WILMINGTON, Del. -- President-elect Joe Biden's first Cabinet picks are coming Tuesday and planning is underway for a pandemic-modified inauguration in January as his team moves forward despite roadblocks from the Trump administration.
Ron Klain, Biden's incoming chief of staff, said that by doing so, the Biden transition was "beating, in fact, the pace that was set by the Obama-Biden transition, beating the pace set by the Trump transition."
He offered no details Sunday about which department heads would be announced: "You'll have to wait for the president-elect to say that himself."
The Associated Press has reported that Biden could name his nominee for secretary of state or treasury secretary this week. He said last week that he had settled on his pick for the Treasury Department.
Biden has pledged to build the most diverse government in modern history, and he and his team often speak about their desire for his administration to reflect America. He could make history by nominating the first woman to lead the Pentagon, the Treasury Department or the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the first Black American at the top of the Defense Department, the Interior Department or Treasury.
Klain said the Trump administration's refusal to clear the way for Biden's team to have access to key information about agencies and federal dollars for the transition is taking its toll on planning, including the Cabinet selection process. The General Services Administration has yet to acknowledge that Biden won the election -- a determination that would remove those roadblocks.
"We're not in a position to get background checks on Cabinet nominees. And so there are definite impacts. Those impacts escalate every day," Klain told ABC's "This Week."
Klain also echoed Biden's recent comment that President Donald Trump's efforts to hinder the transition have put American lives at risk by making it harder for the Biden team to coordinate with the current administration on pandemic planning.
"The president-elect, the vice president-elect are not getting the kind of intelligence briefings they're entitled to," Klain said. "Our transition isn't getting access to agency officials to develop our plans, so there's a lot of focus on that vaccine roll-out plan that's going to be critical in the early days of a Biden presidency. We have no access to that."
TRUMP UNMOVED
Trump, meanwhile, is still refusing to concede the election to Biden and continues making accusations of widespread voter fraud.
In a Sunday morning tweet shortly before arriving at his golf club in Sterling, Va., he weighed in on a federal judge's dismissal of a lawsuit that sought to block the certification of Pennsylvania's election results.
"Other than politics, how do you lose a case where large numbers of voters, far more than you need to flip Pennsylvania, are disenfranchised? Vote Observers thrown out of counting rooms," he tweeted, although his campaign's attorneys have acknowledged that Republican observers were in fact granted access to polling sites.
The president also lashed out at Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, who said in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" that he was "embarrassed that more people in the party aren't speaking up" against Trump.
"Well, I just don't think there are a lot of profiles in courage, frankly," Hogan said. "I mean, we all know how vindictive the president can be, how powerful his Twitter account is, and how he can really pressure Republicans and go after them. Very few of us are willing to stand up."
The president and his campaign legal team have largely failed in their efforts to challenge the election in the courts. And even as most Republicans on Capitol Hill have refused to acknowledge Biden's win, some have shifted course in recent days.
"I, frankly, do think it's time to -- well, it was past time to start a transition, to at least cooperate with the transition," said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said the GSA's designation should happen today, "because it didn't happen last Monday morning," to give the incoming administration "all the time they need."
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said there was a "very good chance" Biden would be president and that he and his team should have access to relevant information for the transition.
After a federal judge's ruling against the Trump campaign in an election challenge in Pennsylvania on Saturday, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of that state said the president had "exhausted all plausible legal options," and he congratulated Biden on his win.
Former Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a longtime Trump supporter, said Sunday on ABC that it was time for the president to stop contesting the outcome. Christie said Trump's legal team was a "national embarrassment."
He said the president should give up his legal strategy. "Elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn't happen," Christie said.
He said Trump's lawyers have made a flurry of fraud allegations but have offered no evidence in court. While they have proffered false conspiracy theories at news conferences, "They don't do it in the courtroom," Christie said, suggesting that attorneys are fearful of making baseless arguments under oath before federal judges.
"It must mean the evidence doesn't exist," he said.
Christie said the Republican Party should focus on trying to win Georgia's two runoff elections Jan. 5 to secure a Senate majority.
DIFFERENT KIND OF INAUGURATION
Looking ahead to the Jan. 20 inauguration, Klain said it is "going to definitely have to be changed" because of the pandemic, and that the Biden team is consulting with Democratic leadership in the House and Senate over their plans.
"They're going to try to have an inauguration that honors the importance and the symbolic meaning of the moment, but also does not result in the spread of the disease. That's our goal," Klain said.
Inaugurations typically include a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, remarks by the president and vice president from the Capitol, a lunch with lawmakers in the Capitol rotunda and numerous balls across Washington. All are events attended by hundreds and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people who travel to the nation's capital.
It's unclear how public health concerns will affect those traditions.
But, said Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager, "The American people voted for Joe Biden to be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021, and he will be."
MICHIGAN
Also Sunday -- a day before canvassers are to meet on certifying Biden's 154,000-vote victory in the battleground state of Michigan -- a legislative leader said Trump did not ask Republican state lawmakers to "break the law" or "interfere" with the election during a meeting at the White House.
House Speaker Lee Chatfield was among seven GOP legislators who met with Trump for about an hour Friday.
"There was this outrage that the president was going to ask us to break the law, he was going to ask us to interfere, and that just simply didn't happen," Chatfield told Fox News of the unusual meeting. He did not elaborate on what was discussed, except to say the delegation asked for additional federal aid to help Michigan's coronavirus response.
Michigan's elections agency has recommended that the Nov. 3 results -- including Biden's 2.8 percentage-point victory -- be certified by the Board of State Canvassers, which has two Democrats and two Republicans. The Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party want the board to adjourn for 14 days to investigate alleged irregularities in Wayne County, the state's largest and home to Detroit.
Staff for the state elections bureau said that claimed irregularities, even if verified, would not significantly affect the outcome. The Michigan Democratic Party said the total number of Detroit votes implicated by imbalanced precincts -- where the number of ballots does not equal the number of names on the poll book -- is at most 450, or "0.029% of the margin" separating Biden from Trump.
"The certification process must not be manipulated to serve as some sort of retroactive referendum on the expressed will of the voters. That is simply not how democracy works," chairwoman Lavora Barnes wrote to the board Sunday.
If the board does not confirm the results and the Michigan Supreme Court does not subsequently order it to do so, Chatfield said, "now we have a constitutional crisis."
He and other Republicans, however, have indicated they would not undermine the voters' will.
PENNSYLVANIA
In Pennsylvania, Trump is appealing the dismissal of his campaign's effort to block the vote certification.
The president and other plaintiffs filed notice of appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sunday, a day after the judge issued a scathing order shooting down claims of widespread irregularities with mail-in ballots.
Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, appeared in court for the first time in decades to argue the case last week.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann wrote in his order that Trump had asked the court to disenfranchise almost 7 million voters. In seeking such a "startling outcome," he said, a plaintiff could be expected to provide compelling legal arguments and "factual proof of rampant corruption" -- but "That has not happened."
PUTIN WAITING
President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that Russia is willing to work with whomever is officially declared the next president of the United States, but that he won't offer congratulations until the winner is formally decided or a candidate concedes.
Putin's remarks broadcast on state television reiterate earlier Kremlin comments on why Putin had not congratulated Biden after major news organizations called him president-elect, as did many other world leaders.
"We are just waiting for the end of the internal political confrontation," Putin said.
"We will work with any person who will be given the trust of the American people. But who will be given this trust? It must either be indicated by political custom when one of the parties recognizes the victory of the other, or the final results of the elections are summed up in a legitimate, legal way," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Alexandra Jaffe, David Eggert and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Paul Kane and Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post.
