WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is fac­ing pres­sure to coop­er­ate with Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden’s team to ensure a smooth trans­fer of pow­er when the new admin­is­tra­tion takes office in January.

The Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion is tasked with for­mal­ly rec­og­niz­ing Biden as pres­i­dent-elect, which begins the tran­si­tion. But the agency’s Trump-appoint­ed admin­is­tra­tor, Emi­ly Mur­phy, has not start­ed the process and has giv­en no guid­ance on when she will do so.

That lack of clar­i­ty is fuel­ing ques­tions about whether Trump, who has not pub­licly rec­og­nized Biden’s vic­to­ry and has false­ly claimed the elec­tion was stolen, will impede Democ­rats as they try to estab­lish a government.

There is lit­tle prece­dent in the mod­ern era of a pres­i­dent erect­ing such hur­dles for his suc­ces­sor. The stakes are espe­cial­ly high this year because Biden will take office amid a rag­ing pan­dem­ic, which will require a com­pre­hen­sive gov­ern­ment response.

“America’s nation­al secu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic inter­ests depend on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment sig­nal­ing clear­ly and swift­ly that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment will respect the will of the Amer­i­can peo­ple and engage in a smooth and peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er,” Jen Psa­ki, a Biden tran­si­tion aide, tweet­ed Sunday.

The advi­so­ry board of the non­par­ti­san Cen­ter for Pres­i­den­tial Tran­si­tion also urged the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to “imme­di­ate­ly begin the post-elec­tion tran­si­tion process and the Biden team to take full advan­tage of the resources avail­able under the Pres­i­den­tial Tran­si­tion Act.”

Biden, who was elect­ed the 46th pres­i­dent on Sat­ur­day, is tak­ing steps to build a gov­ern­ment despite ques­tions about whether Trump will offer the tra­di­tion­al assistance.

He is focus­ing first on the virus, which has already killed near­ly 240,000 peo­ple in the Unit­ed States. Biden on Mon­day announced details of a task force that will cre­ate a blue­print to attempt to bring the pan­dem­ic under con­trol that he plans to begin imple­ment­ing after assum­ing the pres­i­den­cy on Jan. 20.

For­mer Sur­geon Gen­er­al, Dr. Vivek Murthy, ex-Food Drug Admin­is­tra­tion Com­mis­sion­er Dr. David Kessler and Dr. Mar­cel­la Nunez-Smith, a Yale Uni­ver­si­ty asso­ci­at­ed pro­fes­sor and asso­ciate dean whose research focus­es on pro­mot­ing health care equal­i­ty for mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions, are its co-chairs.

“Deal­ing with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is one of the most impor­tant bat­tles our admin­is­tra­tion will face, and I will be informed by sci­ence and by experts,” Biden said in a state­ment. “The advi­so­ry board will help shape my approach to man­ag­ing the surge in report­ed infec­tions; ensur­ing vac­cines are safe, effec­tive, and dis­trib­uted effi­cient­ly, equi­tably, and free; and pro­tect­ing at-risk populations.”

There are also 10 mem­bers, includ­ing two for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials: Rick Bright, who said he was oust­ed as head of the Bio­med­ical Advanced Research and Devel­op­ment Author­i­ty after crit­i­ciz­ing the fed­er­al government’s response to the coro­n­avirus, and Luciana Borio, who until last year was a biode­fense spe­cial­ist on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Council.

The remain­der of the pan­el includes experts with exper­tise in a num­ber of areas, includ­ing Eric Goos­by, who was then-Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s glob­al AIDS coordinator.

Biden was also launch­ing agency review teams, groups of tran­si­tion staffers that have access to key agen­cies in the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. They will col­lect and review infor­ma­tion such as bud­getary and staffing deci­sions, pend­ing reg­u­la­tions and oth­er work in progress from cur­rent Trump admin­is­tra­tion staff at the depart­ments to help Biden’s team pre­pare to transition.

