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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. It's Friday so we will have our weekly Ask The Mayor segment in the second hour of the program, as we usually do. Hold your mayor calls until eleven o'clock. I see some of your already tweeting questions about the plan to close all the public schools when the virus test positivity rate hits 3%, which could be any day.

That will be our lead topic with the mayor today. That and indoor dining. We'll take it from there with my questions and yours. Ask The Mayor coming up in an hour. Here's something unusual. The South Brooklyn and Staten Island congressional race between Max Rose and Nicole Malliotakis was too close to call, as the Republican Malliotakis led after election night, but thousands of absentee ballots were in line to be counted and Democrats, like in a lot of places, had been doing better with the absentee ballots and often caught up as they got counted.

As of yesterday, the race was still too close to call for the AP to make a firm mathematical projection, but Congressmen Rose himself saw that the vote count wasn't going his way at a high enough percentage so he conceded. What a concept? The other candidate was leading, the mathematical handwriting was on the wall and the loser acknowledged that he lost.

He didn't make up claims of massive fraud out of thin air or try to get the Democratic-controlled New York State legislature to declare the outcome unknowable and seat him instead.

He saw the math and he conceded. What an unusual and innovative concept?. Good luck back in the private sector Max Rose. Good luck in Washington, Congresswoman-elect Nicole Malliotakis. She becomes New York City's only Republican member. Any candidate is entitled to ask for recounts and close races and to go to court with claims of election irregularities, but while that process is playing out, you would think one president of the United States would help the unofficial winner to be ready to assume all those responsibilities. Let's say just in case his 60-electoral vote lead and 5 million popular vote lead happened to hold up in court, just on the off chance, but that's not what's happening.

The Biden transition has begun, getting ready to go to work from its own end alone. We now will look past the stonewalling and the now bipartisan complaints about that, to the transition work itself. What's the Biden-Harris team doing and what kinds of immediate coronavirus response and other work can we tell they're getting ready to do, beginning on an Inauguration Day, January 20th, that would be different from the current administration.

With us for this is Lisa Rein who covers the federal government for The Washington Post. Her latest article is called How Biden's transition team will work around Trump's blockade of the government. Lisa, thanks for helping us out with this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Lisa Rein: Hi Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian: As I just read your headline uses the word blockade. Can you describe the nature and extent of the blockade that the Biden transition has to work around?

Lisa: There is a Trump appointee who leads a little known agency called the General Services Administration, which is basically in charge of all federal real estate. One of the administrator's roles every time there's a new president elected is that they're supposed to write a letter that basically hands the keys to the new president-elect and says, okay, here's millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded resources, here's office space at each of the federal agency and we're now going to let your people go into federal agencies and meet with the current political appointees as well as just full-time civil servants to get to know what's going on at those agencies.

What has happened is that the GSA administrator, a Trump appointee named Emily Murphy has so far refused to write that letter and there is no end in sight to this refusal, even as it does appear that Trump is realizing that his legal avenues to fight Biden's win are probably really dwindling.

Brian: One example you give is that with no state department cooperation, Biden is having to receive the official congratulations phone calls from world leaders on something other than a secure government phone line or with government interpreters. Why is the secure phone line an issue?

Lisa: I think it's because if let's say some of these foreign leaders wanted to discuss material that is classified or that is sensitive, that can't happen unless the state department actually sets up the communication. I think that's the issue. Sure, the initial calls from foreign leaders might be just pure congratulatory, but there are more difficult relationships the United States has with certain foreign leaders that you would want formal channels to be setting those calls up.

Brian: Your article mentions that one of the current officials refusing to share information with the transition team is John Ratcliffe, the current director of National Intelligence. What kinds of national security information would Ratcliffe's office normally be sharing with the presidential-elect?

Lisa: I think it's clear that we don't really know whether John Ratcliffe and his team would block the Biden people. It's just a concern that the incoming Biden-Harris team has. We don't have any evidence of this. John Ratcliffe is obviously a Trump ally and so that there's concern about that. There's just a whole realm of information really on foreign threats, on domestic threats, and transitions are a period, even when they're done right, of potential vulnerability for governments, especially as big as this one.

