Trees were planted in the nature reserve eight years ago as part of the Greening Palestine project supervised by the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture and funded by the Venezuelan consulate in Palestine. Bisharat stressed that the occupation alleged that the destruction of the reserve came as it was classed as a military zone even though it was not more than 300 metr...
Read more

Unrest in South Africa increases fars of food and fuel shortages

-
Image
 Violence and looting has raged in South Africa for the sixth day running, stoking fears of food and fuel shortages as disruption to farming, manufacturing and oil refining began to bite amid the country’s worst unrest in decades. More than 70 people have died as grievances over the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma have widened into an outpouring of anger over the inequality that remains 27 years after the end of apartheid. Poverty has been exacerbated by severe social and economic restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. More than 1,200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air on Tuesday and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations. Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampedes as thousands of people stole food, electric appliances, liquor and clothing from ...
Read more