But that process can’t begin in full until the GSA rec­og­nizes Biden as pres­i­dent-elect. The def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes a clear elec­tion win­ner for the GSA is legal­ly murky, mak­ing next steps unclear, espe­cial­ly in the short term.

The GSA’s lead­er­ship is sup­posed to act inde­pen­dent­ly and in a non­par­ti­san man­ner, and at least some ele­ments of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment already have begun imple­ment­ing tran­si­tion plans. Avi­a­tion offi­cials, for instance, have restrict­ed the air­space over Biden’s lake­front home in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware, while the Secret Ser­vice has begun using agents from its pres­i­den­tial pro­tec­tive detail for the pres­i­dent-elect and his family.

There were oth­er signs that some lead­ers were prepar­ing for a new administration.

Biden aides said the pres­i­dent-elect and tran­si­tion team had been in touch with Repub­li­can law­mak­ers. Israel’s prime min­is­ter, Ben­jamin Netanyahu, one of Trump’s clos­est allies, opened a Cab­i­net meet­ing on Sun­day by con­grat­u­lat­ing Biden, a for­mer vice pres­i­dent and long­time senator.

“I have a long and warm per­son­al con­nec­tion with Joe Biden for near­ly 40 years, and I know him as a great friend of the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

George W. Bush, the only liv­ing Repub­li­can for­mer pres­i­dent, called Biden “a good man, who has won his oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead and uni­fy our country.”

But oth­er Repub­li­cans, includ­ing Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na, urged Trump to con­tin­ue pur­su­ing legal chal­lenges relat­ed to the elec­tion, mak­ing a bumpy tran­si­tion more likely.

Biden start­ed his first full day as pres­i­dent-elect on Sun­day by attend­ing church at St. Joseph on the Brandy­wine near his home in Wilm­ing­ton, as he does near­ly every week. After the ser­vice, he vis­it­ed the church ceme­tery where sev­er­al fam­i­ly mem­bers have been laid to rest, includ­ing his son Beau.

He oth­er­wise spent most of the day inside his home while some of his staff spent hours on a con­fer­ence call focused on tran­si­tion planning.

Those plans also may hinge on two Sen­ate races in Geor­gia that have advanced to a Jan. 5 runoff. If Repub­li­cans hold those seats, they’ll like­ly retain the Sen­ate major­i­ty and be in a posi­tion to slow con­fir­ma­tion of Biden’s top Cab­i­net choic­es and com­pli­cate his leg­isla­tive goals, includ­ing sweep­ing calls for expand­ing access to health care and bol­ster­ing the post-pan­dem­ic econ­o­my with green jobs and infra­struc­ture designed to com­bat cli­mate change.

That could test Biden’s cam­paign pledge to move past the divi­sive­ness of the Trump era and gov­ern in a bipar­ti­san manner.

While Biden’s aides acknowl­edged it would be eas­i­er for him to get his pro­pos­als enact­ed with Democ­rats con­trol­ling the Sen­ate, Stef Feld­man, the pol­i­cy direc­tor on his cam­paign, said Biden has been known in the past for work­ing with Repub­li­cans to move legislation.

“The president-elect’s plan will remain the president-elect’s plans regard­less of who wins the Sen­ate major­i­ty, and he will work with col­leagues across the aisle in order to get it done,” she said.

Dur­ing his vic­to­ry speech on Sat­ur­day, he vowed to be a pres­i­dent who “seeks not to divide, but uni­fy” and appealed to Trump sup­port­ers to “give each oth­er a chance.”

Those close to Biden say he will nav­i­gate the peri­od ahead by har­ness­ing his sense of empa­thy that became a trade­mark of his cam­paign. Biden often spoke of the pain he expe­ri­enced fol­low­ing the death of his wife and young daugh­ter in a 1972 car crash, and Beau’s 2015 death due to brain cancer.

“My broth­er knows how to feel,” said Valerie Biden Owens, Biden’s sis­ter and long­time top advis­er. “Joe’s strength has been resilience and recov­ery and that’s what we need as a country.”