this narrow biden victory will get certified, but just putting a like to what trump is saying that there's a path here. where joe biden has 12,67 points, this has certified but there's a recounseled under way. that now is going under way, so there would be the initial kourant the hand on it, and now an actual formal recount. and he will be declared the winner in georgia again.

>> david, i guess we'll keep seeing each other like this, david, david chalian, thank you so much for taking us through this. any moment now we should be get a vote from the michigan state canvassing board. this could still pass. cnn's national correspondent dianne gallagher is in lansing for us. tell us what's going down at this board meeting? >> reporter: that republican,

aaron -- well, he said, look d. i want to say i think we are limited today, i think we have a duty to do this. to republican congressmen and others that he does not -- that that's okay it can go for hour, but what's important here as they will that doesn't mean

it's done and over but they're going to and some candidates have said they would like to do. so certification has to come first, and then move on to other methods if in fact that is -- >> and the story goes on in michigan. dianne, thank you so much. we do have a new official statement on the election -- the incumbent president must recognize the results, obviously this hasn't happened yet. that message is not coming from the white house, not from republican leadership, but from the kremlin this morning. so think about that. as i run through the republicans

who are beginning to accept reality. chris christie, who calls the legal challenges that it was starting to look like a -- if the president has proof of fraud officially congratulated. jamie gangel joins us now. the question is, will any of these late defections actually have an effect on president trump? what do you think, jamie? >> i'm still laughing about the kremlin, maybe when the kremlin finally says president-elect biden will -- i think there is mounting pressure. today, when we see certification, every day there will be more and more, but i think there are some significant things, liz cheney, she is

republican leadership on the house side. we know that had an effect, because president trump tweeted. steve schwartzman, a loyalist, the fact that he's come out and said it's over, it's time for the country to move on, those are very significant that said will it change donald trump? probably not yet one republican source described it this way. they said his impact is fading. you can see it day by day, but it's like a balloon, and the air is coming out of the balloon, and it's moving all around the room, and it's hitting some people on the way with mean tweets, but eventually it will land on the floor. he's just not ready yet.

>> that is quite the visual, jamie. i was sort of ruminating on that for a moment. what are you hearing from republicans, maybe who aren't, you know, publicly coming out and saying what they believe. what are they saying behind the scenes? >> behind the scenes, they are concerned about the same things that we heard now from a few of these republicans, that this is undermining democracy they also say that president trump that is never been really interested in what this is doing to the country or the republican party. they think he's going to continue to fight. he will fight right to the end. they also take note he's using this to raise money.

i want to give you one number. 332. that is the number at last count of fund-raising e-mails and texts that the trump campaign has sent out. much of this money will go to a post-presidential slush fund, this from the man who ran on i don't need your money. he's apparently working very, very hard to get that money. the rest of republicans are very concerned about it, because that has to do with the future and control of the party. >> so, you know, what can he spend that money on and what can't he spend money on? there really any apparatus in place to stop him from doing something questionable, if

legal? >> we have yet to see something stop donald trump. the other part of this fight is we talked last week about whether donald trump might pardon himself? part of this might be part of the fighting is they're out to get me, i'm a victim, they're not fair to me, i haven't done anything, but i need to pardon myself. i need to maybe pardon family members because they're going to come after me. i think these are the things we'll see in the coming weeks. i did ask one republican sort, who is very close to the white house -- will president trump ever concede? the person laughed and said to me, yes, but not in the way you think. what he will do is, he will concede in his own way.

look for the words "the election was stolen." that's as close to a concession as you'll get. >> does he leave the white house filly, right? that might be the concession he does with his feet instead of his mouth. >> right. >> jamie, thank you so much. president-elect biden is not letting the roadblocks slow him down. he's just unveiled any national security teams. the names signal to allies around the world. cnn is learning who's on the short list, as well as the two top contenders that could shatter some glass. plus we are just days away from the thanksgiving holiday, and americans are not traveling at pandemic-high records, going against cdc guidelines. contactless curbside pickup is here! just tap for tasty in the app. and pickup contactless. cause it's safety first. right, tiny car? you wearing your seatbelt little man?

