But behind the scenes, Biden’s advisers are in the midst of a fierce lobbying blitz to get Trump’s allies to crack. They’re dispatching emissaries from past administrations — Republican and Democrat — along with a wide array of business and interest group leaders to intercede on Biden’s behalf. According to three transition officials, Biden’s team is in talks with multiple Republican leaders and officeholders to end the transition stalemate, warning them of risks to national security and public health if the president-elect isn’t granted access to the government.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are also deploying aides and allies to ramp up public pressure on General Services Administrator Emily Murphy, who has refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory and thus allow the transition to officially begin. And Biden’s roster of medical experts is making the rounds on cable TV to argue that the transition needs to get underway now for the country to distribute Covid-19 vaccines to hundreds of millions of Americans quickly next year…

Biden’s team is trying to walk a line between blasting Murphy and Republicans — which might cause them to dig in more — and highlighting what they call legitimate dangers of delay.

They want to avoid open partisan warfare, convinced it would only further inflame Trump and his supporters. Instead, the thinking goes, apply pressure privately, and remove enough bricks in Trump’s wall of defenders until it collapses.