Biden's transition moves ahead

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Supreme Court late Monday night to take up a lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, arguing that the battleground states exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws. He seeks to block election results from the states. 

It is the latest long shot petition to reach the high court challenging election results and faces tough odds before the justices.

If a state seeks to sue another state it can go directly to the Supreme Court but it would take five justices to agree to take up the matter. 

In the new filing, which has yet to be docketed at the high court, Paxton said that a “dark cloud” hangs over the 2020 Presidential election. 

“Lawful elections are at the heart of our constitutional democracy,” Paxton argued. He said that “using the Covid-19 pandemic as a justification” officials in the battle ground states “usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes.” He said they did so through “executive fiat”. He pointed specifically to mail in ballots which he said were placed “in drop boxes,” with “little to know chain of custody” which weakened signature verification and witness requirements which he called “the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote.”

Lawyers for Pennsylvania told the Supreme Court Tuesday morning that a lawsuit brought by Republicans in the state seeking to block election certification results is “fundamentally frivolous” and represented one of the most “dramatic disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic.”

The response came as the court is considering a petition from Rep. Mike Kelly and other state republicans asking the justices to nullify the certification of Pennsylvania election results, the latest desperate attempt on the part of republicans to challenge Joe Biden’s victory.  

Kelly challenges the Commonwealth’s “no-excuse” absentee ballot scheme that was passed in October of 2019. 

The effort faces steep odds at the Supreme Court, particularly because the dispute turns mostly on issues of state law. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the challenge holding that Kelly and others failed to file their challenge in a timely manner.

“It is beyond cavil that petitioners failed to act with due diligence” in presenting the case, the court held noting that they filed the suit more than one year after the enactment of the law at issue. 

Remember: Pennsylvania certified its results on Nov. 24, and it came after the state's 67 counties certified precinct results to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, Kathy Boockvar.

President-elect Joe Biden will take the oath of office on Jan. 20 in a 75% to 80% virtual inauguration mixing traditional ceremony with virtual festivities, co-chair of the Biden Presidential Inaugural Committee Rep. Jim Clyburn told CNN’s John Berman on New Day Tuesday. 

CNN reported yesterday that Biden could return to the nation's capital for his inauguration ceremony the way he long bridged his life at home and his job in politics: On an Amtrak train from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, DC.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced last month the senior leadership of the committee charged with planning and executing what will be an unprecedented presidential inauguration.

The committee, which is charged with fundraising and organizing inaugural events, promises that in its planning, it will prioritize "keeping people safe and preventing the spread of COVID-19 while engaging all Americans."

Watch Rep. Clyburn:

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday at 1:40 p.m. ET will introduce the scientists and doctors he says will finally defeat the pandemic — but for now, his team can only watch as a wave of infection and death deepens the crisis he will face after Jan. 20.

As Biden will give his most significant preview yet of his plan to tackle the worst health challenge in 100 years, President Trump — whose dereliction of duty has contributed to the alarming winter surge — will hold his own pandemic event.

He will pitch for credit for the swift development of Covid-19 vaccines and sign an executive order prioritizing their supply for Americans during a vaccine summit that is expected to begin at 2 p.m. ET.

The dueling events — one in Biden's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, and other at the White House — will showcase the vastly different approaches to the pandemic between Trump and Biden.

The President has repeatedly downplayed the disaster as he concentrates instead on false claims that last month's election was stolen from him. Biden, whose own campaign was an exercise in demonstrating social distancing and masking, is pledging to put science back at the center of the fight against the virus.

In the meantime, the tragedy of the pandemic is being exacerbated by the political vacuum in Washington. Trump, in his last weeks in office, has the power and presidential megaphone that could go a long way toward convincing Americans to take precautions, but has no inclination to do so.

Biden has the plans and a fresh team of experts who could make a difference, but he has no real power to shift American behavior and policies until he is inaugurated next month.

Read more here.

Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser of the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, said on Tuesday that they have a meeting planned on Thursday with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team.

“Our objective has always been outside of politics and making sure we make available these vaccines for the US people, and that’s what we’re doing,” Slaoui added.

The meeting will be held the same day as the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, a panel of independent experts, will meet to review Pfizer's data and make a recommendation to the FDA about whether to authorize the vaccine.

President Trump's legal team for weeks has worked to delay the certification of Joe Biden's election win in a long-shot effort to create an opening for Trump stay in power.

On Tuesday, that small window for subversion officially closes.

That's because Tuesday is the "safe harbor" deadline under federal law. What that means is that when Congress tallies the electoral votes in January, it must accept electoral results that were certified before the deadline.

Most states have already certified their results. Missouri is set to certify on Tuesday. Others, like Hawaii, have delayed their formal procedures, but none of the battleground states that Trump's team was hoping to hold up will be in play after Tuesday.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig puts it this way: The arrival of the safe harbor date should effectively extinguish any dying embers of hope even for the last few remaining election denialists. And what an utter disaster — legally and otherwise — the Trump team's effort to contest the election in the courts has been.

Trump's team sees the writing on the wall. There is a sense developing within Trump's legal team and what remains of his campaign staff that their efforts to overturn or delay the results of the election are coming to an end, multiple sources tell CNN.

But there's still room for drama. It's now up to the Electoral College to make Biden's victory completely official. 

On Dec. 14, electors will meet in their states to cast their votes for president and vice president. Those votes are later transmitted to officials and counted in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced the health team that will lead his administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic when he takes office in January.

He is scheduled to formally introduce the team in an event today at 1:40 p.m. ET in Wilmington, Delaware.

Here are Biden's nominees and appointees:

The team will lead the administration's response as the US grapples with a pandemic that has killed more than 283,000 Americans and shut down businesses and schools across the country.

Fauci told CNN's John Berman on "New Day" Monday that he had worked with all of the other members of Biden's health team and praised them as "excellent choices."

President-elect Joe Biden could return to the nation's capital for his inauguration ceremony the way he long bridged his life at home and his job in politics: On an Amtrak train from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, DC.

It would be a fitting moment for the man who took roughly 8,000 round trips on that same route during his time as senator and vice president — earning him the moniker "Amtrak Joe" — and who four years ago left Washington by train on his final day as vice president.

Biden's inauguration team is eyeing a rail arrival as one of a number of plans being discussed for the January celebration, Democrats familiar with the planning told CNN. The plan, first reported by Axios, is far from finalized and there is a great deal of uncertainty around all inauguration planning given the coronavirus pandemic, the Democrats cautioned. A spokesperson for Biden's presidential inaugural committee declined to comment.

Biden's deep ties to Amtrak and rail travel hark back to his earliest days in the US Senate. After losing his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972, Biden rode the rails to and from Washington nearly every day to help raise his sons, Hunter and Beau.

Biden became one of the rail system's biggest proponents on Capitol Hill and continued to take the train to Wilmington — albeit less frequently — while vice president.

The roughly 90-minute ride between Wilmington and DC was so central to Biden's story that the then-senator launched his first presidential bid in 1987 at his hometown train station.

Read more here.

President-elect Joe Biden nominated California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the transition team announced Monday.

If confirmed by the Senate, Becerra would serve a critical role in the administration's response to a pandemic that has killed more than 282,000 Americans.

Becerra, a former member of Congress, emerged as the leading contender for the critical role after other candidates with more health care expertise were ruled out.

The New York Times was first to report the expected nomination.

Here are some key things to know about Becerra: