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Live Updates: Biden’s Transition to the Presidency Formally Begins

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A key federal official designated Joe Biden the apparent winner after weeks of delay, allowing his team to access government resources and information. Mr. Biden will announce his picks for cabinet offices including the secretary of state and director of national intelligence.

Teams from President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s transition will begin reaching out across Washington on Tuesday, free to interact virtually with their counterparts in the government after President Trump’s administration formally cleared the way on Monday for an orderly transfer of power.

After more than a two-week delay following Mr. Biden’s victory in the election, there are just 57 days left until his inauguration. Mr. Biden has said the holdup of the transition threatened national security by depriving his team of critical briefings. And he warned that distribution of vaccines to combat the coronavirus would be at risk if his advisers could not work side-by-side with current health officials.

Those meetings are expected to begin immediately as preparations that have been underway for months kick into gear. At the Pentagon, officials said that Biden transition team members contacted the Defense Department on Monday night, soon after Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, announced that the transition could commence.

“We will begin immediately implementing our plan to provide support in accordance with statute, D.O.D. policy and the memorandum of agreement between the White House and the Biden-Harris team,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough said in a statement. “The D.O.D. Transition Task Force will arrange and coordinate all D.O.D. contact with the Biden-Harris team.”

Other transition teams also reached out to their agency contacts within hours of Ms. Murphy’s decision.

In a memorandum sent to White House employees late Monday night, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, wrote that Ms. Murphy had made an “ascertainment” about the results of the 2020 election “to allow the start of a presidential transition.” He reminded staff to conduct all work-related communications with official, White House email accounts. And he said records must be preserved.

He also warned, in bold letters, against unauthorized contact by the White House staff — known formally as members of the Executive Office of the President — with members of the Biden transition team.

“Unless specifically authorized,” he wrote, “E.O.P. personnel are not permitted to speak directly with a member of the Biden transition team or the federal transition coordinator.”

The warning underscored the sensitivity that usually accompanies discussions between administrations during a transition and the need for confidentiality.

It is not clear when Mr. Biden will receive his first classified national security briefing as president-elect. Transition officials have said that it was critical that the incoming president be aware of the potential threats and international dynamics that Mr. Trump receives in what is known as the Presidential Daily Brief.

Mr. Biden could begin receiving regular briefings as early as Tuesday, officials said.

With the pandemic raging, transition officials are also especially eager to start coordination with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and members of the Warp Speed project, which is responsible for vaccine distribution. Transition officials have said they want to begin receiving official government data about the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the virus.

Meetings between Mr. Biden’s coronavirus advisory group and government health officials were expected to begin Tuesday and intensify over the next several days.

The start of the formal transition also clears the way for government-run background checks of Mr. Biden’s cabinet nominees and other top aides who require high-level security clearances. Those checks, which are conducted by the F.B.I. and other agencies, had also been held up until Ms. Murphy’s decision.

Other, smaller changes will take place as well. Transition members will start using government email accounts — ending in ptt.gov, for “presidential transition team” — and Mr. Biden’s official transition website, buildbackbetter.com has already moved to a government server and been renamed buildbackbetter.gov.

Biden will announce cabinet picks today even as Trump vows to keep fighting the results.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will introduce his nominations for high-profile cabinet positions on Tuesday, a day after President Trump authorized his administration to officially begin the transition process, even as he refused to concede the election and vowed to continue his fight in court.

In a letter on Monday, Emily W. Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration, officially declared Mr. Biden the apparent winner of the presidential election, completing the step needed to grant Mr. Biden access to government funds and resources to start the transfer of power.

Her decision came after several additional senior Republican lawmakers, as well as leading figures from business and world affairs, denounced the delay in allowing the peaceful transfer of power to begin, a holdup that Mr. Biden and his top aides said was threatening national security and the ability of the incoming administration to effectively plan for combating the coronavirus pandemic. And the recent pro-Biden developments in Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as Georgia, which certified Mr. Biden’s win there last Friday, provided a clear justification for moving ahead.

Mr. Trump said he would press on with his legal battles, but made clear he accepted Ms. Murphy’s decision.

The Biden-Harris transition team said in a statement Monday evening that Ms. Murphy’s decision was “a needed step to begin tackling the challenges facing our nation, including getting the pandemic under control and our economy back on track.” The Biden transition website also moved from buildbackbetter.com to buildbackbetter.gov, a signal that the team had access to government resources.

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden plans to continue to chart his course toward Inauguration Day and formally name more officials to his administration:

  • Antony J. Blinken, a longtime foreign policy adviser, to be Secretary of State. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat, will be his pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
  • Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2016, to become the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. If confirmed, Mr. Mayorkas would become the first Latino to run the agency that manages the nation’s immigration policies.
  • Avril D. Haines, deputy director of the C.I.A. from 2013 to 2015, to be director of national intelligence. She would be the first woman to serve in her role, the top job in the intelligence community, if she wins Senate confirmation.
  • Former Secretary of State John Kerry to be a special envoy for climate change, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.
  • Janet Yellen, former head of the Federal Reserve, to be Treasury secretary. It is unclear if the role for Ms. Yellen, who would be the first woman to lead the Treasury, will be announced this week.

Mr. Biden’s movement on staffing comes as Mr. Trump’s election challenges in Michigan and Pennsylvania have failed.

In Michigan, which carries 16 electoral votes, election officials on Monday certified the state’s presidential results in favor of Mr. Biden, resisting pressure from Mr. Trump to delay the process.

And multiple counties in Pennsylvania on Monday certified the results of the election, including Philadelphia, the state’s most populous, where Mr. Biden scored his largest margin of victory. ( https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/24/us/joe-biden-trump?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage)

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