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president trump has been obstructing the election for weeks, but president-elect biden has been pushing ahead. jeff zeleny has the details. he will be a member of the national security council, certainly elevating the importance, but also an historic first. he will indeed nominate alejandro mayorkas, the first latino, if confirmed, to head the dhs.

avril haines as well, those are three names we are seeing, as the transition team puts out these announcements quickly. joe biden is turning to an obama alum. tony blinken. d.c. insiders say this signals a return to a more traditional stance. blinken has worked very closely with the former vice president as well. we have more now from kylie atwood. >> reporter: brianna, i'm hearing from diplomats around the world and here in foggy bottom, that tony blinken is -- and ambassador linda thomas-greenfield will be the u.s. ambassador. she's someone who is a 35-year foreign service i've, well known by diplomats. she has served around the world.

they love she has the credentials as being a foreign service officer. they also recognize that tony blinken, someone who is else known in this building, was in the last few years, he is close with joe biden, he has worked with him for almost 20 years. that means when he travels abroad as secretary of state, the policy that he is pursuing, what he is trying to achieve will have the seal of approval for the president brianna? >> kylie atwood, thank you. president-elect biden is expected to make history. christin christi christiristina alesci is here t us why. >> biden has whittled down the list to janet yellin or late

brainard. both would be the first woman treasury secretary. both of them women have worked at the highest levels of economy policymakes, with similar views on policies like interest rate these two women have supported easy money policies but they would differ from him in important ways. on banks regulation, for example, and on helping cities and states with additional funding through this very different period during the pandem pandem pandemic. >> cristina, thank you. max, the former defense secretary matt is called on joe biden to strip all reference to say "america first" from america's strategy, which would

be dumping a key mantra of donald trump. if i can read this, he wrote this in "foreign affairs" -- in january when they begin to reevaluate the policy, we hope they -- to eliminate america first from its contends, restoring in its place the commitment to -- >> general matt is is reflecting the consensus of the foreign policy -- america first was a terrible label with a horrible history. this was the phrase used in the 1930s by pro-nazi isolationists, so the fact that donald trump revived it, that was designed to provoke an outrage, and it did. after the disasters of the trump presidency, i hope that frayed will not be heard from again for another 70 years.

>> how much cover does that give joe biden? >> it certainly helps. he got so many popular votes, a margin of more than 6 million votes, that carries its own legitimacy, but there's no question that the course he's embarked on is one that will need bipartisan buy-in, especially if republicans can keep control of the senate. so i think the choices that president-elect biden is making for its cabinet are very encouraging, because these are centrist mainstream figures with great credibility on both sides of the aisle, and certainly the policies they pursue will not be some kind of far-left socialism as donald trump seems to suggest. it will be a much more traditional policy, and that's something that jim mattis and others advocated for within the

trump administration. they were ignored. now i think their views will be well represented? the biden administration. >> okay. let's talk more about the picks we're seeing. it's very interesting, of course, to watch this national security team take shape, and it was about the philosophy of what the biden administration will do. >> is there anything that stands out to you? >> what stands out to me, brianna is the fact that you're not see grifters, you're not seeing people who are, as far as we know, under investigation by the fbi. it just makes you realize all of the misfits, and by comparison, that was really the -- this is really the a-team. it's striking to me from tony blinken on down, they are all very qualified, deep commitment

to american leadership, and just as importantly, they also know joe biden. they have worked with him a long time. that's a key advantage. there's a trust in confidence that you don't see amid the back-biting of the trump administration. is there anyone he might have trouble getting through a controlled senate? >> i don't think so. i think he's shied away from some choices like susan rice for secretary of state, who might be more controversial. you've seen signals from some of the morse centrist republican senators like mitt romney, susan collins, lisa murkowski, that they will give president biden a lot of leeway on his cabinet picks. i can't imagine that so far any alarm bells will be set off. if anybody would be alarmed is the progressive part of the

party, and they don't have a veto power. >> but they do at the ballot. max, thank you so much. we appreciate your insight. as we're getting closer and closer to thanksgiving, medical experts are begging people to stay home. there are no beds anyway. we'll speak to an icu doctor in minnesota whose hospital is overwhelmed. i got uh sausage - you can do better, steve! get a freshly made footlong, from subway®! you can even order on the subway® app! did i just get picked off by deion sanders? you sure did! now in the app, get a free footlong when you buy two. because it's footlong season™!

