US election: Joe Biden sets to work on transition to the White House

Joe Biden has taken the first steps towards taking over the White House 72 days from now.

Joe Biden visits the graves of his son Beau and first wife Neilia and daughter Amy. Picture: AFP

US president-elect Joe Biden took the first steps on Monday AEDT towards taking over the White House 70 days from now.

As congratulations poured in from world leaders and supporters nursed hangovers after a day of raucous celebrations, Mr Biden and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris launched a transition website, BuildBackBetter.com, and a Twitter feed, @Transition46.

The transition website lists four priorities for an administration led by Barack Obama’s former vice-president: COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

“The team being assembled will meet these challenges on Day One,” it said in a reference to January 20, 2021, when Mr Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the US.

Mr Biden, who turns 78 on ­November 20, is the oldest person ever elected to the White House. Senator Harris, 56, the junior senator from California, is the first woman and first black person to be elected vice-president.

Mr Biden plans to name a taskforce on Tuesday AEDT to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 237,000 people dead in the US and is surging across the country.

He has also announced plans to rejoin the Paris climate accord and will issue an executive order on his first day reversing Donald Trump’s travel ban on mostly Muslim countries.

Mr Biden has vowed to name a cabinet that reflects the diversity of the country although he may have some trouble gaining Senate approval for more progressive ­appointees if Republicans retain control of the Senate — an outcome that will depend on two runoff races in Georgia in January.  Mr Biden, after John F. Kennedy just the second Catholic to be elected US president, attended church on Sunday morning in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, and visited the graves of his son, Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and his first wife, Neilia, and daughter Amy, who died in a 1972 car accident.

The Trump campaign has mounted legal challenges to the results in several states but no evidence has emerged so far of any widespread irregularities that would affect the election outcome. On CNN on Sunday (Monday AEDT), Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to Mr Biden, dismissed the court challenges as “baseless legal strategies”.

Mr Biden received nearly 74.6 million votes to Mr Trump’s 70.4 million nationwide and has a 279-214 lead in the electoral college.

He also leads in Arizona, which has 11 electoral votes, and Georgia, which has 16, and if he wins both would finish with 306 electoral votes — the same total won by Mr Trump in 2016 when he upset Hillary Clinton.

In a victory speech on Saturday (Sunday AEDT), Mr Biden promised to unify the bitterly divided nation and reached out to Trump supporters, saying “they’re not our enemies, they’re Americans”.

“Let’s give each other a chance,” he said. “Let this grim era of demonisation in America begin to end, here and now.”

Financial markets welcomed Mr Biden’s victory, with shares up in Tokyo and Hong Kong, and US futures up on Wall Street on Sunday evening.

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and other European countries sent congratulations to Mr Biden, along with Australia, Canada, India, ­Indonesia, Israel, Japan and South Korea. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would wait until all legal challenges are resolved, while Trump ally President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil had yet to make any official comment.

AFP