(The Washington Post): A day that began with thousands of President Trump’s supporters in Washington for demonstrations turned violent as many in attendance saw Wednesday as a last stand for Trump because Congress was set to confirm that President-elect Joe Biden won the election.



Trump — who lost the popular and electoral college vote — continues to dispute the election results, without evidence, and has encouraged his supporters to attend the rallies. He took the stage about noon to roaring crowds, falsely claiming he had won the election.



Later at the U.S. Capitol, throngs of people pushed past police who were trying to block them from entering the building as lawmakers inside debated counting electoral college votes confirming Biden’s victory. A mob was able to breach security and successfully enter the building, where one person was shot and later died.



D.C. police make curfew arrests as unrest at Capitol quiets



About 30 people had been arrested by D.C. police for curfew violations by 9:30 p.m., the office of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said. Officials cautioned a more precise number will be made available on Thursday, and additional arrests are possible.



These curfew arrests are in addition to the 13 people arrested since Tuesday afternoon on other charges that include firearm offenses, assault and crossing police lines.



D.C. police arrested about a dozen Trump supporters for curfew violation on New York Avenue NW, near 15th Street about two blocks from the White House, just before 8 p.m.



As the night continued, downtown streets emptied, except for a handful of Trump supporters smoking outside hotels or walking in small groups. A few cars passed through, some with out-of-area plates seeking an exit from the city. D.C. police occasionally used loud speakers in their cruisers to warn walkers they were violating curfew.



Outside the Marriott hotel on 14th Street NW around 9:15 p.m., a small group of people were arguing loudly with about 10 MPD officers standing opposite them on the sidewalk. One woman yelled, “This is tyranny.” The small crowd refused to go inside, and more people joined them from inside the hotel, chanting, “Shame on you,” “1776!” and “whose streets? Our streets.” One person waved a large Trump flag.



Dozens more officers assembled in a line in the middle of the road to face them. By about 15 mins later, shouts from the crowd to police grew louder and louder.



By 8:45, law enforcement officers around the Capitol seemed to sense that the immediate threat of violence had dissipated. On the East side, the lines of officers that stood behind the metal barriers before Congress reconvened had dispersed.



More than two dozen officers seemed to head for home, saying good night and making jokes about how badly they needed the bathroom. The Capitol lawn remained littered with signs declaring support for Trump.



After 9 p.m., National guardsmen unbuckled their helmets and set down their shields. The dozen or so Trump supporters still lingering at the reflecting pool settled onto folding chairs and mounds of grass. A woman with a megaphone continued to berate the police. “We have rights,” she said. “We have the right to be here and exercise our First Amendment rights.”

Woman dies after shooting in U.S. Capitol; D.C. National Guard activated after mob breaches building

WASHINGTON (Reuters): Two top aides to first lady Melania Trump resigned on Wednesday in the wake of violence on Capitol Hill, and more top White House officials were considering resigning, including national security adviser Robert O’Brien and his deputy, Matthew Pottinger, sources familiar with the matter said.



Stephanie Grisham resigned as chief of staff to the first lady after supporters of President Donald Trump violently occupied the U.S. Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying the presidential election results.



“It has been an honor to serve the country in the White House. I am very proud to have been a part of Mrs. Trump’s mission to help children everywhere, and proud of the many accomplishments of this administration,” Grisham said in a statement.



Grisham, who spent a year as White House press secretary before becoming chief of staff to the first lady, did not say whether her resignation was in reaction to the violence in the nation’s capital, but a source familiar with her decision said the violence was the last straw for her.



The White House social secretary, Rickie Niceta, also resigned, as did a deputy White House press secretary, Sarah Matthews, two sources told Reuters.



O’Brien was also considering resigning, as was Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who has been a key voice on China policy within the administration, two sources said.



“I just spoke with Vice President Pence,” O’Brien said in a statement earlier Wednesday, adding, “I am proud to serve with him.”



There was also chatter inside the White House that deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell might resign, a source said.



The White House declined to comment.



Multiple injuries were reported and one woman was killed in the melee at the Capitol, as Trump supporters responded to the president’s call to protest his loss in November’s presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has repeatedly and baselessly claimed the election was marred by fraudulent voting.

Two top White House officials resign after Capitol violence, more on the way -sources

(AP): In an unprecedented step, Facebook and Twitter suspended President Donald Trump from posting to their platforms Wednesday following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.



Twitter locked Trump out of his account for 12 hours and said that future violations by Trump could result in a permanent suspension. The company required the removal of three of Trump’s tweets, including a short video in which he urged those supporters to “go home” while also repeating falsehoods about the integrity of the presidential election. Trump’s account deleted those posts, Twitter said; had they remained, Twitter had threatened to extend his suspension.



