The Senate accepted the document, known as the article of impeachment, and set Feb 9 for beginning the trial, making Trump the second president in US history to face such a trial and the only to face it twice.

In an interview to CNN, US President Joe Biden said he was aware that the trial could have repercussions but "I think it has to happen. There would be a worse effect if it did not happen."

But South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump ally, said the impeachment move should have been "dismissed" because of a "constitutional lack of jurisdiction".

Trump, who has not yet commented on the proceedings, is still assembling a legal team for the trial. A South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers could lead the defence team.

Congressman Ted Lieu, one of the nine who brought the article to the Senate, described the procession as "historic". All nine are now known as House managers who will represent the House during the trial.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, the lead House impeachment manager, turned towards his colleagues as they lined up for the walk, and said, "proud of you guys."

There were only a few Republicans in the Senate, including Senators Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney, when the procession arrived. Democrat Patrick Leahy, the president pro tempore of the Senate, was presiding over the session.

The 100-member Senate is equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. Since Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has a tie-vote, Democrats now control the Senate.

A two-thirds majority is required to convict Trump. So, Democrats need to win over 17 Republicans for their move to succeed. If convicted, a simple-majority vote could bar Trump from holding federal office again.

Explainer: What does impeachment mean for Trump's future?

On Jan 13, when the House impeached Trump for a second time by 232 to 197 votes, 10 Republicans voted against Trump.

The impeachment article charges Trump with "incitement of insurrection" for his role in the deadly Capitol riots. The article also cites Trump's Jan 2 phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to "find" enough votes to overturn the state's election results. The House called it an effort "to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election".

According to US media reports, President Biden had asked House Democrats to delay the trial as he needed more time to settle down and needed Republicans’ support for a smooth endorsement of his nominees. All senior nominees require the Senate’s confirmation. Biden also needs support for the passage of his huge coronavirus relief package.

In his brief interview to CNN, President Biden said he does not think 17 Republican senators will vote to convict Trump. "The Senate has changed since I was there, but it hasn't changed that much," Biden said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, now a Democrat, stressed the need for the trial but said the process must move fast. "Everyone wants to put this awful chapter in American history behind us. But sweeping it under the rug will not bring healing," he said.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio told Fox News that while he believes Trump "bears responsibility for some of what happened," the trial would only increase tensions. "We're just going to jump right back into what we've been going through for the last five years and bring it up with a trial and it's going to be bad for the country," he said.

Comparison with crowd at riot

Yet, on Monday evening, all eyes were focused on the Capitol as television commentators compared this small procession with the huge crowd that invaded the building on Jan 6, causing five deaths.

Unlike the Trump crowd, they had no weapons. No scaffoldings. No pictures and no banners. There was no slogan chanting. No threats hurled.

But this small group had the power of the US Constitution behind it. So, the two-page document carried across the rotunda had immensely more power than slogans chanted inside the building on Jan 6 to stop the counting of the electoral votes.

It also carried more weight than the empty threats Trump made on Jan 6 that caused the crowd to ransack the Capitol.

The US Constitution requires the chief justice to preside over the trial when a president is impeached but Justice John Roberts has opted out, saying that Trump is no more a president.

The longshot suit lodged late on Tuesday against four states key in the Nov 3 vote — Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — challenged Biden’s victory in each jurisdiction.

But the Supreme Court, made up of nine justices including three appointed by Trump, said Texas — which voted for the president — “has not demonstrated a judicially cognisable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.” The court’s decision “is an important reminder that we are a nation of laws, and though some may bend to the desire of a single individual, the courts will not,” tweeted Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel.

Biden spokesman Mike Gwin said the ruling was “no surprise.” “Dozens of judges, election officials from both parties, and Trump’s own Attorney General have dismissed his baseless attempts to deny that he lost the election,” he said.

The Texas suit had been seen as audacious and legally unsound, given that no one state has any legal right to interfere in another’s voting processes.

Even so, it was backed by 106 Republican lawmakers and 17 state attorneys general.

Texas alleged that the results in the other four states were “unconstitutional” because of their heavy use of “fraud-prone” mail-in votes during the coronavirus pandemic.

It offered no proof of significant fraud, and didn’t challenge the use of mailed ballots in states Trump won.

The suit cited numerous alleged examples of potential fraud already rejected by lower courts.

Even so, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani insisted the allegations were “sound.” “They have to be tested but that’s what the court is for. They can’t just dismiss it like that,” he told Fox News. White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox that the court “dodged” and “hid behind procedure.”

In a tweet following the verdict, President Trump said the court had “let us down” and accused it of having “No Wisdom, No Courage!” But perhaps the most eyebrow raising reaction came from the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, who slammed the ruling and appeared to suggest the state should secede.

“Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution,” Allen West said in a party statement.

Trump and his allies have filed dozens of lawsuits in several key states, almost all of which have been thrown out by the courts.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court also refused his bid to overturn his loss in Pennsylvania.

Trump had hoped that the high court, whose bench he has tipped solidly to the right, would intervene in his favor. In 2000, the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida, where George W. Bush was only 537 votes ahead of Democrat Al Gore, allowing the Republican to win the election.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2020

Both lawsuits were filed on Nov 25 by Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for the Trump campaign, on behalf of groups of Republican voters. Trump and his allies have lost numerous cases aimed at overturning election results in states Trump lost in the Nov 3 election after winning them in 2016, making unfounded claims of fraud.

Judge Linda Parker in Detroit and judge Timothy Batten in Atlanta ruled that the plaintiffs lacked the legal standing to bring the lawsuits and that the cases were filed too late.

“The people have spoken,” Parker wrote, referring to the election results.

Batten said a hearing on Monday that the plaintiffs were seeking “perhaps the most extraordinary relief ever sought” in connection with an election.

“They want this court to substitute its judgement for that of two-and-a-half million Georgia voters who voted for Joe Biden, and this I am unwilling to do,” Batten said.

Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden won Michigan by about 154,000 votes and Georgia by about 12,000 votes, giving him 16 electoral votes from each state. Biden amassed 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 in the state-by-state electoral college that determines the winner of a presidential election. The electoral college meets on Dec 14 to formally cast the votes.

Published in Dawn, December 8th, 2020

In a speech remarkable for its twisting of reality more than a month after the Nov 3 election, the outgoing president launched into another litany of allegations that the polls won handily by Democrat Joe Biden were rigged.

The crowd in Valdosta, Georgia, for what was nominally a rally in support of two Republican Senate candidates facing a hugely consequential runoff election roared in support, at one point chanting “fight for Trump”.

Even with Covid-19 cases surging nationwide, there were few masks in the crowd and many ignored social-distancing rules. In a nearly two-hour speech Trump, 74, declared he would not concede, at times sticking to his script but regularly going off-the-cuff for his more incendiary claims.

“We’re winning this election,” Trump told the rally, which was similar to his many gatherings prior to the election, down to the soaring country song “God Bless the USA” played as he took the stage with First Lady Melania Trump.

“It’s rigged. It’s a fixed deal.” It was yet another example of Trump breaking democratic norms, engaging in conspiracy-mongering and presenting falsehoods in ways unprecedented in US history.

His stance has raised the question of how he will react when Biden’s January 20 swearing-in date arrives.

“The swing states that we’re all fighting over now, I won them all by a lot,” Trump claimed.

“And I have to say, if I lost, I’d be a very gracious loser. If I lost, I would say, I lost, and I’d go to Florida and I’d take it easy and I’d go around and I’d say I did a good job. But you can’t ever accept when they steal and rig and rob.”