Brian: Listeners, any questions about the Biden transition, and who and what they're working with and rolling out to be ready to take office, 646-435-7280. Don't make these calls about the current president of the United States. We're looking past the controversy and talking about the transition. Let's talk about the Biden transition, and who and what they're working with and rolling out to be ready to take office at a policy level. If your questions are about that for Lisa Rein from The Washington Post, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

Part of the blockade, as her headline calls it, is so that people only talk about the blockade and the controversy over the blockade. We're not going to fall for that. We're going to talk about the actual transition, which is going forward in its own way, even if from one side. All right, you got it. That's what we're inviting questions on. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet a question @BrianLehrer.

The pandemic, of course, is an ongoing emergency with a thousand Americans per day, dying now up from 800 a day last month, and about 700 day the month before, 1,000 people dying per day, we can get so numb to it. Remember a few months ago when people's eyes were bulging, because we hit the same number of Americans who died in the whole Vietnam War, 58,000? Wow, 58-

Lisa: Yes, I know.

Brian: Right, 58,000, the whole Vietnam war. Now we're over 240,000 and each number doesn't register like that, except for the people personally infected. In fact, I read that Biden lost in 90% of the hardest hit counties, but Biden laid out in the campaign, certain things he would do different on a policy level. In this conversation about the transition, does he need cooperation in the transition to hit the ground running or not really? What can you tell that's being done?

Lisa: I think he absolutely needs cooperation from the Department of Health and Human services, from CDC from the FDA, but I think that folks there are starting to get a little bit bolder about going public with information. For example, the CDC just put out something a couple of days ago about mask-wearing and how it is now viewed as very much protecting the wearer as well as the other people. The CDC has really been hamstrung by Trump appointees who really didn't try to muzzle it. Biden has announced the formation of this coronavirus task force. He's already meeting with them.

What's, of course, notable about this group of people is that they're all science-based experts. They're scientists, technology people, and that's really the stark contrast to what we've seen in the Trump era. I think one of the biggest questions were that the incoming Biden people will really have to interface with the outgoing Trump people is, when a vaccine is ready, and we heard good news from Pfizer this week, it's not just like a pharmaceutical company comes up with a vaccine, and then everyone gets it, and then we all are safe.

The government has to stand up this huge apparatus to distribute the vaccine and to decide who are the most vulnerable populations, who gets it first, right. We're going to start with health care providers, obviously. Then the elderly, and then people with underlying conditions, and all this has to be coordinated to the federal government. That's the kind of stuff that the Biden team really, really does need to be working with the folks inside the government on.

Brian: The current administration does have a Coronavirus Task Force and Vice President Pence is its coordinator. We know the President himself is very detached from its work at this point. Maybe because he's superman, as he called himself when he recovered quickly from the virus. Is Biden setting up a difference that's just a different personnel flowchart or something more meaningfully different?

Lisa: I think it's more meaningfully different because we don't really know what the Pence-led task force is doing right now. We know Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Burks, who are the government point people for the White House. It's not clear to me yet what is happening in terms of their involvement with the Biden team. Yes, the Pence taskforce seems moribund at this point. They talk about what they're doing, but there's still huge issues of protective gear for hospitals, getting all kinds of equipment to hospitals. There's been very little contact tracing, which is something we've talked about a lot in these past nine months. The Biden team says it really wants to focus on that.

Then there's also the question that the current task force is not discussing, which is, will there be a mask mandate? What will governors be urged by the Biden team to do in terms of locking down their states? What are the criteria for those kinds of lockdown? It's a much more, I think, aggressive stance. There are two issues. As we were talking before, one is the rollout of a vaccine. That's clearly something that the Biden-Harris team is focused on, the one that he just appointed, but there's also what do we do with the current crisis?

Brian: I did see Health and Human Services Secretary Azar on TV last night saying they're going to be ready to go next month, December, with first vaccines for the first group of prioritized people. As you say, I think it's certain health care workers and certain vulnerable citizens. Do you know how real that is or newly rushed up to say they're administering vaccines while this legal battle over the election is still going on and they want to galvanize public opinion around it?

Lisa: All I know is that Anthony Fauci did say on CNN, he did an interview with Jake Tapper about two days ago. I do think what Fauci says is trustworthy. He did say much the same thing that starting around December, the government would gear up to distribute the vaccine to some people. Fauci also said that by April, he thought, because Jake Tapper asked him the very question, by April, he thought that ordinary people would begin to be getting the vaccine. It's optimistic, but I think that that does feel real. Pfizer right now is the only company that's come out and said that their vaccine looks really promising but there will also be other companies.