Facebook followed up in the evening, announcing that Trump wouldn’t be able to post for 24 hours following two violations of its policies. The White House did not immediately offer a response to the actions.



While some cheered the platforms’ actions, experts noted that the companies’ actions follow years of hemming and hawing on Trump and his supporters spreading dangerous misinformation and encouraging violence that have contributed to Wednesday’s violence.



Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor and an expert on social media, said Wednesday’s events in Washington, D.C. are a direct result of Trump’s use of social media to spread propaganda and disinformation, and that the platforms should bear some responsibility for their inaction.



“This is what happens,” said Grygiel. “We didn’t just see a breach at the Capitol. Social media platforms have been breached by the president repeatedly. This is disinformation. This was a coup attempt in the United States.”



Grygiel said the platform’s decision to remove the video — and Twitter’s suspension — are too little, too late.



“They’re creeping along towards firmer action,” Grygiel said, calling Trump “Exhibit A” for the need for greater regulation of social media. “Social media is complicit in this because he has repeatedly used social media to incite violence. It’s a culmination of years of propaganda and abuse of media by the president of the United States.”



Trump posted that video more than two hours after protesters entered the Capitol, interrupting lawmakers meeting in an extraordinary joint session to confirm the Electoral College results and President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.



So far, YouTube has not taken similar action to muzzle Trump, although it said it also removed Trump’s video. But that video remained available as of Wednesday afternoon.



Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, said on Twitter Wednesday that the video was removed because it “contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.”



“This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump’s video,” Rosen said on Twitter.



Twitter initially left the video up but blocked people from being able to retweet it or comment on it. Only later in the day did the platform delete it entirely.



Trump opened his video saying, “I know your pain. I know your hurt. But you have to go home now.”



After repeating false claims about voter fraud affecting the election, Trump went on to say: “We can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”



Republican lawmakers and previous administration officials had begged Trump to give a statement to his supporters to quell the violence. He posted his video as authorities struggled to take control of a chaotic situation at the Capitol that led to the evacuation of lawmakers and the death of at least one person.



Trump has harnessed social media — especially Twitter — as a potent tool for spreading misinformation about the election. Wednesday’s riot only increased calls to ban Trump from the platform.



“The President has promoted sedition and incited violence,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement. “More than anything, what is happening right now at the Capitol is a direct result of the fear and disinformation that has been spewed consistently from the Oval Office.”

Twitter, Facebook muzzle Trump amid Capitol violence

WASHINGTON (AP): A violent mob loyal to President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and forced lawmakers into hiding, in a stunning attempt to overturn America’s presidential election, undercut the nation’s democracy and keep Democrat Joe Biden from replacing Trump in the White House.



The nation’s elected representatives scrambled to crouch under desks and don gas marks, while police futilely tried to barricade the building, one of the most jarring scenes ever to unfold in a seat of American political power. A woman was shot and killed inside the Capitol, and Washington’s mayor instituted an evening curfew in an attempt to contain the violence.



The rioters were egged on by Trump, who has spent weeks falsely attacking the integrity of the election and had urged his supporters to descend on Washington to protest Congress’ formal approval of Biden’s victory. Some Republican lawmakers were in the midst of raising objections to the results on his behalf when the proceedings were abruptly halted by the mob.



Together, the protests and the GOP election objections amounted to an almost unthinkable challenge to American democracy and exposed the depths of the divisions that have coursed through the country during Trump’s four years in office. Though the efforts to block Biden from being sworn in on Jan. 



20 were sure to fail, the support Trump has received for his efforts to overturn the election results have badly strained the nation’s democratic guardrails.



Congress reconvened in the evening, senators decrying the protests that defaced the Capitol and vowing to finish confirming the Electoral College vote for Biden’s election, even if it took all night.Vice President Mike Pence, reopening the Senate, directly addressed the demonstrators: “You did not win.”Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the “failed insurrection” underscored lawmakers’ duty to confirm the vote. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress would show the world “what America is made of” by finishing the count.



The president gave his supporters a boost into action Wednesday morning at a rally outside the White House, where he urged them to march to the Capitol. He spent much of the afternoon in his private dining room off the Oval Office watching scenes of the violence on television. 



At the urging of his staff, he reluctantly issued a pair of tweets and a taped video telling his supporters it was time to “go home in peace” — yet he still said he backed their cause.Hours later, Twitter for the first time time locked Trump’s account, demanded that he remove tweets excusing violence and threatened “permanent suspension.”