Huge stakes

Trump has barely left the White House since Biden was projected winner of the election on Nov 7, though he has made a number of trips to his nearby golf course.

There had been concerns from some Republicans over whether Trump’s continuing claims of fraud would drive down voter turnout among Republicans in the coming election, making his appearance in Georgia somewhat of a gamble.

The runoff election will decide which party controls the US Senate, and Trump in his speech continued his fear-mongering about rival Democrats.

“The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee, writes every piece of legislation, controls every single taxpayer dollar,” he said.

“Very simply, you will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country.”

If Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeat Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the Senate will be evenly divided at 50-50, meaning Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris would cast any deciding votes, as the Constitution dictates.

The race has drawn enormous attention. One measure of the intense interest: With donations pouring in from across the country, the candidates have already spent more than $315 million, the AdImpact website reported, an astounding figure for senatorial races.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2020

“It’s been an amazing four years,” Trump told the crowd, which included many Republican National Committee members. “We’re trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.”

The video of Trump’s appearance was streamed live on Facebook by one attendee, Pam Pollard, who is national committeewoman for the Oklahoma GOP.

It showed dozens of people crammed into the Cross Hall of the White House state floor, standing closely together. Many seen in the video were not wearing masks.

The Trumps began hosting holiday receptions this week, intent on celebrating a final season before Trump leaves office on January 20.

According to social media postings reviewed by The Associated Press, the events have featured large crowds of often mask-less attendees gathered indoors — violating the very public health guidance the US government has pressed the nation to follow this holiday season as cases of Covid-19 skyrocket across the country.

In the video, Trump is heard continuing to air baseless allegations of election fraud to explain his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden despite his attorney general, William Barr, telling the AP earlier on Tuesday that the Justice Department had not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud and had seen nothing that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“It’s certainly an unusual year. We won an election. But they don’t like that,” Trump told the group, adding: “I call it a rigged election, and I always will.”

The White House has been the site of at least one suspected Covid-19 superspreader event, and dozens of the president’s aides, campaign staffers and allies have tested positive in numerous outbreaks.

Trump himself was hospitalised for the virus in October, and the first lady and two of his sons have tested positive. Numerous others have had to quarantine.

Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman and chief of staff, had said last month that the White House would be moving forward with events, “while providing the safest environment possible”.

She said that would include smaller guest lists, that “masks will be required and available, social distancing encouraged while on the White House grounds, and hand sanitiser stations throughout the State Floor”.

“Attending the parties will be a very personal choice,” she added.

A police contingent deployed at the Shahgai police post stopped a vehicular convoy led by Mr Gustasap heading to Judbah, the district headquarters of Torghar, to hold a public gathering. “You can’t proceed to Judbah to hold the public meeting,” the Judbah police station SHO leading the police contingent, told Mr Gustasap at Shahgai post.

The SHO said his high-ups following the district administration’s directives had ordered him not to allow the vehicular convoy to go beyond the police post.

However, the PTI-backed contender entered into an argument with SHO, asking him to allow them to proceed as election rallies were not banned, but the SHO didn’t allow them at all.

After an hour of heated arguments, Torghar deputy commissioner Ziaur Rehman intervened through telephone, directing the police to allow the procession to proceed further, but they shouldn’t be allowed to hold a public gathering in Judbah.

Gustasap’s rally first stopped at Shahgai post, then in Judbah

The police again intervened in Judbah and didn’t allow the PTI workers and Mr Khan to hold the gathering.

Later, the election contender moved to a local jirga hall and addressed the workers there.

He asked the people to vote for the PTI to steer this country out of the economic and political crises.

It is to be mentioned here that as many as 16 contenders are vying for NA-15, Mansehra-II, which also covers the Torghar district.

The prominent among the hopefuls are PML-N’s supremo Nawaz Sharif, JUI-F’s Mufti Kifayatullah, PPP’s Zargul Khan and PTI-backed Shahzada Gustasap, and two women independent contenders – Sanaya Sabeel and Umbreen Faiz Shirazi.

NOTICES ISSUED: The district monitoring officer appointed by the Election Commission of Pakistan to check violations of election code of conduct has summoned PTI-backed NA contender Saleem Imran Swati and a college principal for affixing giant hoarding on a school building.

To find your constituency and location of your polling booth, SMS your NIC number (no spaces) to 8300. Once you know your constituency, visit the ECP website here for candidates.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2024

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Joe Biden on Monday named the deeply experienced Antony Blinken for secretary of state, also nominating the first female head of intelligence and a czar for climate issues, with a promise to a return to expertise after the turbulent years of Donald Trump.

As Trump continued to make flailing attempts at overturning the results of the election three weeks ago, Biden’s rollout of cabinet names was his biggest step yet to signaling he is ready to take over on January 20.

The list put out by Biden’s team ahead of a formal announcement on Tuesday demonstrated a push to lower the temperature in Washington and restore traditional US leadership abroad.

“We have no time to lose when it comes to our national security and foreign policy,” Biden said in a statement.

“These individuals are equally as experienced and crisis-tested as they are innovative and imaginative.” Blinken, a former number two of the State Department and a longtime advisor, will spearhead a fast-paced dismantling of Trump’s disruptive “America first” policies, including rejoining the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization and resurrecting the Iran nuclear deal.

Biden named the first woman, Avril Haines, as director of national intelligence, and the first Latino, Alejandro Mayorkas, to head the Department of Homeland Security, whose policing of tough immigration restrictions under Trump was a frequent source of controversy.

Signaling the Democratic president-elect’s campaign promise to raise the profile of global warming threats, he named former secretary of state John Kerry as a new special envoy on climate issues.

And in a further message of US re-engagement with the international community, Biden named career diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield for UN ambassador. Jake Sullivan, who advised Biden when he was vice president under Barack Obama, was named national security advisor.

The picks underline an emphasis on professionals whom Biden already knows well, in contrast to the Trump White House where officials were often picked without having traditional background for the job or proved incompatible and departed in acrimony.

The announcements come against an unprecedented backdrop of Trump refusing to concede defeat and blocking Biden’s access to the normal process for preparing an incoming government.

So far only a slowly growing minority of Republican leaders has denounced Trump’s conspiracy theory that mass fraud robbed him of victory, despite there being no evidence for this.

Many of Biden’s cabinet picks will require confirmation in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority, although this would change if Democrats score an upset victory in two Georgia Senate runoff elections.

Trump remains defiant in spite of repeated failures by his legal team to prove their allegations in court.

Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2020

The decision — announ­ced in a scathing judgement which excoriated the Trump team’s legal strategy — paves the way for Pennsy­lvania to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory there, which is scheduled to take place on Monday.

With the clock ticking down to Biden’s January 20 inauguration, Trump’s team has focused on trying to stop battleground states from certifying election results, in addition to his numerous legal challenges that have so far failed.

Judge Matthew Brann wrote in his ruling that Trump’s team had presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” in their complaints about mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” Brann wrote.

“Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.”

Biden won the state-by-state Electoral College votes that ultimately decide who takes the White House by 306 to 232.

The Electoral College is due to formally vote on Dec­e­mber 14, with certificat­ions to take place beforehand.

States’ certification of res­ults of their popular votes is usually routine following a US presidential election.

But Trump’s refusal to concede has complicated the process and drawn concerns that he could cause long-term damage to Ame­ricans’ trust in their voting system.