Brian: Heline in Fort Lauderdale. You're on WNYC with Lisa Ryan from The Washington Post. Hi, Heline? Heline, can you hear me?

Helene: Hello. Are you asking for Helene?

Brian: Oh, Helene. I'm sorry. I said, Heline, my mistake. Hi, Helene.

Helene: That's quite all right. Brian, you followed me to Fort Lauderdale, Florida beach. Here I'm looking at this gorgeous ocean listening to the most frustrating conversation I've heard in about a half-hour. Is there nothing that Joe Biden and the Democrats can do to walk through the Barclay blockade? What can they do? I feel as though we're being held hostage to our detriment. That's my question.

Lisa: Helene, it's a couple of things. Biden said this week, this was what he said publicly that he is not concerned, he feels they're proceeding with their transition anyway. He just basically said that this is not an issue. It is true that the money that they're entitled to, which is about $7 million that they will get that regardless, and that's for hiring transition staff. It's important, but they will get that back paid to them. If they're hiring people right now, and they're not paying them, that's not a permanent issue.

Helen, I think the issue is that more and more Republicans are coming out. There's more and more pressure on the Trump administration right now on this issue. Then as we reported the other day, there are many things that the Biden folks can do in the interim. The Obama administration has only been out of power for four years. It's not that long. They have a huge area of expertise. They've got people who left the Trump administration in recent years. They've got Trump appointees. The defense secretary, Mark Esper was just fired two days ago.

They've got lots of people at nonprofit groups, the thinktanks, who very, very closely have been monitoring the Trump administration for four years. It's not like Democrats have been in the wilderness for eight years. We'll see. They do have legal options as well, but they haven't exercised them.

Brian: Helene, thank you for your call. You had to rub it in me as we sit here in cold rain in New York that you're sitting on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Thank you very much. Jake on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jake?

Jake: Hi. I was wondering for all the griping we have about the policies that the current administration has, are there things that are not going to necessarily jump back to four years previously under Obama that maybe were considered good ideas, or are just a reality? Be it positions on Israel or troop withdrawal or something to that effect?

Brian: That's a great question. Because we hear so much about the things that Biden is planning to reverse. A lot of the executive orders that he can do with a stroke of a pen. Put us back in the Paris Climate Accord, other things. Are there any things that you could tell or that Biden or his folks have said out loud may have been good things that the Trump administration did that they will keep?

Lisa: Sure, it is a great question. I think it really will depend on which corner of the government you're talking about. You have Betsy DeVos, Trump's education secretary who served the full term. The Biden people are likely to do pretty much a wholesale reversal of her policies which have really largely favored private education and religiously-funded education over public education.

Then, of course, you're absolutely right. If you look at the Department of Veterans Affairs, I don't see huge, huge changes there. For example, VA has a big, big, big IT project that is, unfortunately, over budget, but it was a really good project that basically was started by the Trump team that is trying to match veterans medical information from the defense department with what happens when they go into the VA system. That's been a real mess for decades because doctors of VA don't know what their medical histories are. That's a project that will absolutely continue.

Another VA issue, veteran suicide. Again, a universal bipartisan theme, also private care for veterans, which started under Obama and continued under Trump. Things will be tweaked, obviously, but that's a perfect example. At the defense department, even though we've seen a more politicization of that agency in recent days, and to some degree to the administration, but generally, the military is a political and I think will stay that way and ensure there'll be different policies on troop withdrawals. Trump has favored a quicker withdrawal from Afghanistan and he's obviously been not in favor of cooperation with Iran.

Things like that will change but in the area of intelligence, national security-- I mean, of course, there are certain allies we always have, there are certain enemies we have made in this era. Housing and Urban Development, I'm just going through with another area where you'll see changes and again a reversion a little bit back to more of an emphasis on public housing and things like that. I think it just depends on the agency, actually, but certainly the area of environmental protection, and everything, all the policies that unfold from climate change will be different.

Brian: Robert on Staten Island, you're on WNYC with Lisa Rein from The Washington Post. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my call. My question involves appointments, both high level and some of the lower level appointments. Given that the Biden-Harris administration, repeatedly said that they were going to be a bridge to the youth, and they were going to have a diverse administration. I'm wondering if you're aware of any efforts of the Biden-Harris administration to do outreach to Latino, Black, and youth organizations to fill some of these both high level and lower level administration of appointeeship?