A somber President-elect Biden, two weeks away from being inaugurated, said American democracy was “under unprecedented assault, ” a sentiment echoed by many in Congress, including some Republicans. Former President George W. Bush said he watched the events in “disbelief and dismay.”The domed Capitol building has for centuries been the scene of protests and occasional violence. 



But Wednesday’s events were particularly astounding both because they unfolded at least initially with the implicit blessing of the president and because of the underlying goal of overturning the results of a free and fair presidential election.

Pro-Trump mob storms US Capitol in bid to overturn election

WASHINGTON (AP): The Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit backed by President Donald Trump to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, ending a desperate attempt to get legal issues rejected by state and federal judges before the nation’s highest court and subvert the will of voters.



Trump bemoaned the decision late Friday, tweeting: “The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!”



The high court’s order earlier Friday was a stark repudiation of a legal claim that was widely regarded as dubious, yet embraced by the president, 19 Republican state attorneys general and 126 House Republicans.



Trump had insisted the court would find the “wisdom” and “courage” to adopt his baseless position that the election was the product of widespread fraud and should be overturned. But the nation’s highest court emphatically disagreed.



Friday’s order marked the second time this week that the court had rebuffed Republican requests that it get involved in the 2020 election outcome and reject the voters’ choice, as expressed in an election regarded by both Republican and Democratic officials as free and fair. The justices turned away an appeal from Pennsylvania Republicans on Tuesday.



On Monday, the Electoral College meets to formally elect Biden as the next president.



Trump had called the lawsuit filed by Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin “the big one” that would end with the Supreme Court undoing Biden’s substantial Electoral College majority and allowing Trump to serve another four years in the White House.



In a brief order, the court said Texas does not have the legal right to sue those states because it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”



Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have said previously the court does not have the authority to turn away lawsuits between states, said they would have heard Texas’ complaint. But they would not have done as Texas wanted — setting aside those four states’ 62 electoral votes for Biden — pending resolution of the lawsuit.



Trump complained that “within a flash,” the lawsuit was “thrown out and gone, without even looking at the many reasons it was brought. A Rigged Election, fight on!”



Three Trump appointees sit on the high court. In his push to get the most recent of his nominees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed quickly, Trump said she would be needed for any post-election lawsuits. Barrett appears to have participated in both cases this week. None of the Trump appointees noted a dissent in either case. The four states sued by Texas had urged the court to reject the case as meritless. They were backed by another 22 states and the District of Columbia.



Republican support for the lawsuit and its call to throw out millions of votes in four battleground states was rooted in baseless claims of fraud, an extraordinary display of the party’s willingness to countermand the will of voters. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana were among those joining to support the action.



“The Court has rightly dismissed out of hand the extreme, unlawful and undemocratic GOP lawsuit to overturn the will of millions of American voters,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday night.



A few Republicans expressed concerns about the case. Many others remained silent even as Trump endlessly repeated claims that he lost a chance at a second term due to widespread fraud.



Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican who has previously criticized the president, applauded the court’s decision.



“Since Election Night, a lot of people have been confusing voters by spinning Kenyan Birther-type, ‘Chavez rigged the election from the grave’ conspiracy theories, but every American who cares about the rule of law should take comfort that the Supreme Court — including all three of President Trump’s picks — closed the book on the nonsense,” Sasse said in a statement.



Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the court “saw through this seditious abuse of the judicial process.”



“While these stunts are legally insignificant, their cost to our country — in misleading the public about a free and fair election and in tearing at our Constitution — is high and we will not tolerate them from our sister states or anyone else,” said Shapiro, a Democrat.



The Texas complaint repeated false, disproven and unsubstantiated accusations about the voting in four states that went for Trump’s Democratic challenger. The high court had never before been asked for such a dramatic remedy.



Two days after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed his suit, Trump jumped into the high court case. Hours later, the president held a meeting at the White House, scheduled before the suit was filed, with a dozen Republican attorneys general, including Paxton and several others who backed the effort.



“If the Supreme Court shows great Wisdom and Courage, the American People will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our Electoral Process will be respected again!” he tweeted Friday afternoon. Trump had spent the week relentlessly tweeting about the Texas case with the hashtag “overturn” and claiming, falsely, that he had won the election but was robbed.



In a statement Friday, Paxton called the Supreme Court’s decision “unfortunate.”



Still, some of the top state Republican prosecutors who urged the court to get involved acknowledged that the effort was a long shot and sought to distance themselves from Trump’s baseless allegations of fraud.