Only a limited number of Republicans have so far recognised Biden as the winner and called on Trump to concede.

The Pennsylvania court ruling prompted a Repub­lican senator from the state, Pat Toomey, to join those ranks, saying Biden “won the 2020 election and will become the 46th president of the United States”.

The judgement in Pennsy­lvania came hours after Republicans also requested a delay in certification in Mic­h­igan, another battleground, in a letter that repeated allegations of irregularities in the state which Biden won by 155,000 votes.

They asked for a delay of two weeks to allow for a full audit of results in Wayne County, the state’s largest and where majority-black Detroit is located, which was won overwhelmingly by Biden.

Michigan’s board of canvassers, which includes two Democrats and two Republicans, is also due to meet on Monday to certify the results.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2020

“Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021,” the social network said in a statement.

“As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration,” the statement said.

The handover will see all existing tweets on @POTUS, as well as @FLOTUS (the First Lady), @VP (vice president) and other official accounts, archived.

The accounts will then be reset to zero tweets and transferred to the incoming Biden White House that day.

Trump, who still has not conceded his November 3 loss, used Twitter to help build his political brand and, later, wield the power of the presidency — though he mainly uses his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, whose 88 million followers dwarf @POTUS’s 32 million.

The @POTUS account is largely used to retweet Trump’s personal account, as well as the White House and other accounts.

Trump’s frequent habit of abruptly announcing new policies on the platform has led to long-standing complaints of governing by tweet.

Twitter has long come under pressure to curb the president’s use of the site to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Since the election, the company has slapped warning labels on many Trump tweets as he continues to insist — despite all evidence to the contrary — that he won the vote, and that Biden’s victory is due to massive fraud.

Biden, for his part, is a far more sedate Twitter user. He has sent fewer than 7,000 tweets to his 19 million followers, compared to Trump’s 58,000.

Published in Dawn, November 22nd, 2020

The letter came as Wayne County, which includes the majority-Black city of Detroit, has become a focus of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the Nov 3 election in states that were decisive in his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.

Two Republicans on the county’s canvassing board attempted to rescind their votes to certify the county’s results after Trump himself called them. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said the certification could not be reversed.

The state board, which includes two Democrats and two Republicans, is due to meet on Monday to certify election results and will have as many as 20 days to do so.

The letter urged a “full, transparent audit” in Wayne county, citing “numerical anomalies and credible reports of procedural irregularities” made by a losing Republican candidate for senate.

The Secretary of State’s office on Friday recommended that the state board certify the results, which showed Biden winning in Michigan by 154,187 votes.

It said there were small tabulation and reporting errors but they were “typical human error similar to that which has occurred in past elections” and did not affect the results.

Published in Dawn, November 22nd, 2020

As he wrestles with those issues, Biden will be attempting to accomplish another feat: Demonstrate to Americans that age is but a number and he’s up to the job.

Read: What will Biden mean for Pakistan?

Biden will be sworn in as the oldest president in the nation’s history, displacing Ronald Reagan, who left the White House in 1989 when he was 77 years and 349 days old.

The age and health of both Biden and US President Donald Trump — less than four years Biden’s junior — loomed throughout a race that was decided by a younger and more diverse electorate and at a moment when the nation is facing no shortage of issues of consequence.

Out of the gate, Biden will be keen to demonstrate he’s got the vigour to serve.

“It’s crucial that he and his staff put himself in the position early in his presidency where he can express what he wants with a crispness that’s not always been his strength,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who has advised legislators from both parties.

“He has got to build up credibility with the American people that he’s physically and mentally up to the job.”

Throughout the campaign, Trump, 74, didn’t miss a chance to highlight Biden’s gaffes and argue that the Democrat lacked the mental acuity to lead the nation.

Both critics and some backers of Biden worried that he was sending the wrong message about his stamina by keeping a relatively light public schedule while Trump barnstormed battleground states.

Biden attributed his light schedule to being cautious during the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of Biden’s rivals in the Democratic primary also made a case on age — while skipping Trump’s vitriol — by raising the question of whether someone of Biden’s and Trump’s generation was the right person to lead a nation dealing with issues like climate change and racial inequality.

Brian Ott, a Missouri State University communications professor who studies presidential rhetoric, said Biden was hardly impressive as a campaigner, but has proven far more effective with his public remarks since Election Day.

Ott said Biden’s victory speech was poignant, and his empathy showed in a virtual discussion that he held earlier this week with frontline healthcare workers.

The president-elect’s experience — a combination of age and nearly 50 years in politics — conveys more clearly through the prism of governing than the chaos of campaigning, he said.

“The rhetoric of governing, unlike the rhetoric of campaigning, is collaborative rather than adversarial,” Ott said.

Biden’s relatively advanced age also puts a greater premium on the quality of his staff, Baker said. His choice of Senator Kamala Harris, nearly 20 years younger than him, as his running mate effectively acknowledged his age issue.

Biden has described himself as a transitional president but hasn’t ruled out running for a second term.

“He’s well served in making it known from Day One that she’s ready to go,” Baker said of Harris.

“She’s got to be in the images coming out of the White House. They also need to, in terms of their messaging, highlight her inclusion in whatever the important issue or debate is going on in the White House.”

Biden, in a September interview with CNN, promised to be “totally transparent” about all facets of his health if elected but he hasn’t said how he’ll do that.

The campaign has made the case that Biden isn’t your average septuagenarian.

His physician, Dr Kevin O’Connor, in a medical report released by the campaign in December, described Biden as “healthy, vigorous [...] fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency, to include those as chief executive, head of state and commander in chief.”

O’Connor reported that Biden works out five days a week.

The US president-elect told supporters that during the pandemic he has relied on home workouts involving a Peloton bike, treadmill and weights.

In 1988, Biden suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms, an experience that he wrote in his memoir shaped him into the “kind of man I want to be”.

O’Connor also noted in his report that Biden has an irregular heartbeat, but it has not required any medication or other treatment. He also had his gall bladder removed in 2003.

A September article by a group of researchers in the Journal on Active Aging concluded that both Biden and Trump are “super-agers” and are likely to outlive their American contemporaries and maintain their health beyond the end of the next presidential term.

"Some of Biden’s White House predecessors left behind breadcrumbs about the dos and don’ts of demonstrating presidential vigor," said Edward Frantz, a presidential historian at the University of Indianapolis.

Reagan made sure the public saw him chopping wood and riding horses. Trump, after being diagnosed with the coronavirus, quickly returned to a busy campaign schedule — holding dozens of crowded rallies in battleground states in the final weeks of the campaign.

Those events flouted coronavirus guidelines on social distancing, wearing masks and avoiding large gatherings.

In 1841, William Harrison, 68, attempted to show off his vigor by delivering a lengthy inaugural address without a coat or hat.

Weeks later, Harrison, then the oldest president elected in US history, developed a cold that turned into pneumonia that would kill him just a month into his presidency. It’s disputed whether Harrison’s illness was related to his inaugural address.

“America faces great challenges, and they bring diverse perspectives and a shared commitment to tackling these challenges and emerging on the other side a stronger, more united nation,” Biden said in a statement.

The new appointees — some of the first among hundreds that Biden will name to the White House in the coming months — include his 2020 campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon being named deputy chief of staff.

The 44-year-old will serve under White House chief of staff Ron Klain, whom Biden appointed last week.

A veteran of seven presidential campaigns, O’Malley Dillon served as deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama’s successful 2012 reelection effort.

Campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond, a House Democrat from Louisiana, was named senior advisor to the president.

The African-American lawmaker, 47, will leave his seat in Congress to take his White House job when Biden is inaugurated on January 20.

Biden also named Mike Donilon, a chief strategist for his campaign and a veteran Democratic tactician, to serve as senior advisor to the president.

“The team we have already started to assemble will enable us to meet the challenges facing our country on day one,” Klain said in the statement.

Other appointments include the chief of staff and senior advisor to incoming First Lady Jill Biden, a counsel to the president and a director of Oval Office operations.

The appointments come as President Donald Trump continues to challenge the results of the Nov 3 election and refuses to concede the race to Biden, and as his administration has declined to formally cooperate with Biden’s transition team.

Netanyahu speaks with Biden

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a “warm conversation” with US President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office said, in a delayed and clear acknowledgement of his election defeat of the Israeli leader’s ally Donald Trump.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2020

Trump spoke from the Rose Garden as the nation sets records for confirmed cases of Covid-19, and as hospitalisations near critical levels and fatalities climb to the highest levels since the spring. He said a vaccine would ship in a matter of weeks” to vulnerable populations, though the Food and Drug Administration has not yet been asked to grant the necessary emergency approvals.

Public health experts worry that Trump’s refusal to take aggressive action on the pandemic or to coordinate with the Biden team during the final two months of his presidency will only worsen the effects of the virus and hinder the nations ability to swiftly distribute a vaccine next year.

As states impose new restrictions in the face of rising caseloads, Trump asked all Americans to remain vigilant.” But he ruled out a nationwide lockdown” and appeared to acknowledge that the decision won’t be his much longer.

"This administration will not be going to a lockdown," he said. "Hopefully whatever happens in the future, who knows, which administration it will be I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown."

Biden, for his part, has not endorsed a nationwide shutdown, but he appealed for Trump to take urgent action to curtail the spread of the virus. The crisis does not respect dates on the calendar, it is accelerating right now, he said in a statement on Friday.

Trump said vaccines would arrive within a few weeks, saying they were ready and merely awaiting approval and would be given to high-risk individuals right away. In fact, there’s no guarantee that Pfizers shot, the front-runner, will get rapid authorisation for emergency use. Even if it does, there’s no information yet indicating if the vaccine works in older adults or just younger, healthier adults. Nor does Pfizer have a large commercial stockpile already poised to ship; initial batches of shots would be small and targeted to certain still-to-be-determined populations.

Trump took no questions on Friday from reporters. He hasn’t answered questions since before Election Day.

Meanwhile, his campaign prediction that the US was rounding the turn on the pandemic has met a harsh reality, with his own White House becoming the focus of yet another outbreak. Trumps aggressive travel despite the virus has taken its toll on his protectors as well. The US Secret Service is experiencing a significant number of cases, many believed to be linked to his rallies in the closing days of the campaign, according to one official.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, meanwhile, said Trump is not even at that point yet when it comes to conceding to Biden. Trump has leveled baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, even as his own administration has said there is no evidence to support the claims. His aides suggest he is merely trying to keep his base of supporters on his side in defeat.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2020

Their messages came hours after President Donald Trump once again cried foul, tweeting a baseless claim that an election equipment maker “deleted” 2.7 million votes for him nationwide.

Biden, who leads by more than five million in the popular vote, cemented his victory late on Thursday by winning Arizona, US networks said, flipping the state Democratic for the first time since 1996.

Arizona gives Biden a 290-217 lead over Trump in the Electoral College, with 270 needed to win the White House.

With most Republican lawmakers having yet to acknowledge Biden's win, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the chamber's top Democrat, accused them on Thursday of “denying reality” and “auditioning for profiles in cowardice".

“Instead of working to pull the country back together so that we can fight our common enemy Covid-19, Republicans in Congress are spreading conspiracy theories, denying reality and poisoning the well of our democracy,” he said.

Senior US federal and state election officials, meanwhile, in a statement rejected Trump's claims of fraud, saying that “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history". The statement was issued by the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, a public-private umbrella group under the primary federal election security body, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” they said.

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” the statement said.

It was signed by the heads of the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State — the officials who manage elections at the state level — and by the chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission.

'Absurd circus'

The statement came just hours after Trump's tweet, which in addition to claiming 2.7 million “deleted” votes also said hundreds of thousands had been switched from him to Biden in Pennsylvania and other states.

It was the latest in a series of bogus assertions Trump and Republicans have put forth in order to reject Biden's victory.

Republican lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have stood firm with Trump by supporting his refusal to concede and backing his legal challenges.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on Thursday to demand Republicans stop what she called an “absurd circus” and turn to combatting the pandemic.

“Now that the people have expressed their views, Joe Biden has won (and) Kamala Harris will be the first woman vice president of the United States,” Pelosi said.

Political experts believe Republicans may be invoking such a strategy as a way to rile up Trump's base before two US Senate runoff elections in Georgia that will determine which party controls the chamber.

A total of 161 former national security officials, including some who worked with Trump, additionally warned the current administration's continued delay in recognising Biden's victory is posing “a serious risk to national security".

In a letter, the group including ex-Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and Trump's former National Security Council senior counterterrorism director Javed Ali urged General Services Administration (GSA) chief Emily Murphy to recognise Biden as the apparent president-elect.

Without a GSA signoff, transition funds and other resources including access to intelligence briefings cannot flow to Biden and his team, but Murphy has refused to budge.

The executive actions would also include rejoining the Paris Climate Agree­ment, reinstating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme and rejoining the World Health Organisation, the campaign told Fox News on Monday night.

On Saturday, Fox News and several other US media outlets projected Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

As of Tuesday, the Trump campaign continues to reject the results and has filed lawsuits in various states, challenging the ballots and the counting process.

On Monday night, a popular aggregator of political data, Real Clear Politics (RPC), withdrew Biden’s president-elect status after stripping him of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.

On Tuesday, a top official of the US Justice Department resigned after Attorney General William Barr allowed federal prosecutors to probe alleged election irregularities. The official, Richard Pilger, would have overseen such investigations. He said he was resigning in response to Mr Barr’s order. Election irregularities, Mr Piler said, should be handled by individual states, not the federal government.

During his election campaign, Biden had promised to undo a variety of policies pursued by President Trump. While addressing a Muslim voters’ club in July, Biden described the Muslim ban as unjust and pledged to rescind it on his first day in office.

Fox News noted that Biden’s decision to re-enter the WHO “reflected a broader effort to combat the coronavirus upon taking office.” Democrats have decried Trump’s decision to exit the transnational organisation in the middle of a pandemic.

On Monday, Biden formed a coronavirus advisory board dominated by scientists and doctors.

Since his projection as the president-elect, the Biden campaign has also asked the Trump administration to the process of transition, which must be completed before the Jan 20 inauguration of the new president.

But the Trump’s administration’s refusal to recognise Biden as the president-elect have caused speculations that the transition may not complete before the inauguration.

RCP’s decision to reverse Biden’s win may also contribute to delaying the transition process. RCP reversed Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania bringing his electoral votes to 259, 11 short of the required 270 votes.

RCP, which is based in Chicago, claims to be an independent, non-partisan political news media company, but often sympathizes with the Republicans.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2020

Pennsylvania Republican state lawmakers plan to call for an audit of the results in the state that gave Biden enough electoral votes to win, the day after US Attorney General William Barr told federal prosecutors to look into “substantial” allegations of irregularities.