Lisa: I absolutely think so. They haven't really announced many personnel decisions yet, but they just a couple of days ago released a list of 500 names on what they call-- these are going to be the eyes and ears of their team in federal agencies, when they can get into federal agencies. This is a really, really diverse group. You have all these agencies, you've got 10-15 people named at each one. It's a very diverse group of women, Latino, Native Americans, African Americans.

I don't know for sure to answer your question, what the outreaches, but all I can say is if you connect the dots, there are so many appointments to fill in government. There are 4000 political appointees. This is as you said from the top to lower level appointment, as well as to people who serve on boards and commissions that really do fascinating work but not a lot of us have heard of.

Of course, this is just how you network. The Trump people network was conservative groups, and I think that it's pretty clear that the Biden Harris team will absolutely be reaching out to a variety of activist groups and all kinds of diverse areas but I don't know more than that.

Brian: I read the article of yours that you refer to from earlier this week with great interest. Robert, you'll probably be interested in this too. It's this list of names and I was bookmarking, one after another like, "That would make a great guest. He would make a great guest. She would make a great guest." People who are not well known, but who you identify by name as some officials who have prominent roles in the transition effort at very least, and what agencies they'll be working with.

Andrea Flores, Department of Homeland Security, Deputy Director of Immigration Policy for the ACLU, currently their quality division. Rahul Gupta Office of National Drug Control Policy. He was West Virginia's Health Commissioner. Michelle Howard, liaison to the Department of Defense for the transition. She was the first Black woman to command a navy ship. You've got a whole list of names like that. I think a central point of your article was, Biden was already starting to keep his promise to appoint, in this case, not yet a Cabinet, but a transition team that looks like America.

Let me ask in that case about a particular appointee who does not quite fit that category, potential appointee I should say. I saw Bernie Sanders on TV last night, reacting to the rumor that he's being considered for labor secretary. He said he would accept the job, if he's given enough autonomy to really be a voice for workers. You think Bernie Sanders is being seriously considered for that?

Lisa: I think possibly. Here's the only problem that Sanders would face is that he's got to get through the Senate. The Senate is now controlled by Republicans and what we've got to runoff election. Sorry, not a runoff, we have a special election. Yes, it is a runoff in Georgia, that's coming up in a few weeks that is featuring a contest for two Senate seats out of Georgia. Now if those both went Democratic, control of the Senate would change and Chuck Schumer would be Majority Leader of the Senate, but we don't know that's going to happen right?

For now, we've got a Republican Senate and I think the only problem for Sanders is just, will ball of Biden's Cabinet picks make it through the Mitch McConnell Senate and I think that's the only issue. I don't know. Sure, he'll be considered. I just don't know that-- I think that's the issue facing him really.

Brian: I guess since you bring up the Georgia special elections, January 5th, I think the date is with control of the Senate at stake there. The backlash that the Democratic Party seems to have faced against the word socialism and people who label themselves Democratic Socialists, in some of the more swing districts, and Georgia is obviously a very close swing state at this point, I wonder, given the timing of that, early January for this crucial election, and that most of the appointments would typically be made by then, although we still would have a couple of weeks before the January 20th inauguration, whether it might not cause at least a delay, or a more conservative slate of Cabinet nominees to make a show to the voters of Georgia?

Lisa: It's hard to say I don't know that those dots can be connected, but it's certainly true that-- Some of Trump's nominees were not made until February, March, April of 2017, during his first term. The whole Cabinet will certainly not be named by then. Then, of course, in Georgia, Republicans are facing the problem that Trump is not going to be on the ballot for that special election.

That's a potential roadblock for them. I don't know. I don't know that there is a tie in. Possibly. But Bernie Sanders is always so much fun to watch. I really look forward to seeing if his candidacy to run the labor deepartment will be real or not. Because Biden also has debts that he owes to the progressive wing of the party. That's something he's taking very seriously too. He's got a lot to balance.

Brian: I'm thinking about the Clinton administration. President Clinton appointed a more center-left Cabinet in general, but place probably his most progressive Cabinet member Robert Reish as labor secretary. Irish later complained of not being given much power in the job, but there is that precedent and that model. That's one thing I'm keeping my eye on with respect to the potential for Bernie Sanders as labor secretary.

