Biden consolidates his victory by snatching Arizona and Trump is keeping the transition in hibernation

US President-elect Joe Biden cemented his electoral victory by seizing the crucial state of Arizona late Thursday evening, but the process of transferring powers to his administration is still in a state of political torpor as outgoing President Donald Trump refuses to accept defeat.

The Edison Research Center said Biden won in Arizona after a count that took more than a week.

With this, Biden becomes the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the state, which usually backs Republicans, in seven decades.

Biden's victory in Arizona gives him 290 votes in the electoral college that determines the winner, surpassing the 270 votes required to win.

Biden leads the popular vote as well, with more than 5.3 million votes, equivalent to 3.4 percentage points.

With the end of the count in the vast majority of states, the chances of Trump, the Republican, who claimed without evidence that the elections were marred by widespread fraud, diminish.

To snatch victory from Biden, Trump must lead him in at least three of the crucial and closely contested states.

The Trump campaign has filed legal appeals questioning the vote count in several states, although judges have already rejected some of them.

Legal experts said the litigation did not have much opportunity to alter the outcome, and state election officials said they saw no evidence of gross wrongdoing or fraud.

Trump's refusal to accept the outcome of the November 3 election is a stumbling block to the transfer of powers to a new administration.

The federal agency that normally provides funding for the incoming president-elect, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognize Biden as a winner.

Ron Klein, who was nominated by Biden as the chief of staff for the White House, told MSNBC television on Thursday that receiving the necessary funds for the transition process was necessary as the US administration would launch a vaccination campaign against the Corona virus early next year.

"The faster our experts in the transition meet with those involved in planning the vaccination campaign, the smoother the transition from Trump's presidency to Biden's presidency," he added.

Biden is scheduled to meet with his advisors on the transition today, Friday, again as he lay out his vision for how to deal with the pandemic and prepares to name his top officials, including ministers.

Most Republicans support Trump's right to file legal appeals and have been reluctant to recognize Biden as the winner.

On Thursday, however, more signs of taking a different approach began to appear.

Prominent figures in the party, such as Ohio Governor Mike Dwyane, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sunono and Karl Rove, who was a senior adviser to former President George W. Bush, said Biden should be treated as the elected president.

On the other hand, a number of Republican members of the Senate said that the Trump administration should allow the submission of classified intelligence statements to Biden, even if they did not publicly call him the winner.

Usually, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces is informed of such matters in order to avoid breaching national security during the transition period.

"I don't see this as a high-stakes proposal, but rather I think it is part of the transition process," Senator John Cornyn told reporters.

And if he wins in the end, I think they will need to start working. ”

The idea was opposed by House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, suggesting Trump could win.

"He is not president now," he said of Biden. "I don't know if he will become president on January 20."

While Republicans defended Trump, Democrats attacked him, saying he was undermining the institutions of the state.

In an interview with "60 Minutes" to be broadcast on CBS channel on Sunday, former President Barack Obama said that Republicans were taking a "dangerous path" by accepting unfounded allegations of fraud.

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