Trump for months before the election made repeated claims without providing evidence that results would be marred by fraud and has kept up those unfounded allegations over the past week. Judges have tossed out lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia, and experts say Trump’s legal efforts have little chance of changing the election result.

But Congress’s top Republican, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, on Monday lined up behind Trump, saying that he was “100pc within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities,” without citing any evidence.

The dispute is slowing Biden’s work in preparing for the work of governing, as a Trump appointee who heads the office charged with recognising election results has not yet done so.

Biden on Saturday secured the more than the 270 votes in the Electoral College needed to win the presidency. He also led Trump in the popular vote by 4.6 million votes on Tuesday morning as states continued to count the remaining ballots.

Barr’s directive to prosecutors prompted the top lawyer overseeing voter fraud investigations to resign in protest.

Barr told prosecutors on Monday that “fanciful or far-fetched claims” should not be a basis for investigation and his letter did not indicate the Justice Department had uncovered voting irregularities affecting the outcome of the election.

But he did say he was authorising prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of irregularities of voting and the counting of ballots.

Richard Pilger, who for years has served as director of the Election Crimes Branch, said in an internal email he was resigning from his post after he read “the new policy and its ramifications”.

The previous Justice Department policy, designed to avoid interjecting the federal government into election campaigns, had discouraged overt investigations “until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded.” Biden’s campaign said Barr was fueling Trump’s far-fetched allegations of fraud.

“Those are the very kind of claims that the president and his lawyers are making unsuccessfully every day, as their lawsuits are laughed out of one court after another,” said Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2020

The General Services Administration (GSA) normally recognises a presidential candidate when it becomes clear who has won an election so that a transition of power can begin.

That has not yet happened despite US television and news networks declaring Biden the winner on Saturday after he secured enough electoral votes to secure the presidency.

The law does not clearly spell out when the GSA must act, but Biden transition officials say their victory is clear and a delay is not justified, even as Trump refuses to concede defeat.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that there was widespread voting fraud and has filed a raft of lawsuits to challenge the results.

Election officials across the country say there has been no evidence of significant fraud, and legal experts say Trump’s efforts are unlikely to succeed.

GSA Administrator Emily Murphy, appointed by Trump in 2017, has not yet determined that “a winner is clear,” a spokeswoman said. A source close to Murphy said she was a thorough professional who would take her time making a careful decision.

A Biden transition official told reporters on a call that it was time for the GSA’s administration to grant what is known as an ascertainment recognising the president-elect, and said the transition team would consider legal action if it was not granted.

“Legal action is certainly a possibility, but there are other options as well that we’re considering,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declining to outline other options.

The delay is costing the Biden team access to millions of dollars in federal funding and the ability to meet with officials at intelligence agencies and other departments.

The transition team needs to be recognised to access funds for salaries, consultants and travel, as well as access to classified information, the official said.

In addition, the team has no access to the State Department, which usually facilitates calls between foreign leaders and the president-elect, the official said.

A senior administration official said the agency did not approve the start of a formal transition process in 2000 for five weeks while Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore battled over an election that came down to just hundreds of votes in Florida.

With congratulations pouring in from world leaders and supporters nursing hangovers after a night of celebrations, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced they would receive a joint briefing on Monday in Wilmington, Delaware from their transition Covid-19 advisory team.

Biden would then deliver remarks on coronavirus and economic recovery. They also launched a transition website, BuildBackBetter.com, and a Twitter feed, @Transition46.

Meanwhile, Trump played golf at his course near Washington, the same place where he was on Saturday when news broke that Biden had secured enough Electoral College votes for victory.

“Since when does the lamestream media call who our next president will be?” Trump complained in a tweet on Sunday.

Trump, who has no public events scheduled for Monday, plans to file a string of lawsuits in the coming week, according to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said he had “a lot of evidence” of fraud.

But former president George W. Bush said the “outcome is clear” and added that he had called “president-elect” Biden and Harris to extend his congratulations.

Bush said in a statement that “the American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair [...] We must come together for the sake of our families and neighbors, and for our nation and its future.”

Biden's transition website lists four priorities: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

“The team being assembled will meet these challenges on Day One,” it said in a reference to January 20, 2021, when Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.

Biden, who turns 78 on November 20, is the oldest person ever elected to the White House. Harris, 56, a senator from California, is the first woman, first Black person and first South Asian person to be elected vice president.

Read: Kamala Harris breaks barriers as America's next vice president

Biden plans to name a task force on Monday to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 237,000 people dead in the United States and is surging across the country.

He has also announced plans to rejoin the Paris climate accord and will reportedly issue an executive order on his first day in office reversing Trump's travel ban on mostly Muslim countries.

Biden has vowed to name a cabinet that reflects the diversity of the country, although he may have trouble gaining approval for more progressive appointees if Republicans retain control of the Senate — an outcome that will depend on two runoff races in Georgia in January.

'Accept the inevitable'

Biden, who after John F. Kennedy is just the second Catholic to be elected US president, attended church on Sunday morning in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

He also visited the graves of his son, Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and his first wife and daughter, who died in a 1972 car accident.

The Trump campaign has mounted legal challenges to the results in several states, but no evidence has emerged of any widespread irregularities that would affect the results.

Giuliani told the Fox News show “Sunday Morning Futures” that Trump's team would file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania on Monday against officials “for violating civil rights, for conducting an unfair election (and) for violating the law of the state”.

“The first lawsuit will be Pennsylvania. The second will either be Michigan or Georgia. And over the course of the week, we should get it all pulled together,” Giuliani said.

First Lady Melania Trump also chipped in Sunday, tweeting: “The American people deserve fair elections. Every legal — not illegal — vote should be counted.”

Speaking on CNN's “State of the Union” on Sunday, senior Biden advisor Symone Sanders dismissed the court challenges as “baseless legal strategies”.

Biden received nearly 74.6 million votes to Trump's 70.4 million nationwide and has a 279-214 lead in the Electoral College that determines the presidency.

Biden also leads in Arizona, which has 11 electoral votes, and Georgia, which has 16. If he wins both, he would finish with 306 electoral votes — the same total won by Trump in 2016 when he upset Hillary Clinton.

Only two Republican senators, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, have congratulated Biden. Democratic Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina said the Republican Party has a “responsibility” to help convince Trump it is time to give up.

Romney, who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial, said the president will eventually “accept the inevitable”.

The Utah senator added that he “would prefer to see the world watching a more graceful departure, but that's just not in the nature of the man”.

'Do not concede'

Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the 74-year-old president should keep fighting.

“We will work with Biden if he wins, but Trump has not lost,” Graham said on Fox News. “Do not concede, Mr President. Fight hard.”

In a victory speech on Saturday, Biden promised to unify the bitterly divided nation and reached out to Trump supporters, saying, “They're not our enemies, they're Americans.”

“Let's give each other a chance,” he said. “Let this grim era of demonisation in America begin to end, here and now.”

Financial markets welcomed Biden's victory, with shares up in Tokyo and Hong Kong, and US futures up on Wall Street on Sunday evening.

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and other European countries sent congratulations to Biden, along with Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan and South Korea.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he would wait until all legal challenges are resolved, while Trump ally President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has yet to make any official comment.

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Joe Biden began the transfer of power on Sunday that Americans hope would turn the page on four years of divisiveness as his defeated rival Donald Trump refused to concede and continued to cast doubt on the election results.

As congratulations poured in from world leaders and supporters nursed hangovers after a day of raucous celebrations, the 77-year-old Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, 56, launched a transition website, BuildBackBetter.com, and a Twitter feed, @Transition46.

