this is "nightline." >> tonight, virus rising. the record number of cases in america's newest covid hot spot, on the border. nurses overwhelmed and overworked. >> you know, we're human. our emotions get to us. it's just hard to see. >> our big box stores compounding the problem? how a new vaccine may provide hope. plus transition turmoil. team trump digging in, spreading baseless claims of election fraud, refusing to acknowledge joe biden as the president elect. >> there will be a smooth transition to a second trump administration. >> how biden responded. >> secretary of state pompeo.

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♪ good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight, cases of covid-19 rising in every single state in the country. the u.s. surpassing 1 million new cases in november already.

now the pandemic hitting one city in texas hard. here's abc's matt gutman. >> reporter: high school football coach charles brown loved his team, but even more, he loved his sprawling family. >> we did it! >> oh, no, you better not! >> reporter: but last month when he was diagnosed with covid, it was the family's turn to motivate the career coach. >> we were all telling him, just keep fighting, that's how you -- even that morning i said, you have to pinkie promise me that you will not stop fighting. every time when we ended the phone call, it was "i love you." then he would wave to millie like this and i've blown kisses. >> that's what he taught everybody else and his players and his students. you fight till the very end. then you turn it over to the lord, and the lord will do the rest. >> reporter: dying of covid, the retired coach hoped to spare

them one last anguish. >> right at the end, he left us because he didn't want to be put on a ventilator and he knew there was no other choice. and he didn't want me to have to make that decision. because he knew how bad it was. his lungs were like concrete. that's why he kept telling us, "i can't breathe, i can't breathe." >> reporter: coach brown, who recently retired, one of the latest victims in the city where the spread of covid is described as uncontrollable. el paso, texas. once dubbed the safest city in the country, imperiled now by the virus. cases, hospitalizations, and deaths breaking records. they're backing in this refrigerator truck into the medical examiner's office just over there. there are still more of these trucks headed this way. the state has shipped ten refrigerator trucks here, and county judge cardiego says more may be needed.

>> how long would it take if you had the same trajectory of numbers going before you exhaust resources? they're saying about two weeks. >> 154 bodies in there. why is that? >> we have such a massive number of positive cases, hospitals are at capacity. >> reporter: the judge walking us through this personal heartbreak in his hometown. >> so you think that you have two friends who died who might be in one of these trucks? >> one for sure, but i have no clue. i've got friends that have died in the last week. and i have no clue where the process is. >> reporter: texas isn't unique. every single state in the country is seeing an increase in cases, infections, deaths. for the first time the u.s. surpassing a staggering 10 million covid-19 cases, the highest number reported in any nation. and today alone, 131,000 new cases reported. officials now from both sides of the aisle with dire messages. from new york -- >> we have one last chance to

stop a second wave. >> reporter: to utah, where overcrowding in intensive care units is forcing governor gary herbert to declare a new state of emergency. >> i'm placing the entire state of utah under a mask mandate until further notice. >> reporter: in indiana, state officials calling for retired health care workers to help. ohio shattering a record with over 6,000 new cases in just the past 24 hours. in tulsa, oklahoma, hospitals there have run out of icu beds. but in the el paso region, numbers have been climbing for weeks. >> this is a very vital moment -- >> reporter: the increase so alarming that the u.s. air force has deployed dozens of medical personnel from around the country. every hospital in the area using those blue surge tents for overflow. those tents were once used for disaster relief and detention centers housing thousands of separated children. they are now retrofitted to become emergency hospitals. getting tested now similar in length to the scene two weeks

ago when hospitals were already scrambling to keep up with incoming cases. >> me as a nurse, it just kicked in. i've got to take care of these people. this is something we've got to do as a community. >> reporter: vanessa is a nurse here at the university medical center. >> does it get any easier dealing with these patients who are the sickest you've ever seen? >> no, it doesn't. >> you weren't used to seeing so many people die? >> no, of course not. i think -- we're human. our emotions get to us. sorry. it's just hard to see. >> reporter: among those who have died due to the virus here, 90% are latino. funeral homes are faced with an unrelenting procession of bodies. >> these refrigeration units -- >> reporter: christopher luhan is helping families say their final good-byes. >> families need some type of closure, so they ask us if they