we begin this thanksgiving week with 20 straight dade of 100,000-plus new infections today, and we averaged 170,000 new infections a day over the last week. the u.s. has added 3.1 million new cases just in month. hospitalizations are rising as dramatically as the case numb bers. for the last 13 days, hospitalizations have broken a record set the day before. they're trending up and up and up. 84,000 americans hospitalized right this moment with coronavirus, according to the covid tracking project. on sunday, more than 900 deaths were reported, with the average daily death toll being is a 00, the deadliest since may. this just in regard the

treatment that president trump received for the coronavirus, health and human services secretary alex azar said the regeneron therapy will be going out to patients on tuesday. . the treatment just received emergency authorization, and 30,000 doses will go out tomorrow. more than 3 million people passed through airport checkpoints on the weekend, the highest number flying since the pandemic began. they're doing it at the worst point of the pandemic. i want to go for the very latest to adriid broaddus. right now the line is short on

saturday and sunday, a spokesperson with american airlines said during the thanksgiving holiday, american is increasing its flying by 15% we talked to people traveling with small children. we also heard from college students, all wearing masks. most of the people i spoke with, they crave a hug from the people they love the most. >> definitely hug them. it's been so long. it would be nice to see my family, touch them again. >> i only see them once a year. it's one of the main things that i look forward to every year. it's the one thing that i think that will make my life alternates better.

>> reporter: it raises another question, is a thanksgiving meal worth the risk? is traveling worth the risk? brianna, the response to the question is different, depending on who you ask. i also talked to two other travelers who said they didn't want to get on the plane, but a family emergency was forcing them to fly. >> adrienne broaddus, thank you. dr. jason stein tosaid -- jt look at the front page of "the minneapolis star tribune" hospital systems so overwhelmed, one local doctor saying there are no beds anywhere. that doctor, matthew lee, is

joining me now, the medical director at mercy hospital near minneapolis. doctor, thank you for being with us. what is happening in your hospital? >> we are at crisis level. we have seen just an explosion of covid cases the last couple weeks, off the charts, and we're completely filling the capacity of our hospital, running at 120% capacity, and we still don't have room. we really just are trying to juggle wherever we can to put patients and moving patients from hospital to hospital throughout the entire state, and there's just simply not enough room. >> just to put your state into context, minnesota reported the fifth highest daily case count in the country on sunday. they had more than 7200 new

cases. we know this is heading in an even worse direction, but i think you might have heard some of those travelers right before you who were talking, and, you know, you can hear in their voice how much they miss their families, people they don't normally get to see, they really want to see them. i wonder, you know, what you say to them, as they are making this calculation. >> yeah. this is just the worst time to be going out, to traveling, seeing others. you know, we've been in i would call this like a tropical storm covid for the last six months. it's getting worse daily. we are now in full hurricane dough individu covid. no one thinking they'll be the ones who would get covid. all the people i've seen didn't think they would get it, about

you they did. this is completely preventable. all these people who are dying, these a preventable disease. it just starts with social distancing. >> so when you're dealing with people in your icu, i mean, tell us about the kind of situations where families transmitted this inside the family, and in the end, it took away a family member. >> right. that is all too familiar story. so many of the people who have died in our icu have been 50, 6 on, 70-year-olds who have been doing the best to social distance, and you hear this story again and again. i was with my kids last week. my children, they got sick, and now here i am sick. i think a lot of times it's the younger generation that's maybe

