Joe Biden speaking in Wilmington, Delaware on Nov. 16. Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Photo

 

Joe Biden speaking in Wilmington, Delaware on Nov. 16. Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

President-elect Joe Biden stressed his opposition to the federal death penalty on Saturday just after the Trump administration scheduled three executions of inmates on death row before his Jan. 20 inauguration.

Why it matters: The Justice Department on Friday directed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule three additional executions on top of two it has already scheduled for December.

Context: The Bureau of Prisons put Orlando Hall, 49, to death on Thursday. He was found guilty of kidnapping, raping and burying a Texas teenager alive in 1994. MOVING ON Full News Here

• Hall was the eighth inmate to be executed by the federal government this year following a 17-year hiatus. The DOJ has executed more people in 2020 than during the previous half-century, according to AP.
• The last time the government carried out an execution between a presidential election and the inauguration of the new president was 1889, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center.

What they’re saying: “The President-Elect opposes the death penalty, now and in the future, and as president will work to end its use,” TJ Ducklo, press secretary for the Biden-Harris campaign, said in a statement on Saturday.

The big picture: Alfred Bourgeois is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 11. He was found guilty of murdering his 2 1/2-year-old daughter in 2004.

• Cory Johnson’s execution is planned for Jan. 14, 2021. He was found guilty of seven counts of capital murder, though his lawyers argue Johnson is intellectually disabled and therefore prohibited from being executed, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
• Dustin Higgs is set to be executed on Jan. 15. He was convicted of ordering the murders of three women 1996. Higgs’ attorneys argue he is intellectually disabled and receiving an “arbitrary and inequitable” punishment since the person who prosecutors claim carried out the killings did not receive the death penalty, according to AP.
• All three are Black men, as was Hall. MOVING ON Full News Here

Twitter will hand @POTUS account to Joe Biden on Inauguration Day

WASHINGTON, D.C. (KXAN) — Even if Pres. Trump has not conceded by Jan. 20, Twitter will hand over the @POTUS account to president-elect Joe Biden as soon as he’s sworn in at noon.

Twitter confirmed the news to Politico on Friday, saying transfer of the presidential handle will be automatic — as will the accounts for @whitehouse, @VP and @FLOTUS.

“Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021,” Twitter spokesperson Nick Pacilio said in an email, according to Politico. “As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration.”

Twitter says all Trump’s tweets will be archived, as have those of Barack Obama (the first president to use the account).

While removing Trump’s access to the @POTUS account — which has over 32 million followers — will likely remove some elements of his reach, it may not be much. Trump has maintained (and often used more frequently) his own personal account, which has 88.9 million followers.

On Friday, Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger certified the battleground state’s results, which reflect Biden as the winner of 2.47 million votes to Trump’s 2.46 million.

Georgia governor certifies presidential electors for Biden

As of Saturday morning, Trump continued advancing still unproven claims of voter fraud in the 2020 Election, tweeting: “Big voter fraud information coming out concerning Georgia. Stay tuned!”

Twitter says it will meet with the Biden transition team to explain how the account will operate from now on. MOVING ON Full News Here

Presidential Transition Live Updates: Trump Returns to Golf Course as World Leaders Discuss Pandemic

In an alternate universe where there was no coronavirus pandemic, President Trump might have been ending his presidency by attending the Group of 20 summit in the same city he visited on his first foreign trip as president: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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Instead, the coronavirus has turned the global meeting into a V.I.P. webinar — and left the president to pursue his more regular weekend routine, tweeting and going to the golf course.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump briefly participated in a virtual Group of 20 summit from the Situation Room. But he was not listed as a participant at a sideline event at the conference on “Pandemic Preparedness and Response.” Speakers at the event included Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany.

Instead, Mr. Trump continued the postelection weekend routine he has settled into. He sends out a tweet with a new, empty promise of “fraud” revelations and then heads to his Virginia golf course. It was the third weekend in a row that he has done so.

“Big voter fraud information coming out concerning Georgia. Stay tuned!” Mr. Trump tweeted on Saturday morning.

In reality, Georgia Republicans on Friday delivered a blow to his attempts to undo the election results. The secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, announced that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. had defeated Mr. Trump by 12,670 votes. Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican, said he would sign the certification. Mr. Trump has been furious at Mr. Kemp for not helping him in his attempt to undo the election results in his state.

Since the election, Mr. Trump has taken no questions from reporters. But he has played golf on Nov. 7, 8, 14, 15 and 21.

— Annie Karni

Biden marches toward Inauguration Day, as more Republicans acknowledge his win.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, referred to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris as “president-elect” and “vice president-elect” in an interview on ABC News on Friday.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. continued to overcome President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results on Friday, as only a few Republican lawmakers started to break ranks and acknowledge Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.

Georgia became the first contested state to certify Mr. Biden’s victory, a move that likely seals the state’s 16 electoral votes for the former vice president, although Mr. Trump could still demand a machine recount.

Georgia’s certification is the first of a series of battlegrounds that could officially declare Mr. Biden the winner in the coming days, with Michigan and Pennsylvania facing a certification deadline on Monday and Nevada on Tuesday.

Though Mr. Biden won Michigan decisively, the outcome of the state’s 16 electoral votes was a source of intense focus on Friday, as top Republican lawmakers from the state visited the White House at the president’s invitation. After the meeting, the lawmakers said that they would “follow the normal process” in certifying the state’s vote tally and honor the electoral outcome, dealing a blow to one of the president’s most brazen attempts to subvert the electoral process.

More Republican lawmakers on Friday also publicly acknowledged Mr. Trump’s loss. Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, referred to Mr. Biden and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris as “president-elect” and “vice president-elect” in an interview on ABC News. Representative Kay Granger, Republican from Texas, said on CNN that she had “great concerns” about Mr. Trump’s efforts to the upend the election, saying, “It’s time to move on.”

And Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee became the most prominent Republican lawmaker to press Mr. Trump to start the transition process, saying on Friday that it looks like Mr. Biden had a “very good chance” of winning. Late Friday night, a spokeswoman for Ms. Blackburn said the senator “misspoke.”

Mr. Biden met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, during the first in-person gathering of the Democratic leaders since the election.

They said the meeting was focused on the need for Congress to pass a coronavirus aid package in the coming weeks, rather than waiting for Mr. Biden to take office in January.

— Pranshu Verma