Biden officially secures Electoral College majority after California certifies votes

11 min readDec 5, 2020

California certified its presidential election Friday and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for President-elect Biden, officially handing him the Electoral College majority needed to win the White House.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s formal approval of Mr. Biden’s win in the state brought his tally of pledged electors to 279, according to a tally from The Associated Press. That’s just over the 270 threshold for victory.

These steps in the election are often ignored formalities. But the hidden mechanics of electing a U.S. president have drawn new scrutiny this year as President Trump continues to deny Mr. Biden’s victory and pursues increasingly specious legal strategies aimed at overturning the results before they are finalized.

Although it’s been apparent for weeks that Mr. Biden won the presidential election, his accrual of more than 270 electors is a key step toward the White House, said Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University.

“It is a legal milestone and the first milestone that has that status,” Foley said. “Everything prior to that was premised on what we call projections.”

The electors named Friday will meet December 14, along with counterparts in each state, to formally vote for the next president. Most states have laws binding their electors to the winner of the popular vote in their state, measures that were upheld by a Supreme Court decision this year. There have been no suggestions that any of Mr. Biden’s pledged electors would contemplate not voting for him.

Results of the Electoral College vote are due to be received, and typically approved, by Congress on January 6. Although lawmakers can object to accepting the electors’ votes, it would be almost impossible for Mr. Biden to be blocked at that point.

The Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would both vote separately to resolve any disputes. One already has arisen from Pennsylvania, where 75 Republican lawmakers signed a statement on Friday urging Congress to block the state’s electoral votes from being cast for Mr. Biden. But the state’s Republican U.S. senator, Pat Toomey, said soon after that he would not be objecting to Pennsylvania’s slate of electors, underscoring the difficulty in trying to change the election results through Congress.

“As a practical matter, we know that Joe Biden is going to be inaugurated on January 20,” Foley said.

That was clear in the days after the election, when the count of mail ballots gradually showed that Mr. Biden had won victories in enough states to win the Electoral College. It became even more apparent in late November, when every swing state won by Mr. Biden certified him as the winner of its elections and appointed his electors to the Electoral College. Mr. Trump has fruitlessly tried to stop those states from certifying Mr. Biden as the winner and appointing electors for the former vice president.

He made no such effort in deeply Democratic California, the most populous state in the nation. Three more states won by Mr. Biden — Colorado, Hawaii and New Jersey — have not yet certified their results. When they do, Mr. Biden will have 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232.

Mr. Trump and his allies have brought at least 50 legal cases trying to overturn the results in the swing states Mr. Biden won — mainly Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. More than 30 have been rejected or dropped, according to an AP tally.

Mr. Trump and his allies have also raised the far-fetched notion that Republican state legislatures in those states could appoint a rival set of electors pledged to Mr. Trump.

But state Republican leaders have rejected that approach, and it would likely be futile in any case. According to federal law, both chambers of Congress would need to vote to accept a competing slate of electors. If they don’t, the electors appointed by the states’ governors — all pledged to Mr. Biden in these cases — must be used.

The last remaining move to block the election would be the quixotic effort to vote down the electors in Congress.

This tactic has been tried — a handful of congressional Democrats in 2000, 2004 and 2016 objected to officially making both George W. Bush and Mr. Trump president. But the numbers were not enough to block the two men from taking office.

Kentucky council unanimously denies request for independent prosecutor in Breonna Taylor case

The Kentucky Prosecutors Advisory Council unanimously decided on Friday to not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the death of Breonna Taylor. The council argued that it does not have the legal authority to appoint the prosecutor, although attorneys for Taylor’s family say otherwise.

Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother, called for an independent special prosecutor and a new grand jury to be appointed to the case in October.

Council member Christopher Cohron said during Friday’s meeting that after reviewing Palmer’s petition, he believes the council doesn’t have the legal authority to grant her request.

The council unanimously agreed. But when it was asked if there was any opposition, members of the public watching the meeting virtually chimed in.

WLKY reporter Deni Kamper caught the moments after the decision was made, in which several people criticized the council.

“You’re wrong and you know it,” one person could be heard saying.

Palmer’s October request for a new prosecutor came just days after two members of the original grand jury that reviewed Taylor’s case anonymously told “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King that they were not presented with the option to indict any of the police officers involved on charges directly linked to her death.

None of the officers present on the night Taylor was killed were charged directly for her death. One officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with wanton endangerment for shooting at the apartment adjacent to Taylor’s.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron told a local Kentucky TV station in September that if the grand jury “wanted to make an assessment about different charges, they could have done that.”

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“It was a betrayal,” Juror №2 told “CBS This Morning.” “They didn’t give us the charges up front… when they gave us all of that testimony, over 20-something hours, and then to say that these are the only charges that they’re coming up with, it’s like, ‘Well, what did we just sit through?’”

Lonita Baker, one of the attorneys representing Palmer, said case law supports Palmer’s request for a new prosecutor, according to CBS affiliate WLKY.

“There is plenty of authority that this council can appoint a special prosecutor by majority vote,” Baker said.

Sam Aguiar, another of Palmer’s attorneys, told CBS News the situation shows “how the cards stack so heavily in favor of law enforcement and against Black women.”

“Daniel Cameron completely undermined the integrity of our justice system, exposing its bias and the unethical conduct which happens behind the secret walls of grand jury proceedings,” Aguiar said. “Rather than fix this, eight prosecutors today chose to condone it. Their failure to step up here was cowardly. The whole world now sees clearly how the blindness of lady justice does not exist in Kentucky for Black women.”

Aguiar also said Palmer’s team will likely file an action in the courts to better interpret the legislation the council was referring to in their decision.

The council’s decision came on the same day that Taylor’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, held a ribbon cutting ceremony to rename Monroe Center Street NW “Breonna Taylor Way.”