not social distancing as well as they could be, and then they're exposing their family members, and before you know it, those family members are critically ill, and a lot of them are dying. it's heartbreaking. it's heartbreaking for a community to be losing these people, and for the health care providers who are trying to take care of them. having otherwise healthy people dying every day, it is truly heartbreaking. >> when you're talking about they're seeing their kids and that's how they're getting inphetted, are you talking about kids in their 20s, 30s? >> 20s, 30s, 40s, yeah, people who are socially interacting. or maybe they still need to be working and they don't have an option to stay home. there is the option to not be interacting with the other family members in these family gatherings. it's just a perfect spot for covid to be transmitted between lots of people.

>> yeah. it is so hard. you are seeing the hardest part, which is people having to say good-bye to their family members. i want to thank you for talking to us about the real risks of what's going on. thank you, doctor. >> you're welcome. thank you. so we now know where president trump's line is when it comes to conspiracy theories. the campaign distances itself from a member of its legal team, who is baselessly peddling a theory from a dictator has been dead for more than seven years. hello! hello is friendly... hello is open... it's welcoming... everything we want to be when helping people find a medicare plan. so if you're looking for yours, say hello to hellomedicare...

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just moments ago, in delaware, reporters firing a few questions at president-elect joe biden, after he announced his national security picks. let's listen. [ inaudible ] >> are you kidding me? [ laughter ] [ inaudible ] >> because it's national security. thanks.

>> all right. so a quick q&a there, certainly we would like more substantive answer to say that, but the president-elect clearly expecting there to be some friction with the senate, if it is republican controlled, and stating obviously, you know, the obvious, the national security is important. that's why he went national security first for his announcement. let's look at a different story. sydney powell just got the boot from trump's legal team. cnn has lenders that powell's firing was made at the behest of the president after receiving several calls over the weekend. her latest statement on newsmax seemed to be the last straw. >> georgia will probably be the first thing i'm going to blow up, and mr. kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it, because they're in on this dominion scam.

another benefit, dominion was created through what i call -- i wonder where he got the technology, where it actually came from. i think it's hammer and scorecard from the cia. >> sydney powell was unable to provide any evidence to back any of that up. harry litman is a former deputy assistant attorney general. harry, if you can, help us understand this. they booted powell, but her conspiracy theories don't really stand out from those that others on his team promulgate, so why dump her? >> it's really true. outlandish, extravagant claims with no proof whatsoever are giuliani's stock-in-trade as well for many months. she did seem to be wearing aluminum foil there on her head.

is that what got her voted off the island? it's a little hard to say. in general, she's just doing what they all were doing, taking it maybe a step further with this international conspiracy involves chavez who died, as you say, many years ago. somehow they got crosswise with giuliani. she flinched from appearing on tucker carlson's show when he asked for evidence. that might have contributed to it, but it seems like she was sort of a sacrificial lamb for tactics that all three of the so-called elite strike force -- giuliani, jen ellis and she -- have been deploying regularly. >> that's what jen ellis called the team, the elite strike force team. >> right. >> by all accounts, from anyone who just has any legal knowledge, it's been -- it's been a disaster, and not only a disaster, it's been, you know,

to someone with a legal mind, who knows a bit -- even a bit of legal dese, it's been hard to watch, cringe-worthy. >> at absolute slow-moving train wreck. i can't remember a parallel. two and 34, and every time they stand up in front of the a court, the court says, where is the evidence? they say the equivalent of, oh, never mind, we weren't claiming fraud anyway. completely different from what they were saying in public. it's humiliating. giuliani has shown an appetite for being humiliated in the past. it just seems like they're plying if for pr reasons, not legal reasons. nevertheless, as one said, powell was too crazy even for this president. >> which says a lot. where does the legal ballots go from here? what is next in this team's