It lists four priorities for a Biden-Harris administration: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

“The team being assembled will meet these challenges on Day One,” it said in a reference to January 20, 2021, when Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

Biden, who turns 78 on November 20, is the oldest person ever elected to the White House. Harris, the junior senator from California, is the first woman and first black person to be elected vice president.

He has already announced plans to name a task force on Monday to tackle the coronavirus pandemic that has left more than 237,000 people dead in the US and is surging across the country.

Biden, just the second Catholic to be elected US president, was attending church on Sunday morning in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, as Trump was headed for the golf course.

Trump, 74, was playing golf at his club near Washington on Saturday morning when the US television networks announced that Biden had secured enough electoral college votes for victory and he returned for another round on Sunday morning.

On Saturday, Trump fired off tweets saying he had won the election “by a lot” and he continued to make unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud on Twitter on Sunday.

In one tweet, he cited an ally, former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich, as saying the “best pollster in Britain wrote this morning that this clearly was a stolen election”.

In another series of tweets, Trump quoted a George Washington University law professor who testified on his behalf during his impeachment in Congress, but left out one part of his opinion.

“We should look at the votes,” Jonathan Turley said in the tweets quoted by Trump. “We should look at these allegations. We have a history in this country of election problems.”

Trump left out the other part of the professor’s opinion that while there is “ample reason to conduct reviews” there is “currently no evidence of systemic fraud in the election”.

The Trump campaign has mounted legal challenges to the results in several states but no evidence has emerged so far of any widespread irregularities that would overturn the results of the election.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, a senior adviser to Biden, Symone Sanders, dismissed the court challenges as “baseless legal strategies.”

‘A more graceful departure’ Biden received nearly 74.6 million votes to Trump’s 70.4 million nationwide and has a 279-214 lead in the electoral college that determines the presidency. If Biden wins Arizona that has 11 electoral votes and Georgia that has 16, as he is leading in both states, he would finish with 306 electoral votes — the same total that Trump won when he upset Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Only two Republicans senators, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, have congratulated Biden on his victory and Democratic Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina said the Republican Party has a “responsibility” to help convince Trump that it is time to concede.

“What matters to me is whether or not the Republican Party will step up and help us preserve the integrity of this democracy,” Clyburn said on CNN’s “State of the Union”. Romney, who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial, said the president “has every right to call for recounts”, but he should be careful with his “choice of words”. He said: “I’m convinced that once all remedies have been exhausted, if those are exhausted in a way that’s not favourable to him, he will accept the inevitable.”

The Utah senator added that he “would prefer to see the world watching a more graceful departure, but that’s just not in the nature of the man”.

Speaking on ABC’s "This Week", another Republican senator, Roy Blunt of Missouri, said: “It’s time for the president’s lawyers to present the facts and it’s time for those facts to speak for themselves.” However, Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the president should keep fighting. “We will work with Biden if he wins, but Trump has not lost,” Graham said on the Fox News show “Sunday Morning Futures”, “Do not concede, Mr. President. Fight hard.”

Another Trump ally, House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, told the same show it was too early to call the election. “What we need in the presidential race is to take sure every legal vote is counted, every recount is completed, and every legal challenge should be heard,” McCarthy insisted.

Let’s give each other a chance In a victory speech in Wilmington on Saturday, Biden promised “not to divide but unify” and reached out directly to Trump supporters, declaring“ they’re not our enemies, they’re Americans.” “Let’s give each other a chance,” he said, urging the country to “lower the temperature.” He said: “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end, here and now.”

While only a handful of Republicans have congratulated Biden, the leaders of Britain, Germany, France and other European countries have extended their congratulations, along with Japan, India and Canada.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2020

The confirmation of victory of Biden, who at 78 will be the oldest American president, brings to a climax three days of post-election anxiety and uncertainty that followed one of the most bruising US presidential races in modern times.

The Associated Press declared Biden, whose vice president will be Kamala Harris — the first female to hold the post in America's history, the winner on Saturday evening after he secured more than the crucial 270 electoral votes he needed to win the White House.

CNN, NBC News and CBS News also called the race in his favour, after projecting he had won the decisive state of Pennsylvania. Shortly after winning the presidency, Biden also won Nevada, adding to his Electoral College victory over Trump.

Biden declared victory in a tweet, saying: "America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country.

Profile: Shaped by tragedy, Joe Biden eyes calm after Trump storm

"The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not. I will keep the faith that you have placed in me."

Trump, refusing to concede defeat, said that Biden was “rushing to falsely pose as the winner” after television networks declared the Democrat's victory.

“We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don't want the truth to be exposed,” Trump said.

“The simple fact is this election is far from over.”

Trump underlined that states had not yet certified the results, and his campaign has launched multiple legal challenges.

However, near complete results issued by each state showed an insurmountable lead for Biden, allowing network news channels to call the overall result, as they do every election.

In a tweet, Harris said the election was about "so much more than [Biden] or me. It’s about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started."

Prime Minister Imran Khan congratulated Biden and Harris in a tweet for making it to the White House.

"Congratulations @JoeBiden & @KamalaHarris. [I] look forward to President Elect Biden's Global Summit on Democracy and working with him to end illegal tax havens and stealth of nation's wealth by corrupt leaders," he wrote.

The premier said Pakistan "will also continue to work with US for peace in Afghanistan and in the region".

For Biden, who got more than 74 million votes, a record, the triumph after a tense contest conducted during a global coronavirus pandemic was the crowning achievement of his half century in US politics, including eight years as deputy to the first Black US president Barack Obama.

The result condemned 74-year-old Trump — who made frantic attempts to claim fraud and stop the vote count — to becoming the first one-term president since George H. W. Bush at the start of the 1990s.

The Republican, whose marathon press conferences, tweeting and raucous campaign rallies have made him a perpetual, noisy presence at home and abroad over the last four years, had no immediate reaction.

But ever since the night after Tuesday's election, when he prematurely claimed victory, Trump has been inhabiting a world increasingly disconnected from the reality of his approaching downfall.

Earlier on Saturday, he left the White House for the first time since Election Day to play golf, tweeting: “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!”

And in an extraordinary White House address to the nation on Thursday — with Biden's lead in the partial results already consolidating rapidly — he claimed “they are trying to steal the election.” Despite Trump's protests, the returns from vote counting offices around the country kept coming all week, with no credible reports of irregularities.

And when US television networks declared that Biden had taken an insurmountable lead in Pennsylvania, that put the Democrat over the magic number of 270 Electoral College votes. Trump had no way back.

Biden's path to 270

As Americans remained glued to TV screens and their phones and the world awaited an announcement with bated breath after polls closed on Tuesday, Biden ended up securing victories in the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowing Trump’s path to reelection.

But with just a handful of states still up for grabs, Trump tried to press his case in court in some key swing states. In spite of the aggressive Republican move, the flurry of court action did not seem obviously destined to impact the election’s outcome.

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, the most in history. At an afternoon news conference on Wednesday, the former vice president said he expected to win the presidency but stopped short of outright declaring victory.

“I will govern as an American president,” Biden said. “There will be no red states and blue states when we win. Just the United States of America.”

Who is Joe Biden?

With decades of political experience under his belt, this was Joe Biden's third run at the White House.

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the 77-year-old began his political career in 1972, when he was first elected to the US Senate from Delaware state. The Democrat has considerable experience in foreign policy and was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee twice in his career. He has also served as the chairperson of the Committee on Judiciary.