The case inflamed already high tensions over the election. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said his office staff received two death threats Thursday after he signed onto the brief supporting the case.



The lawsuit also divided officials in some states.



Montana Attorney General Tim Fox supported Texas’ case, even though he said the suit was “belated” and its chances “are slim at best.” Fox said the case raised “important constitutional questions about the separation of powers and the integrity of mail-in ballots in those defendant states.”



But Gov. Steve Bullock, D-Mont., urged the court to reject the case. He said the fact that Texas is not suing Montana, which Trump won, even though the state similarly used mail-in ballots underscores that “this action is less about election integrity than it is about attempting to overturn the will of the electorate.”



Trump’s repetition of election-related falsehoods and conspiracy theories has taken hold among far-right media and much of his base. Many Republican voters in several states won by Biden have demanded that their elected officials find a way to invalidate the president-elect’s victories.



The Republican Party of Texas on Friday evening issued a statement raising the far-fetched possibility of secession. “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution,” said party chairman Allen West, the former Florida congressman.



Even though the court’s action seemed to be the end of the road for Trump’s legal fights about the 2020 election results, the president’s efforts may have a destabilizing effect long after he leaves office. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, vowed Friday to keep fighting.



“Some litigation may continue, but it will not change election results,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the Universtiy of California, Irvine. “The delegitimization of the Biden presidency by Trump, and of elections generally, will reverberate for years to come. And that’s a real tragedy.”

Supreme Court rejects Republican attack on Biden victory

WASHINGTON (AP): Americans waiting for Republicans in Congress to acknowledge Joe Biden as the president-elect may have to keep waiting until January as GOP leaders stick with President Donald Trump’s litany of legal challenges and unproven claims of fraud.



Tuesday’s deadline for states to certify their elections — once viewed as a pivot point for Republicans to mark Biden’s win — came and went without much comment. Next week’s Dec. 14 Electoral College deadline may produce just a few more congratulatory GOP calls to Biden.



Increasingly, GOP lawmakers say the Jan. 6 vote in Congress to accept the Electoral College outcome may be when the presidential winner becomes official. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled Jan. 20 as the certain date when the country is “going to have the swearing-in of the next president.”



The result is a risky standoff like none other in U.S. history. The refusal to agree upon the facts of the election threatens to undermine voter confidence, chisel away at the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency and restack civic norms in still-unknowable ways.



Yet some GOP officials see the dragged-out process as their best shot at answering the fiery questions, calls and complaints of their constituents who voted for Trump and refuse to believe he legitimately lost the race to Biden.



“The country needs to understand, at least, it was fair,” Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., said in an interview.



Mooney said he was being pressed by voters back home, including Republican Party activists at an event last month in Harper’s Ferry, demanding to know why no one was helping the president. They were “very concerned,” he said, and so he stepped up. He introduced a House resolution Tuesday that encourages neither Trump nor Biden to concede until all the investigations are completed.



“The end is when the roll call is put up here,” he said about the Jan. 6 vote in Congress.



Trump sent his party down this unprecedented path by claiming the election was “rigged,” but Republican officials enabled doubts to swell through their past four weeks of silence. He personally called on some local elected officials to reconsider the results. Now, the disputed election has taken on a political life of its own that the party’s leadership may not be able to squash, even as Trump’s legal challenges crumble.



Republicans say it makes little political sense at this point for them to counter Trump’s views lest they risk a backlash from his supporters — their own constituents — back home. They’re relying on Trump voters to power the Georgia runoff elections Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate. And while some GOP lawmakers have acknowledged Biden’s victory, most prefer to keep quiet, letting the process play out “organically,” as one aide put it, into January.But election experts warn of long-term damage to the long-cherished American system.



“It clearly hurts confidence in the elections,” said Trey Grayson, the Republican former secretary of state for Kentucky and a past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.



“My hope,” he said, is by Dec. 14 “there will be some more voices, but my gut is it won’t be until the 6th” (of January).



Edward Foley, an elections expert and constitutional law professor at Ohio State University, said it’s true that the election winner is not officially the president-elect until the Congress declares it so with its vote on Jan. 6 to accept the Electoral College results.



“I’m less concerned about the timing, but that it happens,” he said.



For Americans to “have faith” in the elections, the losing side has to accept defeat. “It’s very, very dangerous if the losing side can’t get to that,” he said.



“It’s essential for the parties to play by that ethos — even if one individual, Mr. Trump, can’t do it, the party has to do it,” he said.



“What’s so disturbing about the dynamic that has developed since Election Day is that the party has been incapable of conveying that message because they’re taking their cues from Trump.”



