After an unprecedented campaign period and general election, Joe Biden is the apparent president-elect of the United States. Now that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes are firmly in his column, he has clinched enough electoral votes to have defeated the incumbent president, Donald Trump. Biden won the popular vote in addition to the majority in the electoral college.
Biden now faces multiple crises, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, economic turmoil, and civil unrest within the nation. Biden had successfully campaigned on promises to address each of these issues and has cited the implementation of increased testing stations and aggressive action to reign in the pandemic as his top priority. Biden has promised to work to heal the social divide in the nation, pledging to work on behalf of both those that had voted for him as well as those that had not.
The new administration does not appear to be in line for a smooth transition of power, however, as President Donald Trump has yet to concede the defeat. Instead, Trump has promised to exhaust all avenues of litigation to challenge the vote counts, repeatedly trying to cast public doubt on the legitimacy of the results.
President-elect Biden and his administration will make history upon his inauguration on Jan. 20. He will be the oldest elected president, taking the record from his immediate predecessor. His vice president, Kamala Harris is the first female vice president in U.S. history, as well as the first African-American and the first Asian-American vice president.
The new administration will likely face obstacles in implementing its policies, as the projected path for the Democratic party’s campaign to regain control of the U.S. Senate has narrowed after failing to flip some hotly contested seats. Additionally, the Trump administration had successfully confirmed three conservative justices, providing the court with a commanding 6-3 ideological majority.
This story will be updated as additional information becomes available.