Though long and distinguished, Biden's career is certainly not stain-free. He has faced criticism for sponsoring the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which critics say led to the mass incarceration of African Americans.

The former vice president is also no stranger to personal loss and tragedy. In 1972, he lost his wife and baby daughter in a car accident soon after he won his first seat in Senate. His sons Beau and Hunter survived and Biden swore his oath while in the hospital with his sons.

In 2015, when Biden was vice president, his son Beau died from brain cancer. He was 46 and had started off a career in politics.

Biden first ran for president in 1988 but withdrew from the race after it was revealed that he had plagiarised a speech from Neil Kinnock, then leader of the British Labour Party.

He tried his luck once again in 2008 but was unsuccessful this time too as the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama. Biden was later nominated for the position of vice president and served alongside Obama for the next eight years.

Biden, who mocks Trump's 'America First' slogan as 'America Alone', aims to restore the country's position as a global leader.

Header image: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks to supporters, early Wednesday, Nov 4, in Wilmington, Delaware. — AP

Tensions have spiked between the United States and Iran since 2018, when Trump exited a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, and then reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy.

“Trump's damaging policy has been opposed [...] by the American people. The next US administration should use the opportunity to make up for past mistakes,” President Hassan Rouhani was quoted as saying.

“Iran favours constructive interaction with the world.”

Biden has pledged to rejoin Iran's 2015 nuclear accord with six powers, a deal that was agreed by Washington when he was vice president, if Tehran also returns to compliance.

In retaliation for Trump's actions, Tehran has gradually reduced its commitments to the accord. But Iran's clerical rulers have said those steps were reversible if Tehran's interests were respected.

“The heroic resistance of the Iranian people proved that the policy of maximum pressure is doomed to failure,” Rouhani said.

Biden has said returning to the agreement would be “a starting point for follow-on negotiations” and that Washington would then work with allies to strengthen and extend the nuclear deal and address other issues of concern.

Iran's leaders have so far ruled out any talks aimed at further curbing Tehran's nuclear activity, halting its ballistic missile programme and limiting the Islamic Republic's regional influence.

“The American people have spoken. And the world is watching whether the new leaders will abandon disastrous lawless bullying of outgoing regime — and accept multilateralism, cooperation and respect for law. Deeds matter most,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted.

Netanyahu said Trump was Israel’s strongest-ever ally in the White House, and the Republican advanced policies that delighted the Israeli prime minister’s right-wing base.

Netanyahu congratulated Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris on Twitter Sunday, before thanking Trump for a raft of moves that, according to Netanyahu, advanced Israel’s interests.

Trump unilaterally pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — an agreement between Tehran and world powers loathed by Netanyahu — and recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided capital”, moving the US embassy to the city, breaking international consensus.

He also endorsed Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — which was seized from Syria — and avoided criticising Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

According to a pre-vote poll by the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank, 63 percent of Israelis wanted Trump to win a second term.

After the US result was announced, 28-year-old Israeli truck driver Shmuel Nemirovski told AFP that even though “Trump would have been better”, he was comfortable with Biden because the president-elect does not appear “to have anything against Israel”.

In fact, Biden’s ties with Israel run deep, and he has been a vocal supporter of the Jewish state for decades.

He visited Israel in 1973, months after he was first elected to the Senate.

In a 2015 speech, while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden said the United States was wedded to a “sacred promise to protect the homeland of the Jewish people”.

During the 2012 vice-presidential debate, when Biden was facing criticism over the Obama administration’s treatment of Israel from Republican Paul Ryan, Biden asserted that he and Netanyahu had “been friends for 39 years”.

Netanyahu on Sunday praised Biden as “a great friend of Israel” with whom he has had “a long and warm personal relationship”.

Biden supported recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital two decades before Trump triggered global outcry by doing so. Biden backed a 1995 Senate bill to establish a US embassy in Jerusalem by 1999.

Biden’s 2020 campaign said he would not reverse Trump’s embassy move, but would reopen a consulate in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem “to engage the Palestinians”.

Tensions looming?

But Biden is expected to walk-back parts of Trump’s record, notably by opposing Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, which the president-elect has described as an obstacle to piece.

Biden also said he would restore “humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people,” after Trump cut US support to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Israel’s former envoy to Washington Michael Oren told AFP that tensions will spike if Biden seeks to revive the Iran nuclear deal, a prospect he said had a “very high” likelihood.

Netanyahu, and much of Israel’s security establishment, blasted the Iran deal for offering an arch-foe massive financial benefits while failing to eliminate the threat of a nuclear-armed Islamic republic.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is strictly for civilian purposes.

A Biden effort to restore the pact with Iran pact could also affect Trump-brokered normalisation deals between Israel the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, said Eytan Gilboa, political science professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.

The UAE, Bahrain and especially Saudi Arabia — Sunni Muslim led states — are bitter rivals of Shiite majority Iran.

Experts have said that the normalisation deals, as well as warming ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia under Trump, were partly driven by a desire to forge a united front against Iran.

“The Iranians are going to say you cannot have it both ways: you cannot have negotiation with us, and at the same time help to expand the coalition that is basically against us,” Gilboa said.

Israel boycott

Israeli officials are also concerned that Israel critics in the Democratic Party will influence Biden’s administration, Gilboa said.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, tipped for a possible cabinet post, has called Netanyahu a “reactionary racist”.

Israel has meanwhile accused two Democratic congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, of supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians.

According to Gilboa, “the progressive, radical branch of the Democratic party” is “anti-Israel” and gaining strength.

“We don’t know yet how much influence they will have on policy making,” he said.

Palestinian Authority cut ties with Trump’s administration, accusing it of being flagrantly pro-Israel. In a statement congratulating Biden and Harris, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas urged the incoming administration “to enhance the Palestinian-American relations”.

Abbas said he wanted to work with the new administration “to achieve freedom, independence, justice and dignity for (the Palestinian) people”.

Experts agree that while a renewed Middle East peace push is unlikely to top Biden’s immediate agenda, his administration will seek to restore America’s traditional role as a broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It is likely that they will seek much more engagement” with the Palestinians, said Sarah Feuer of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2020

Trump’s motorcade returned from his golf club in Virginia via roads largely cleared of other cars and people.

But as he approached the White House, he was welcomed home with boos and raised middle fingers. Chants of “loser, loser, loser” and profanities were also heard as his motorcade drove by.

Trump has so far refused to concede to president-elect Joe Biden and is promising legal challenges.

Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist in Kentucky, said: “I’m not sure his position would have changed from yesterday — count all the votes, adjudicate all the claims.

But my sense is there won’t be any tolerance for beyond what the law allows. There will be tolerance for what the law allows.”

It was a view being echoed by several other Republicans neither supporting nor rejecting the outcome. Said retiring Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee: “After counting every valid vote and allowing courts to resolve disputes, it is important to respect and promptly accept the result.”

Earlier several hundred people had gathered outside President Donald Trumps Virginia golf club after his election loss.

The crowd included dozens of Biden supporters celebrating his win, singing, “Hey hey hey, goodbye” and chanting, “Lock him up”, a chant frequently heard at Trump rallies, directed at people he doesnt like.

There were also dozens of Trump supporters, many waving large Trump flags and chanting, “We love Trump”.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2020

In the end, his flurry of raucous rallies, an unprecedented turnout operation and sheer force of will could not overcome the reality of his enduring unpopularity and a raging pandemic that has killed more than 236,000 people in the US and thrown millions out of work.