In the House and the Senate, the standoff is playing out in ways large and small as lawmakers prolong the instability, some boosting their own profiles to pick up the mantle with Trump’s movement of voters and others fighting more broadly for an overhaul of election systems.



Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, announced on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show that he was prepared to deliver oral arguments for Pennsylvania lawmakers’ legal challenge to the elections if the Supreme Court takes up the case.



Cruz said in a statement he believes the court “has a responsibility to the American people to ensure, with its powers, that we are following the law and following the Constitution.”The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Republicans’ bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory.



Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., is delivering daily House floor speeches ahead of his planned formal protest during the Jan. 6 voting that he believes will show Trump was reelected.



“Others are joining me,” he said in an interview. And back home, “I have had a lot of pats on the back.”



Even the Republicans, led by McConnell, on the bipartisan inauguration committee refused to allow a Democratic motion Tuesday to publicly announce that planning was underway. The committee that has organized every inauguration since 1901 is planning COVID-19 health and safety protocols for the traditional Jan. 20 swearing-in ceremony next year.



Committee chairman Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said, “It is not the job of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies to get ahead of the electoral process and decide who we are inaugurating.”



Former congressman David McIntosh, who now heads the conservative Club for Growth, said in the new year there should be an independent, bipartisan commission established to investigate the 2020 election.



Until then, his group is trying to push Georgia’s Trump voters to the polls, even as the president disputes Biden’s win of the state.

President-elect? GOP may wait for January to say Biden won

New York: Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been elected as 46th president of the United States. All major media outlets, including CNN, NBC, Fox News, and the New York Times, announced Biden's election on Saturday morning.



Biden, who has already received 253 electoral votes, was elected with 20 Pennsylvania electoral votes. Biden also leads Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. If he wins these three states, he will get 306 electoral votes. In 2016, President Donald Trump received so many electoral votes.



With Biden's victory, Trump has joined a limited list of presidents who will not be elected for a second term. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush did not get a second term after World War II.



Biden, 78, also holds the record for the oldest elected president. He was Barack Obama's vice president from 2009 to 2017, before which he was a senator from Delaware for more than three decades. With Biden's victory, Kamala Harris will become the first woman vice president. She is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.



Biden claims he will erase the dividing line drawn by Trump for four years. He has been saying that he will bring back the lost image of America in the international arena by looking at all the citizens who vote for him and those who do not.



Although Bidenal has been elected, Trump has refused to accept defeat. He claimed that the election was rigged and that he would go to court and reverse the election results. However, he and his campaign have not been able to make public where the fraud took place.Biden has managed to bring back to the Democratic account three states in the Midwest, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which Trump unexpectedly snatched four years ago.



Trump won the 2016 election with 46 electoral votes from the Democrat-dominated state. In addition, Biden will be the first Democratic candidate in decades to take the lead in Georgia and Arizona.

Joe Biden elected  as 46th President of the United States

Agence France-Presse (AFP): Joe Biden, inching closer to victory after a bitter presidential election, appealed Friday to Americans to turn the page on divisions as a seething Donald Trump warned him not to declare victory. As trickling returns from Pennsylvania and three other states made Trump's path to a second term increasingly unlikely, Biden repeated that he believed he would win but said he would wait for the process to complete. Instead, Biden delivered a late-night address with the tone of a president-elect and vowed to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic as new cases Friday hit a new high of more than 127,000 cases. "We must put the anger -- and the demonization -- behind us. It's time for us to come together as a nation and heal," Biden said in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware accompanied by his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. "My responsibility as president will be to represent the whole nation," he said, drawing a stark contrast with Trump's nearly four years of rule by provocation. Biden spoke as US media began reporting that White House chief-of-staff Mark Meadows, 61, had contracted the virus -- underscoring the criticism directed at the president for months over his administration's handling of the crisis. Meadows first tested positive on Wednesday, a day after the election, according to The New York Times. Biden said he and Harris had already been meeting experts on how to control the "skyrocketing" cases of Covid-19, which has claimed more than 230,000 lives in the United States, more than in any other country. "I want everyone to know that on Day One, we are going to put our plan to control this virus into action, Biden said. "That can't save any of the lives that have been lost, but it will save a lot of lives in the months ahead."



Edging toward win



After Biden's campaign said he would address the nation, speculation grew that he would make a formal declaration of victory but he appeared to be waiting for confirmation of an unassailable lead and said he would speak again Saturday.



Biden's lead grew inexorably in Pennsylvania, which would hand him the keys to the White House if he secures its 20 votes in the Electoral College that determines presidential races.