can their loved one, one more time. >> reporter: when i was here in october they were preparing. >> you have a walk-in refrigerator that's been full. >> before this room held bodies, what was in it? >> it was a storage room and part of our music room for our chapel usage as well and we saw that we needed to do something. >> reporter: and across the city, in another funeral home, they're making use of every corner. >> now we've got converted chapel into a cooler. and a small area for -- to place caskets. >> reporter: once filled with rows of pews and prayer, now converted to hold up to 80 bodies. tonight they tell us they are at 100% capacity. >> we never thought that we would have to disband to a bigger cooler. >> reporter: in el paso, going shopping has customarily been a family affair. officials pointing to that custom as one of the causes of

this exponential increase in cases. big box stores like this one with 40% of the people contracting the virus at stores like this. hours later that walmart announcing it has temporarily closed for industrial cleaning. the surge in cases has divided local politics. at the end of october, county judge ricardo salmonellego issued an order calling for a two-week shutdown of nonessential workers. el paso's mayor said he wouldn't ask the local police force to enforce the rule. texas' attorney general taking the proposed lockdown to court. >> it seems to me like people are playing politics with other people's lives. >> well, they're not used to el paso. we've got the reputation that el paso doesn't make a lot of decisions that are not made by the state. we're so isolated in this area. we get -- it's hard to get the same economic development money. so this is no different. this is one more step in saying, you know, you shouldn't have the

authority. >> reporter: help cannot get here fast enough. the news of the first safe and effective trials for vaccine for the virus providing hope. if a vaccine is approved by the end of the year, pfizer expects to produce enough vaccine to cover 25 million people. health care providers and sen r seniors in nursing homes will be the first to receive it. dr. smith was the first to join the human trials. now she's happy to help bring an end to the pandemic. >> as an african-american female, knowing that this disease was affecting african-americans and people of color disproportionately, i also wanted to be part of the race to a cure, not so much a cure, but something that could help prevent covid-19. >> reporter: back in el paso, coach brown's wife, vicki, hoisting the loss and grief of

250,000 americans. >> is there one thing you're going to miss most about him? >> that he's not here. i can only say, he's not here physically with me. because that -- especially for these last five years, we have done everything together. >> reporter: tonight the words of the coach remembered in his own home. >> we were taught, fight, and fix one obstacle at a time. that's all we can do, one thing at a time. >> one of the last things we said in his obituary was, because of your love, dad, we will make it through. and that's what will get us through. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm matt gutman in el paso, texas. >> our thoughts are with coach brown's family. coming up, any hope left for a civil transition?

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♪ it's been a week since election day, and the president and his circle still claim the election was rigged. one of the top administration officials, secretary of state mike pompeo, refusing to acknowledge joe biden is the president-elect. >> is the state department currently preparing to engage with the biden transition team, if not, at what point does a delay hamper a smooth transition or pose a risk to national security? >> there will be a smooth transition to a second trump administration. >> it doesn't look like any transition will be smooth. earlier this evening i spoke to three republican strategists. matt dowd, sara fagen, barbara comstock about what team trump

hopes to gain. >> i'd have to agree with ambassador john bolton, who today said he's eviscerated his credibility internationally. but i think fortunately you've seen people generally understand which way this is going. the legal case is not -- they don't have serious lawyers, they haven't made serious allegations with backed-up information such that we had in the 2000 recount. so i think you will see this sputtering to an end fairly quickly. >> matt, even though the president said we had to know the results that night, he and his inner circle have not gotten any closer to accepting the realities of the numbers. should the nation continue to be patient, or is it time to put up or shut up? >> well, i think the nation has moved on. you look around. i live in a town which voted for donald trump. they've taken their maga flags down. they've taken their banners down. they've moved on. they want to talk about thanksgiving and what we're going to have and what are people going to do.