efforts? >> well, they have just been thrown out of the 3rd circumstance, soished have said 2 in 35. the big thing, brianna, it has yet to link up at all with the certification process. they need the judge to stop the music there. they can't find one, so it goes nowhere. he can so anyone he wants, as long as georgia, michigan and pennsylvania continue to methodically certify, as they are supposed to do under the law, all the lawsuits have no connection whatsoever, and have no possibility of stopping the ind indomible movement for joe biden. >> i mean, this is just been an embarrassing situation the way things are carried out, but at

the same time as this legal ballots goes on, he's able to raise money. so when you look at the motive behind continuing with this legal fight, is that what it is? or is there something else to it? >> i think that's a lot about it. and the republican senators are in league with this, which may explain their silence. it's true, from the start it's had these supplementary goals, raising money for georgia, even to recover his campaign debt. in general, people who have said follow the money when they have tried to explain trump's otherwise opaque motivations, have usually come on to something. so that's a strong possibility. just in general, being able to maintain the charade is another one, but, you know, this legal campaign where they're getting clobbered all over the country just can't continue very much longer. >> harry litman, thank you so much for talk with us today.

>> thank you, brianna. los angeles county is tightening the rules by banning outdoor dining, and toronto is under lockdown again. they're facing a surge more than a month after they celebrated their equivalent of thanksgiving. and it's a place where all are welcome. another powerful season of "this is life with lisa ling." it premieres sunday night at 9:00 on cnn. he uses fresh, clean ingredients to make a masterpiece. taste our delicious new flatbread pizzas today. panera.

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the spike we are seeing in covid cases in our nation's capital and nationwide is

forcing the closure of the smithsonian museums and national zoo in washington, d.c. this is the smithsonian's second closure because of covid. the museums and the zoo closed in march. they had a limited reopening in september to the public. and for more pandemic headlines around the country, let's check in with some of our cnn correspondents.dan simon. now even outdoor dining has been halted in california as cases skyrocket. the rule goes into effect on wednesday. it will be takeout or delivery only at l.a. county. something we have not seen since the month of may. the daily average of new cases in california has hit its highest point yet. more than 15,000 cases on friday. the daily average of new cases has nearly tripled since the month of november. meantime, governor newsom announced that he and his family are quarantining for 14 days after their children came into contact with an officer from the california highway patrol who had tested positive. >> reporter: i'm paula newton in

atlanta. i just returned from toronto on the weekend where that city is now on a second lockdown. spiking cases, the icus close to capacity. and public health officials there say they simply had no choice. this lockdown means that basically all nonessential services, all those stores, salons, barbers, any indoor dining even on a patio now banned. kids, though, will stay in school. the fear now, people wonder will it work? they will find out in the next four weeks and see if they will remain in lockdown through christmas. >> reporter: i'm jab lycqueline howard in atlanta. the risk of covid-19 still appears your in young people under 25 but more concern may be warranted for those with underlying health conditions and those from black, hispanic, and asian communities due to racial disparities. and those older in age like

teens and older adults. the data was based on 135,000 pediatric patients tested for covid-19. among those patients, about 5,000 or 4% tested positive. 359 of them were hospitalized, and overall eight patients died. >> thank you to my colleagues for those reports from them. we are watching monopoly right now where the four members of the board of canvassers are meeting. they'll soon decide whether to certify the election results, and our special coverage continues now with brooke baldwin after this break. when i was in high school, this was the theater i came to quite often. the support we've had over the last few months has been amazing. it's not just a work environment. everyone here is family. if you are ready to open your heart and your home, check us out. we thought for sure that we were done. and this town said: not today. ♪

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hi, there, i'm brooke baldwin. you're watching cnn on this monday. thank you for being here. we begin with the president. 58 days left in office, and he is seemingly in hiding. only leaving the white house to play golf. hiding behind this fantasy that he won re-election, a twitter feed that has become an echo chamber of lies and lawsuit after lawsuit that continue to be thrown out. so it should come as no surprise that more republicans are emerging to support a peaceful transition of power to president-elect joe biden who in the face of unprecedented obstruction is moving forward with building his foreign policy team, naming key members of his