By late Friday he had an advantage of almost 29,000 votes over Trump, although that was still within the narrow margin that would likely trigger a recount.



Biden was also ahead in Arizona and Georgia -- two states that have not voted for Democrats in the 21st century -- as well as Nevada, while Trump held a slim lead in North Carolina.



Georgia said it was ordering a recount due to the narrow margin and the southern state will also have runoff races in January for both its Senate seats, which will likely determine if Democrats wrest control of the upper chamber and give Biden a wider path to legislative victories.



Trump has several times prematurely named himself the winner, refusing to accept the data showing Biden headed for victory.



In his latest broadside, he warned on Twitter that "Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President. I could make that claim also."



Trump's campaign has filed lawsuits around the country alleging fraud but made little headway, with no evidence produced to back up supposed ballot tampering or other significant incidents.



Seeking court action



Pennsylvania Republicans made a last-ditch pitch for emergency intervention by the US Supreme Court to halt vote counting in the state as late ballots went to Biden.



Justice Samuel Alito, considered a conservative, declined to order an immediate halt but said the full court would consider the challenge on Saturday.



He ordered Pennsylvania to keep late-arriving ballots separate, affirming a policy already put in place by state election authorities.



In another tweet, Trump complained that he had "such a big lead" on election night, "only to see the leads miraculously disappear" later in the week.



Trump has now said falsely several times that ballots are being either invented for Biden or stolen from him.



But the unprecedented attacks on US election integrity by a president ignore a simple fact about the different types of ballots cast.



Votes cast in person on Election Day and counted first largely favored Trump, who has questioned mail-in ballots and actions to halt Covid-19.



Later counting turned to the avalanche of votes mailed in by Americans who did not want to go to crowded polling stations in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic – disproportionately Biden voters.



Anger from Trump backers



As Trump unleashed his offensive, his supporters vented anger outside election offices in several cities.



The protests were largely peaceful but in Philadelphia, prosecutors said they were charging two men who drove with weapons to the convention center where votes are being tabulated.



In Atlanta, an election worker went into hiding after facing death threats, with his car's license plate number exposed on the internet, after he was falsely accused of throwing out a ballot.



The worker was seen on video tossing a sheet, which was in fact an instruction sheet mailed back by a voter, said Richard Barron, Fulton County's elections supervisor.



Most of Trump's Republican Party stood squarely behind him.



"Far from over," tweeted Representative Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republican minority in the House of Representatives. "Republicans will not back down from this battle."



But several Republicans voiced alarm at the unprecedented attacks by a president on the US electoral process.



Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the only Republican member of the Senate to vote to convict the president at his impeachment trial earlier this year, said Trump's charge of a stolen election "damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions," Romney said.

Confident in victory, Biden appeals for national unity

(Reuters): A federal judge denied an emergency request from U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign on Thursday to stop ballot counting in Philadelphia so long as Republican observers were not present. Trump’s campaign had sued Philadelphia County’s Board of Elections earlier in the day to seek an emergency injunction. The campaign said election officials were “intentionally refusing to allow any representatives and poll watchers for President Trump and the Republican Party”. The lawsuit was filed with the federal court in Philadelphia. “As stated during today’s emergency injunction hearing, in light of the parties’ agreement, plaintiff’s motion is denied without prejudice,” U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond said in a one-sentence order late on Thursday. A state appellate court ruled earlier in the day that more Republican observers could enter the building in Philadelphia where poll workers were counting ballots. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said about 1,700 ballots had been identified in Pennsylvania at processing facilities during two sweeps late on Thursday and were in the process of being delivered to election officials. Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that mail-in votes were prone to fraud, although election experts say that is rare in U.S. elections. His campaign also lost court rulings in the closely contested states of Georgia and Michigan on Thursday.

