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The president-elect is expected to issue
executive orders to deal with the pan-
demic and to rejoin the effort to fight
climate change. PAGE P
ELECTION 2020
Plans for Action on Day 1
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear
arguments Tuesday, backed by the
Trump administration, seeking to de-
stroy the Affordable Care Act.NATIONAL AHealth Care on Docket, Again
If Republicans hold the Senate, a Biden
administration could take a cue from
President Trump and act unilaterally on
some economic issues. PAGE BBUSINESS B1-Biden’s Economic Options
With many teams refusing to come, the
Rose Garden ceremony, once unifying,
has become another political fault line,
Kurt Streeter writes. PAGE BSPORTSMONDAY B7-Champions’ Fraught Choice Charles M. Blow PAGE A
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-MARIETTA, Ga. — It took a life-
time for Angie Jones to become a
Democrat.
As a young woman, she was the
proud daughter of a conservative
family active in Republican poli-
tics. Ten years ago, after a friend’s
son came out as gay, Ms. Jones be-
came an independent, though one
who watched Fox News. After the
2016 election, Ms. Jones, a stay-at-
home mother in Johns Creek, a
pristine wealthy suburb north of
Atlanta, became frustrated with
her conservative friends defend-
ing President Trump through
scandal after scandal.
And this year, she voted for Jo-
seph R. Biden Jr., after spending
months phone banking, canvass-
ing and organizing for Democratic
candidates with a group of subur-
ban women across Atlanta.
“I feel like the Republican Party
left me,” said Ms. Jones, 54. “It
very much created an existential
crisis for me.”
This week, the political evolu-
tion of voters like Ms. Jones drove
Georgia to a breakthrough for
Democrats: Mr. Biden, the presi-
dent-elect, is on the verge of add-
ing the state to his winning elec-
toral margin, with a narrow lead
that is nevertheless a dramatic
sign of the shifting politics of the
South.
And two Democratic candi-
dates, the Rev. Dr. Raphael G.
Warnock and Jon Ossoff, forced
runoff elections on Jan. 5 that
should decide control of the Sen-
ate, and the fate of much of Mr. Bi-
den’s agenda. With the November
election barely over, the nation’s
political focus will now turn to
Georgia as much as the presiden-
Political Focus
Is Now Georgia,
State of Change
By LISA LERER
and RICHARD FAUSSETContinued in Election 2020, Page 7At a restaurant several years
ago, a stranger went up to Alex
Trebek, the longtime host of
“Jeopardy!” and as strangers of-
ten did, tried to stump him.
“The American flag flies here 24
hours a day, every day of the year,”
the stranger said, using the quiz
show host’s particular locution, in
which questions are delivered as
answers.
Mr. Trebek sensed that the
stranger was looking for some-
thing more clever than a list of
which buildings, like the White
House, had been authorized to fly
the flag through the night. And
without missing a beat he an-
swered in the form of a question:
“What is the moon?”
The quick-witted Mr. Trebek,
who died on Sunday at age 80 af-ter a battle with cancer that drew
legions of fans to rally around him,
hosted “Jeopardy!” for a record-
setting 37 years. He was an au-
thoritative and unflappable fix-
ture for millions of Americans
who organized their weeknights
around the program, shouting out
the questions as Mr. Trebek read
the answers with his impeccable
diction.
One major appeal of the show,
apart from its intellectual chal-
lenge, was its consistency. Over
the years its format stayed reli-
ably familiar, as did Mr. Trebek,
though he trimmed back his
bushy head of hair, grew grayer
and occasionally sported a mus-
tache, beard or goatee. Otherwise
he was the model of a steady and
predictable host — a no-nonsense
presence, efficient in his role andALEX TREBEK, 1940-
Unflappable Host Who Gave America the Answers
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYEAlex Trebek in 2005. He became the face of “Jeopardy!” in 1984.