In your article, you give the education department as an example of an agency not cooperating with a transition. One reason you cite is the concern that transition contact could undermine possible legal action down the road. What education-related legal action would that be about?

Lisa: I think that was really more-- I don't think it was limited to the education department. I think it's just that the Trump White House has told all of the agency heads not to communicate with the Biden team if they reach out just because we've got this GSA is sticking to its guns on releasing the whole transitionary apparatus. The Biden team likewise, has decided that they are going to play it safe and they're not going to try to go through formal channels. I'm not aware of legal action besides just generally the Biden team trying to figure out what it would do if GSA doesn't release the resources.

Brian: The New York Times, Brand X, since you work for The Washington Post, has a story today called, Biden's Education Department Will Move Fast to Reverse Betsy DeVos's Policies, and it gives examples like DeVos's proposals for public school funding cuts and narrowing the Department's enforcement of federal education laws and civil rights for students in marginalized groups. That goes to Robert in Staten island's question a little bit about reaching out to Black and Latino youth. Planning to reverse some of those particular policies. The article also mentioned his plans for a hands-on role in helping schools navigate the pandemic. It says the DeVos education department has absolved itself even tracking the virus's impact on education. I guess my question for you is, what would be happening now during the transition to be ready to help with that aspect, the education aspect of the ongoing emergency if they had the contacts?

Lisa: That's right. The Times story was really fascinating and it's true that all Betsy Devos has really-- that's the current secretary of education. All she's really said about the pandemic is, "Oh, but kids should be in schools," and that's pretty much has been their mantra. I think that Biden people will approach it differently. What has happened is that you've got the education department. Just by law, they have to prepare a whole lot of briefing materials for the incoming team on a whole range of programs, all the ones that are mentioned in that Times piece. They have to be doing that.

I think clearly, as we said earlier, the Obama team has only been out of power, it's been less than four years. What's [inaudible 00:32:21] Biden-Harris people are reaching out to all kinds of people in the education world. Betsy DeVos, her agency has seen a dramatic attrition and senior people who've left. These people are here, they're reachable and I don't know exactly what the policy discussing will be, but there's plenty that they can be figuring out right now. As with the environment, you've got a whole oversight of activist non-profit groups that are very, very active in following trends in the public education world. I am sure that they're working hard on this.

Brian: We're just about out of time, but David in Yonkers has an interesting question, I think, to wrap this up on. David, you're on WNYC with Lisa Ryan from The Washington Post.

David: Since there are some Republicans in the Senate who agree that Biden should be receiving intelligence information, how quickly could Congress act with veto-proof legislation to force the President to give at least the intelligence information at this point, and if he's having more temper tantrums to continue that pattern?

Lisa: All right. David, good question. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, Republican, he has gone public and said, he's going to make a stink. I don't know exactly what that means, but that if GSA did not release this access to the Biden people by today--

Brian: By today. Yes. By today, Lankford said.

Lisa: Yes, he said that. I don't really know what that means, but, David, to answer your question, I just don't think this is going to go. I could be wrong. I just don't think this is going to end up going before Congress in dealing with legislation because remember, the Senate is controlled by Republicans. It can get really messy and I just don't see legislation passing. I think it's more likely that the Biden team would bring legal action. Here's the thing though, what I did learn yesterday is that the GSA blockade, as we've called it, actually does not address the question of intelligence briefings in what we call the daily presidential brief, presidential daily brief.

That is a decision completely made by the White House and by the outgoing president. This decision is being made by Trump and his staff not to give Biden the presidential daily brief. That has nothing to do with the GSA stuff, which makes it even more political and more fraught. I don't honestly know what's going to happen with that, but again, it's only been a week or I should say six days since Biden with declared the winner. Remember, Biden knows-- this is a world that is pretty familiar to him already even though he doesn't know obviously about ongoing threats. He does have that advantage.

Brian: Lisa Rein, who covers the federal government for The Washington Post. Her latest article is called, How Biden's transition team will work around Trump's blockade of the government. Lisa, thank you so much for the time.

Lisa: Thank you very much for having me, Brian.

Brian: Brian Lehrer, WNYC much more to come.

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