Judge denies Trump campaign bid to halt Philadelphia count

WASHINGTON (AP): Democrat Joe Biden was pushing closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to carry the White House, securing victories in the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowing President Donald Trump’s path. With just a handful of states still up for grabs, Trump tried to press his case in court in some key swing states. It was unclear if any of his campaign’s legal maneuvering over balloting would succeed in shifting the race in his favor. Two days after Election Day, neither candidate had amassed the votes needed to win the White House. But Biden’s victories in the Great Lakes states left him at 264, meaning he was one battleground state away — any would do — from becoming president-elect. Trump, with 214 electoral votes, faced a much higher hurdle. To reach 270, he needed to claim all four remaining battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada. With millions of votes yet to be tabulated, Biden already had received more than 71 million votes, the most in history. At an afternoon news conference Wednesday, the former vice president said he expected to win the presidency but stopped short of outright declaring victory. It was a stark contrast to the approach of Trump, who early Wednesday morning falsely claimed that he had won the election. Trump’s campaign engaged in a flurry of legal activity to try to improve the Republican president’s chances and cast doubt on the election results, requesting a recount in Wisconsin and filing lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes; Biden led by more than 20,000 ballots out of nearly 3.3 million counted. For four years, Democrats have been haunted by the crumbling of the blue wall, the trio of Great Lakes states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that their candidates had been able to count on every four years. But Trump’s populist appeal struck a chord with white working-class voters and he captured all three in 2016 by a combined total of just 77,000 votes. The candidates waged a fierce fight for the states this year, with Biden’s everyman political persona resonating in blue-collar towns while his campaign also pushed to increase turnout among Black voters in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee. It was unclear when a national winner would be determined after a long, bitter campaign dominated by the coronavirus and its effects on Americans and the national economy. But even as Biden’s prospects improved, the U.S. on Wednesday set another record for daily confirmed coronavirus cases as several states posted all-time highs. The pandemic has killed more than 233,000 people in the United States. Trump spent much of Wednesday in the White House residence, huddling with advisers and fuming at media coverage showing his Democratic rival picking up battlegrounds. Trump used his Twitter feed to falsely claim victory in several key states and amplify unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Democratic gains as absentee and early votes were tabulated. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the president would formally request a Wisconsin recount, citing “irregularities” in several counties. And the campaign said it was filing suit in Michigan and Pennsylvania to halt ballot counting on grounds that it wasn’t given proper access to observe. Still more legal action was launched in Georgia. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted in Pennsylvania, and Trump’s campaign said it was moving to intervene in existing Supreme Court litigation over counting mail-in ballots there. The campaign also argued that outstanding votes still could flip the outcome in Arizona, which went for Biden, showcasing an inconsistency in its arguments over prolonged tabulation. In other closely watched races, Trump picked up Florida, the largest of the swing states, and held onto Texas and Ohio while Biden kept New Hampshire and Minnesota. Beyond the presidency, Democrats had hoped the election would allow the party to reclaim the Senate and pad its majority in the House. But while the voting scrambled seats in the House and Senate, it ultimately left Congress much like it began — deeply divided. The candidates spent months pressing dramatically different visions for the nation’s future, including on racial justice, and voters responded in huge numbers, with more than 100 million people casting votes ahead of Election Day. Trump, in an extraordinary move from the White House, issued premature claims of victory and said he would take the election to the Supreme Court to stop the counting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell discounted the president’s quick claim of victory, saying it would take a while for states to conduct their vote counts. The Kentucky Republican said that “claiming you’ve won the election is different from finishing the counting.” Vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end. In presidential elections, a key point is the date in December when presidential electors meet. That’s set by federal law. Dozens of Trump supporters chanting “Stop the count!” descended on a ballot-tallying center in Detroit, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete vote count took to the streets in cities across the U.S. Protests — sometimes about the election, sometimes about racial inequality — took place Wednesday in at least a half-dozen cities, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and San Diego. Several states allow mailed-in votes to be accepted after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday. That includes Pennsylvania, where ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 can be accepted if they arrive up to three days later. Trump appeared to suggest that those ballots should not be counted and that he would fight for that outcome at the high court. But legal experts were dubious of Trump’s declaration. Trump has appointed three of the high court’s nine justices including, most recently Amy Coney Barrett. The Trump campaign on Wednesday pushed Republican donors to dig deeper into their pockets to help finance legal challenges. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, during a donor call, spoke plainly: “The fight’s not over. We’re in it.”

Biden pushes closer to victory in race for the White House

LONDON/LAGOS/SARAJEVO (Reuters): A day after Americans voted in a bitterly contested election, the rest of the world was none the wiser on Wednesday, with millions of votes still to count, the race too close to call and a mounting risk of days or even weeks of legal uncertainty. Donald Trump’s pre-emptive declaration of victory at the White House was condemned by some U.S. political commentators and civil rights groups, who warned about the trampling of long-standing democratic norms.



Most world leaders and foreign ministers sat on their hands, trying not to add any fuel to the electoral fire.



“Let’s wait and see what the outcome is,” said British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. “There’s obviously a significant amount of uncertainty. It’s much closer than I think many had expected.”



But while Raab and others urged caution, the Slovenian prime minister broke ranks, congratulating Trump and the Republican party via Twitter.



