President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team has new issues with the Trump administration, the latest in one series of collisions between them. According to CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe, there is disagreement over access to the Pentagon.
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller said his team and the president-elect’s office mutually agreed to postpone some meetings scheduled for Friday until after the holidays. However, Yohannes Abraham, the executive director of the Biden-Harris transition, told reporters Friday that no agreement has been reached.
He said that Mr. Biden still faces “isolated backlash” from political appointees at the Department of Defense, and similar issues at a few other agencies he declined to name.
Miller said the Pentagon has fulfilled hundreds of interview requests with personnel and handed over thousands of pages of documents. The Pentagon also announced that it would suspend daily safety briefings for the remainder of the year, for what it calls a “vacation break.”
The split comes when the president-elect will announce more historic cabinet appointments.
He is expected to nominate the New Mexico congressman Deb Haaland to serve as head of the Interior Department, the first Native American woman in the role. The Interior Department oversees about one-fifth of the nation’s land, including federally controlled tribal areas.
Mr. Biden also plans to appoint Michael Regan, North Carolina’s senior environmental officer, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Regan would be the first black man to lead the EPA.
Meanwhile, elected Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Georgia on Monday to campaign for Democratic Senate layoff candidates Jon Ossoff and Reverend Rafael Warnock. First daughter Ivanka Trump will be there the same day to campaign with Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
The aides to the president-elect have not yet said whether he could return to Georgia before the Jan. 5 second round.
Mr. Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will deliver on their promise to publicly use the Covid-19 vaccine Monday. Harris and her husband will take the vaccine the following week.
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