JEOPARDY PRODUCTIONS
Continued on Page AWASHINGTON — President-
elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepared
on Sunday to start building his ad-
ministration, even as Republican
leaders and scores of party law-
makers refrained from acknowl-
edging his victory out of apparent
deference to President Trump,
who continued to refuse to con-
cede.
With Mr. Biden out of the public
eye as he received congratula-
tions from leaders around the
world, his team turned its atten-
tion to a transition that will swing
into action on Monday, with the
launch of a coronavirus task force
and swift moves to begin assem-
bling personnel.
But more than 24 hours after
the election had been declared, a
vast majority of Republicans de-
clined to offer statements of good
will for the victor, a customary
standard after American presi-
dential contests, as Mr. Trump de-
fied the results and vowed to forge
ahead with long-shot lawsuits to
try to overturn them.
While some prominent Republi-
can figures, including the party’s
only living former president,
George W. Bush, called Mr. Biden
to wish him well, most elected offi-
cials stayed silent in the face of Mr.
Trump’s baseless claims that the
election was stolen from him.
Mr. Biden did not respond to Mr.
Trump’s attacks on the result, but
he also was not waiting for a con-
cession. On Sunday, he unveiled
his official transition website as he
prepared a series of executive ac-
tions for his first day in the Oval
Office — including rejoining the
Paris climate accord, moving ag-
gressively to confront the corona-
virus pandemic and restoring la-
bor organizing rights for govern-
ment workers — aimed at unwind-
ing Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda
and repairing the United States’
image in the world.
But Republicans’ silence sug-
gested that even in defeat, Mr.
Trump maintained a powerful
grip on his party and its elected
leaders, who have spent four
years tightly embracing him or
quietly working to avoid offending
him or his loyal base. For many
prominent Republicans, the presi-
dent’s reluctance to accept the
election results created a dilem-
ma, making even the most cur-
sory expression of support for Mr.
Biden seem like a conspicuous
break with Mr. Trump.
Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri
was the most senior Republican to
suggest Mr. Trump had most
likely lost and cast doubt on his al-
legations of a stolen election, but
he stopped short of referring to
Mr. Biden as the president-elect in
an exceedingly careful television
interview.
“It’s time for the president’s
lawyers to present the facts, and
it’s time for those facts to speak
for themselves,” Mr. Blunt, the
chairman of the Rules Committee,
said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It
seems unlikely that any changes
could be big enough to make a dif-BIDEN TURNS HIS ATTENTION TO TRANSITION,
WHILE TRUMP REFUSES TO CONCEDE DEFEAT
Silence in G.O.P. —
Aides to President
See Little Hope
By LUKE BROADWATERContinued in Election 2020, Page 2On a January evening in 2019,
Joseph R. Biden Jr. placed a call to
the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric
Garcetti, a personal friend and po-
litical ally who had just announced
he would not pursue the Demo-
cratic nomination for president.
During their conversation, Mr.
Garcetti recalled, Mr. Biden did
not exactly say he had decided to
mount his own campaign. The for-
mer vice president confided that if
he did run, he expected President
Trump to “come after my family”
in an “ugly” election.
But Mr. Biden also said he felt
pulled by a sense of moral duty.
“He said, back then, ‘I really am
concerned about the soul of this
country,’ ” Mr. Garcetti said.
Twenty-one months and a week
later, Mr. Biden stands tri-
umphant in a campaign he waged
on just those terms: as a patriotic
crusade to reclaim the American
government from a president he
considered a poisonous figure.
The language he used in that call
with Mr. Garcetti became the
watchwords of a candidacy de-
signed to marshal a broad coali-
tion of voters against Mr. Trump
and his reactionary politics.
It was not the most inspira-
tional campaign in recent times,
nor the most daring, nor the most
agile. His candidacy did not stir an
Obama-like youth movement or a
Trump-like cult of personality:
There were no prominent reports
of Biden supporters branding
themselves with “Joe” tattoos and
lionizing him in florid murals — or
even holding boat parades in his
honor. Mr. Biden campaigned as a
sober and conventional presence,
rather than as an uplifting herald
of change. For much of the general
election, his candidacy was not an
exercise in vigorous creativity,
but rather a case study in disci-
pline and restraint.