“It’s pretty clear that American people have elected @realDonaldTrump and @Mike_Pence for #4moreyears,” wrote Janez Jansa, one of several east European leaders, including Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who are fervent Trump allies. “Congratulations @GOP for strong results across the #US.”



The latest vote tally showed Democrat challenger Joe Biden with a lead in the Electoral College - 224 votes to 213, with 270 needed for victory - but with counting still be completed in at least five major ‘battleground’ states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Georgia.



In 2000, the election between George W. Bush and Al Gore hinged on Florida. It was ultimately decided in Bush’s favour by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling five weeks after the vote.



In his comments, Trump suggested the Supreme Court - to which he has nominated three of the nine justices - would have to decide the winner again.



On Twitter, the hashtags #Trump, #Biden and #USElections2020 were trending from Russia to Pakistan, Malaysia to Kenya and across Europe and Latin America, underscoring how much every region of the world sees the outcome as pivotal.



In Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of trying to interfere in the election, there was no official reaction.



But Pro-Kremlin lawmaker Vyacheslav Nikonov, the grandson of Stalin’s foreign minister, advised Russians to stock up on popcorn to watch the show he predicted was about to unfold, saying U.S. society was fatally split.



“The result of the elections is the worst outcome for America,” Nikonov, who welcomed Trump’s 2016 win, wrote on Facebook. “Whoever wins the legal battles half of Americans will not consider them the lawful president. Let’s stock up on large quantities of popcorn.”



‘IT AFFECTS US ALL’



In Australia, crowds watched the results roll in while drinking beer in an American bar in Sydney.



“The news is so much better when Trump is in,” said Glen Roberts, wearing a red ‘Make Europe Great Again’ baseball cap. “You never know what he said, it’s so good. I think it’ll be less interesting if Trump loses.”



Others were quick to underline the ramifications of the U.S. vote worldwide. “I think it affects us all, what happens over there really matters for the next four years over here,” said Sydney resident Luke Heinrich.



New York-based Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading civil rights groups, warned about the need to reserve judgment on the results until every vote is counted. With a very high number of mail-in ballots this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, full tallies are expected to take days in some states.



Executive director Kenneth Roth said premature declarations of victory were dangerous.



“Autocrats might be perfectly happy to undermine democracy in the United States by welcoming a premature declaration of victory,” he said.



China, whose relations with the United States have sunk to their worst in decades under Trump, said the election was a domestic affair and it had “no position on it”.



Chinese social media users, however, were quick to mock the failure of the U.S. electoral system to deliver a quick and clear result.



“Whether he wins or loses, his final mission is to destroy the appearance of American democracy,” one user on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform wrote on Wednesday.



“Let Trump be re-elected and take the U.S. downhill,” another wrote.



In Nigeria, one leading politician, Senator Shehu Sani, said the uncertainty in the United States was reminiscent of Africa.



“Africa used to learn American democracy, America is now learning African democracy,” he tweeted to his 1.6 million followers.

As America counts, the world holds its breath for U.S. election outcome

LAGOS (Reuters) - Hundreds of men and women marched, clad in T-shirts supporting U.S. President Donald Trump or pink fabric dresses bearing the image of Jesus, as they waved American flags, Republican presidential campaign signs, and even a few Nigerian flags. The rally, after all, was in Onitsha, a city in eastern Nigeria.



Trump has disparaged African nations, calling them "shithole here countries" and saying Africans would never leave the United States if allowed in. This year, he added Nigeria and five other countries when he expanded visa curbs.



But millions in Africa’s most populous nation love the bombastic 45th U.S. president all the same.



“President Trump, may we shout for joy over your victory,” Rev. Daddy Hezekiah of the Living Christ Mission Inc., which organized the Oct. 25 rally, said in a video.



A Pew Research Center poll in January found that 58 percent of Nigerians had confidence in Trump, behind only Israel, the Philippines and Kenya. A 2020 Gallup poll showed 56 percent of Nigerians approved of U.S. leadership, versus 24 percent for Europeans.



In a posh Lagos eatery, a portrait of Trump in a gold-trimmed red agbada, a flowing robe worn by Yoruba men, hangs on the wall. The traditional clothing is a “mark of respect”, said artist Peter Udoakang.



“I made this painting to bring him closer to us,” said the 23-year-old, adding that Trump’s “radical” approach to governing appealed to Nigerians, who are used to hustling in a tough economy to survive.



On a busy Lagos road, driver Michael Onyeonoro said if Nigeria found a similar leader, the U.S. visa troubles might not matter.



“If we have a person like Trump…Nigeria will be a better place to stay,” Onyeonoro said. “There will be no need of going outside the country.”

Election 2020

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