“I want to make one thing clear,” said Justice for Black Lives president Alyssa Bates at the ceremony. “That street sign is not equal justice, at all. Just because that street sign is being hanged, it does not mean we are going to settle. We are going to keep applying pressure to make sure justice is served.”

Health care workers ask for help to slow COVID-19 spread

As coronavirus cases continue to soar, health care workers are raising their voices. Dozens of Connecticut doctors, who are worried about increased hospitalizations and deaths, sent a letter to Governor Ned Lamont with an urgent appeal: shut down indoor dining and gyms now to stop the spread. The letter, spearheaded by Dr. Luke Davis, a critical care physician at Yale New Haven Hospital, prompted an online petition signed by more than 750 people.

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Davis said Lamont did speak directly with him and several colleagues who signed his letter. The governor told them he will monitor the situation — but so far, he’s made no changes in Connecticut.

Despite new vaccines on the horizon, Davis said the public shouldn’t let down its guard.

“What is going on inside your hospital that you think people aren’t realizing out here?” CBS News asked Davis.

“Well, I think that we’re all getting tired,” he said. “It’s a very difficult disease. And the thing that makes the biggest difference is just not having the hospitals be overloaded, having enough staff to take care of people.”

Admissions for COVID-19 at Yale New Haven Hospital have nearly doubled over the last three weeks. The intensive care unit is nearly full.

In Wisconsin, thousands of health care professionals wrote an open letter to the public, imploring them to take the pandemic seriously and to take action to stop the virus.

In New York, roughly 200 nurses went on a two-day strike at Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital. During the two-day strike, nurses said they were demanding better working conditions and decided to walk off the job after contract negotiations with the hospital broke down, CBS New York reported.

“We don’t have enough staffing so we can’t take adequate care of the patients,” said Melissa Ricketts, a registered nurse at the hospital.

The hospital said it has offered the nurses what it calls a “good deal,” that the facility is in compliance with state rules, and that the union is “selfishly putting the community at risk” with the walkout, CBS N.Y. reported.

At least 866 health care workers have died from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of them was Dr. Carlos Araujo-Preza, of Houston, who died on Monday.

Arauzo-Preja, 51, was a critical care medical director at HCA Houston Hospital in Tomball, Texas, and was among those selected to conduct a study on the effectiveness of using convalescent plasma on critically ill coronavirus patients, CBS affiliate KHOU-TV reported.

His daughter, Andrea Araujo, hopes others don’t have to experience losing a loved one to COVID-19 like her family has.

“Just be a little bit safer so that no one else can go through a tragedy like this,” she told the TV station.

Trump orders most US troops to withdraw from Somalia

The Pentagon said Friday it is pulling most U.S. troops out of Somalia on President Donald Trump’s orders, continuing a post-election push by Mr. Trump to shrink U.S. involvement in counterterrorism missions abroad.

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Without providing details, the Pentagon said in a short statement that “a majority” of U.S. troops and assets in Somalia will be withdrawn in early 2021. There are currently about 700 troops in the Horn of Africa nation, training and advising local forces in an extended fight against the extremist group al-Shabab, an affiliate of al-Qaida.

Trump recently ordered troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he was expected to withdraw some or all troops from Somalia. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said on Wednesday that the future structure of the U.S. military presence in Somalia was still being debated.

The adjusted U.S. presence, Milley said, would amount to “a relatively small footprint, relatively low cost in terms of number of personnel and in terms of money.” He provided no specifics but stressed that the U.S. remained concerned about the threat posed by al-Shabab, which he called “an extension of al-Qaida,” the extremist group that planned the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States from Afghanistan.

“They do have some reach and they could if left unattended conduct operations against not only U.S. interests in the region but also against the homeland,” he said. “So they require attention.” Noting that Somalia remains a dangerous place for Americans, he said that a CIA officer was killed there recently.

The acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, made a brief visit to Somalia last week and met with U.S. troops.

Depending on what remains of the U.S. presence in Somalia when he takes office January 20, President-elect Joe Biden could reverse Trump’s drawdown or make other adjustments to reflect his counterterrorism priorities. The U.S. military also has a presence in neighboring Djibouti on the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Representative Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, criticized the Trump pullback in Somalia as a “surrender to al-Qaida and a gift of China.” Langevin is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee.

“When U.S. forces leave Somalia in response to today’s order, it becomes harder for diplomats and aid workers to help people resolve conflicts without violence and loss of life,” Langevin said. “With upcoming elections in Somalia and conflict raging in neighboring Ethiopia, abandoning our partners could not come at a worse time.”

Langevin said China will use the opportunity to build its influence in the Horn of Africa.

The Pentagon said the drawdown in Somalia does not mark the end of U.S. counterterrorism efforts there.

“As a result of this decision, some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa,” it said. “However, the remaining forces will be repositioned from Somalia into neighboring countries in order to allow cross-border operations by both U.S. and partner forces to maintain pressure against violent extremist organizations operating in Somalia.”

“The U.S. will retain the capability to conduct targeted counterterrorism operations in Somalia, and collect early warnings and indicators regarding threats to the homeland,” it added.

The nature of the threat posed by al-Shabab and the appropriate U.S. response has been a matter of increasing debate in the Pentagon, which has been looking for opportunities to shift its focus toward China as a greater long-term challenge.

A Defense Department watchdog report last week said U.S. Africa Command has seen a “definitive shift” this year in al-Shabab’s focus to attack U.S. interests in the region. Africa Command says al-Shabab is Africa’s most “dangerous” and “imminent” threat.

Biden officially secures Electoral College majority after California certifies votes

Health care workers ask for help to slow COVID-19 spread

Trump orders most US troops to withdraw from Somalia

Written by Pasoye