In the end, voters did what Mr.
Biden asked of them and not much
Focus on Character
Spurred Winner’s
Successful Bid
Continued in Election 2020, Page 8This article is by Alexander
Burns, Jonathan Martinand Katie
Glueck.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Sunday arriving for Mass at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Wilmington, Del.
ANGELA WEISS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESPHOENIX — Democrats
thought it would be enough.
After four years of draconian
Trump immigration policies and
divisive messaging, the Biden
campaign courted Latino voters
primarily by reminding them that
Joseph R. Biden Jr. was not Don-
ald Trump, that if they felt tar-
geted in President Trump’s Amer-
ica, a vote for Mr. Biden would
change that.
That argument resonated for
many Latinos, who became the
second-largest voting group for
the first time this year.
“He’s come after people like
me,” said Taylor Valencia, 23, a
first-year elementary school-
teacher who showed up before
sunrise on Tuesday to vote in per-
son in Guadalupe, a predomi-
nantly Latino town near Phoenix.
“His entire presidency is an attack
on my moral values and who I
am.”
But for others, it was Mr. Trump
who made them feel a part of
America, not targeted by it.
“I have been in this country
since I was 9, I have been through
a lot, and I am American,” said
Teresita Miglio, an accountant in
her 60s who immigrated from
Cuba and attends an evangelical
church in Miami where Mr. Trump
spoke in January. “Abortion is the
litmus test, Jesus is my savior and
Trump is my president.”
Mr. Biden is now the president-
elect, and as he vows to work “as
hard for those who didn’t vote for
me as those who did,” as he said in
his victory speech on Saturday, he
must grapple with the fact that Mr.
Trump actually improved his
showing among Latino voters,
from under 30 percent in 2016 toParties Grapple
With Evolution
Of Latino Vote
By JENNIFER MEDINAContinued in Election 2020, Page 5PITTSBURGH — Hours after
President-elect Joseph R. Biden
Jr. declared the coronavirus a top
priority, the magnitude of his task
became starkly clear on Sunday
as the nation surpassed 10 million
cases and sank deeper into the
grip of what could become the
worst chapter of the pandemic
yet.
The rate of new cases is soaring,
and for the first time is averaging
more than 100,000 a day in the
United States, which has reported
more Covid-19 cases than any
other country. An astonishing
number — one in 441 Americans
— have tested positive for the vi-
rus just in the last week.With 29 states setting weekly
case records, the virus is surging
at a worrisome level in more than
half the country. Nationwide, hos-
pitalizations have nearly doubled
since mid-September, and deaths
are slowly increasing again, with
few new interventions in place to
stop the spiraling outbreak.
“We are in a terrifying place,”
said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an as-
sistant professor of medicine at
the Medical University of South
Carolina who studies pandemicresponse. “All I see is cases con-
tinuing to go up, unless we do
something.”
The nation’s worsening
Covid-19 outlook comes at an ex-
tremely difficult juncture: Presi-
dent Trump, who remains in con-
trol of the federal response to the
outbreak for the next 73 days, is
openly at odds with his own co-
ronavirus advisers, and the coun-
try is heading into a cold winter
when infections are only expected
to spread faster as people spend
more time indoors.
In a victory speech on Saturday
night, Mr. Biden said he was
quickly focusing his attention on
the pandemic, including plans on
Monday to announce a new task
force of coronavirus advisers. But
he faces a nation divided over‘Terrifying’ Surge Awaits a New Administration
This article is by Sarah Mervosh,
Mitch Smithand Giulia McDonnell
Nieto del Rio.Continued on Page AU.S. Virus Cases Pass
10 Million as Colder
Weather Looms
Late Edition
VOL. CLXX.... No. 58,872 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020
Today,mostly sunny, near-record
warmth, high 73. Tonight,clear,
mild, fog late, low 58. Tomorrow,fog
early, some sunshine, mild, high 68.
Weather map appears on Page A14.