i saw a poll today, 80% of the people said -- 80% of the voters including 60% of the republicans said biden won, and they all said that trump's got to concede. so the country's moved on. and everyone else has moved on. there's a small circle of people, including the president, that hasn't moved on yet. >> sara, so far there's no evidence of widespread fraud. officials from both parties have stated publicly that election went well. is there any evidence that would support the president's claim he won this election? >> well, i haven't seen it. of course, he's availing himself of the courts, and he has a right to do so. i think probably the only case, and it's not fraud, it's a legitimate legal case, is whether the state supreme court in pennsylvania overruled the state legislature in a way that was unconstitutional by allowing votes to arrive after election day and be counted. now that's a very steep hill to climb up, but it is a legitimate

court case. >> sara, follow on if i may. why are we seeing more republicans come forward to either support the president or say, let's move on? >> well, i think there's a process that's going on around the president by his closest advisers, most of whom are his family. i think you've got a handful of senators who are in the congratulate joe biden camp. we've seen them come forward. we've seen former president bush do that. you have others who are giving the president his time. i think what i see is individuals choosing their words very carefully. you know. just saying that the presiden s has the right to use the court, it looks like it's an uphill battle, but we'll give him the opportunity to do so. i think this will work itself out. it's going to take longer than some people want it to. >> barbara, to that point, is there any concern that some of the president's actions could provoke some kind of civil unrest? >> well, you know, you did hear -- i think pierre thomas on

abc did report there was some law enforcement concern. and because the president often does throw gasoline at various fires, as matt pointed out, people have moved on. the president was fired. he doesn't like that. he was a sore winner, never mind a lower loser, so i think we certainly expected he would not take this well. but, you know, the facts what are they are. i think joe biden was very gracious about that in pointing that out, they're moving forward. the international world is moving forward. and the good thing is, you know, we can do this. i would point out, since we all work on the 2000 campaign, one of the things that the 9/11 commission pointed out afterwards is that delay in transition time might have contributed to some of the national security incidents, things being missed. i am concerned about not having our national security people transitioning and working with

the biden team to make sure the country's protected. we need to have that continuity so that we protect the american people and our national security. >> matt, to the point, the three of you were in the room when it happened in 2000, working for the bush campaign. a number of people in trump world are comparing 2000 to today. from your perspective, is there any comparison between the work you all were engaged in in 2000 in tallahassee, florida, where we all spent too many days, to what we're seeing going on right now? >> well, the only comparison at all is that it wasn't decided on the tuesday night, election night. that's the only comparison. this election, we had to wait a few days until ballots were counted, then we knew who the winner was, joe biden. that's the only comparison. everything else doesn't compare. one thing i'll point out, as everybody knows, the margin of victory that joe biden has in pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, is three times the margin of victory that donald trump had in those same states

in 2016. >> i know you're a michigan man who lives in texas. you love sports analogies. give me a sports analogy. how much longer does this go go on? are we in the third quarter, fourth quarter, overtime, where are we? how much longer before you think the trump administration goes along with what the facts have led sinus. >> the clock's on zero. the fans have left the stadium. the opposing players are playing for their next game. and the team is still on there and the coach is yelling at them, we can still win, even though the clock says zero and they've lost the game and the fans have already left and they're about to turn out the lights. that's the equivalent sports analogy for right now. >> sara, the last word. in contrast, president-elect biden seems to be staying above the fray, having daily events that make him look presidential, while president trump hasn't been seen in days. is biden winning the perception game of who's in charge? >> well, he's certainly handling himself i think almost flawlessly. you know, he doesn't take the

bait on questions about when he's going to speak to mcconnell, if he's being appropriately treated by republicans. you know, he just stays above the fray. he's been very, very smart in a way that i think that is probably defused a good number of people who voted for the president and did not want biden to win. but they look at the way he's conducted himself, and you can't help but say, i like his style, he seems reasonable, he's not agitating, he's not picking a fight with trump. he's sort of doing everything the way you would want a president to handle himself. i think that accrues to his benefit as he moves toward january and likely becomes the next president. most likely definitely will become the next president. >> thank you all for your time and insight. always grateful. >> thanks. >> thank you, byron. and up next, loved ones for loved ones. roomba vacuums exacty where you need it. alexa, tell roomba to vacuum in front of the couch.

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about the covid-19 virus. it's real. it's dangerous. and we do know how to keep you and your loved ones safe. wear a mask. wash your hands. stay six feet apart. we can do this. if we do it together. ♪ finally tonight, love is the mother of invention. for brady max meyers of palmer, nebraska, a little pvc pipe and

a big piece of plastic, just fantastic. >> hug! >> oh, that's a hug! >> it's perfect pandemic protection to meet the grandparents after nine months. granddad popo is undergoing chemo, so they've been extra careful. this homemade hugging station making for some lasting, loving embraces. it was 19th century poet victor hugo who said, life is the flower for which love is the