Yet Trump’s acerbic brand of politics — his Twitter taunts, his vindictive drive to punish enemies, his go-it-alone approach to the world — made its mark across the far reaches of the government and beyond. And his better-than-expected election performance against Democrat Joe Biden suggests his impact is likely to resonate for generations in politics, governing and policy, even in defeat.

It remains to be seen what Trump intends to do after his term ends on January 20. Retreat to the golf course? Launch his own television network? Lay the groundwork to run again? And how fiercely will he try to contest his fate?

“I would absolutely expect the president to stay involved in politics. I would absolutely put him on the short list of people who are likely to run in 2024,” Trump’s former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said in an online interview with the Institute of International & European Affairs. “He doesn’t like losing.”

Trump retains the megaphone of his Twitter account, a far-reaching Fox News platform and the unflinching backing of his loyal base of supporters, who may never accept his defeat after he spent months insisting there was no way he could legitimately lose and even falsely claimed premature victory.

On Saturday, Trump declined to concede to President-elect Biden, instead promising unspecified legal challenges to try to overturn the outcome of the race.

Until a successor emerges to lead Republicans — likely not until the resolution of the 2024 Republican primary — Trump remains the de facto head of a party that he has reshaped in his image.

“Even in defeat, Donald Trump has exceeded expectations and helped other Republicans do the same,” said GOP consultant Michael Steel, who has worked on Capitol Hill and for campaigns. “He will remain a powerful force within the party.”

Still, Trump’s loss is likely to spark a reckoning over how much of Trumpism the party should embrace going forward, especially given that Republicans could retain control of the Senate and won additional seats in the House.

Had Biden won in a blowout, that would have put “wind at the back of a lot of Republicans who said character counts and the Republican Party should never put its faith into someone who pushed boundaries liked Donald Trump,” said former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who served under former President George W. Bush.

But because it was closer, he predicted the party would likely “continue to be wracked with a split between insiders and outsiders, between the establishment and the Trump supporters who fault the establishment. And the soon-to-be former president’s role will be a huge question mark because if he decides to stay active, despite the close loss, he remains powerful and effective, especially for Republicans.”

In the meantime, it remains unclear whether Trump will accept the results of the election or continue to contest them as he spends the next three months as a lame duck president.

Those who know him well say there is little chance he will go quietly into the night.

“When Donald Trump loses there will never be a peaceful transition to power,” said Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen. He predicted Trump would do everything in his power to claim the election was “stolen from him” by Democrats or other forces, just as Trump tried to sow discord as the votes were being counted.

Cohen said Trump was also likely aware that after losing the presidency he might “be served with a plethora of lawsuits, both federal and state.” Trump is already facing lawsuits that accuse him of sexual assault and defamation, and his Trump Organisation’s finances are being investigated by New York’s attorney general.

Barbara Res, a longtime Trump associate who recently wrote a book about her experience working with him, speculated the president might leave the county before Biden’s inauguration and perhaps pursue his own media empire.

“He could put on whatever he wants. He could say whatever he wants. It’s almost like having Twitter explode into everything else,” she said.

As for the future for Republicans, Steel said the party would likely look to leaders who combine elements of Trump’s populist agenda with policies that appeal to a broader swath of the electorate.

“The challenge will be identifying the popular, durable, and practical parts of his agenda and marrying them to policies and arguments that appeal to the broader electorate that the party will need to win at the national level in the future,” he said.

Under Trump, the Republican Party fully embraced the populist wave set in motion by the Tea Party rebels in earlier years, shifting its focus from free trade and trickle-down economics to trade wars and an isolationist foreign policy.

His rise broke open a new path to the presidency, driven more by force of personality than policy, that echoed even as he lost the Electoral College vote. His nativist message and stoking of “culture wars” proved the power of the politics of division and hastened a generational political realignment.

While he deepened his reach with white rural and working-class voters with his economic and racial grievance-stoking, he also turned off college-educated voters in the cities and suburbs with his sometimes crass rhetoric and endless tweets.

Still, many Republicans believed he would have won reelection had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic and a widespread belief among voters that he mishandled it.

Some top GOP leaders believe that while so-called “Never Trumpers” may celebrate the president’s defeat, it is unlikely Republicans will be able to repudiate him completely, given how his stances on trade, immigration and foreign policy have resonated with voters and how close he came to clinching a second win.

It remains unclear, too, whether those who have flocked to the party because of Trump will remain engaged once he is no longer on the ticket.

The race for the 2024 Republican nomination has already quietly begun behind the scenes. A wide range of candidates are testing the waters, from moderates like Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, to firebrands like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and former Trump officials like ex-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, has become a particular favourite with the president’s loyal supporters on the campaign trail, meaning the Trump name could endure.

Fleischer said the party would likely be looking for someone with the blunt outspoken voice of an outsider who would at the same time refrain from going “so far that your tweets push people away that want to be for you.”

Many of Trump’s supporters see his influence continuing.

“We started something that is going to go on for generations,” said Chris Haluck, 56, looking out over a crowd of thousands at a recent Trump rally in Pennsylvania that she’d attended with her 17-year-old daughter.

Indeed, as Trump has traveled the country, his campaign has inspired a new generation of supporters who have been organising their own events outside the campaign infrastructure.

They include “Loud Majority Long Island,” which has been drawing thousands to car parades in New York, a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic.

Matt Vereline, who joined fellow group members at a recent Trump rally, said that even if Trump loses, the group intends to continue its efforts, with a focus on local politicians, including New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“We want to oust Cuomo, of course,” he said. “And we want to oust de Blasio. We’re going to try to organise.”

“The numbers tell us [...] it’s a clear and convincing story: We’re going to win this race,” Biden said late on Friday, adding that he and his running mate Kamala Harris were already meeting with experts as they prepare for the White House.

Americans have been waiting longer than in any presidential election since 2000 to learn the winner, as officials methodically count a record number of mail-in ballots in Tuesday’s contest. The Covid-19 pandemic prompted many to avoid large groups of voters on Election Day.

With thousands of votes still to count, it was not clear when the bitter contest would conclude.

States yet to finalise winner

• Alaska – 3 votes (Trump leading convincingly)

• Nevada – 6 votes (Biden leading with thin margin)

• Pennsylvania – 20 votes (Biden leading with thin margin)

• North Carolina – 15 votes (Trump leading)

• Georgia – 16 votes (Biden leading with thin margin)

Biden backers danced in Philadelphia’s streets, while armed Trump supporters in Phoenix and Detroit said the election was being stolen, despite any evidence of irregularities. Under the banner of “Stop the Steal,” Trump supporters planned dozens of rallies for Saturday.

Biden’s speech in his home state of Delaware was originally planned as a victory celebration, but he changed his approach in the absence of an official call from television networks and other election forecasters.

Still, it amounted to a blunt challenge to Trump. The Republican incumbent kept out of view in the White House on Friday as Biden held on to leads in the four states that will decide the outcome: Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada.

Leading Trump by 4.1 million votes nationwide out of a record 147m cast, Biden said Americans had given him a mandate to tackle the pandemic, the struggling economy, climate change and systemic racism.

“They made it clear they want the country to come together, not continue to pull apart,” Biden said.

He said he hoped to address Americans again on Saturday.

Trump has remained defiant, vowing to press unfounded claims of fraud as his Republicans sought to raise $60m to fund lawsuits challenging the results. But some in his camp described the legal effort as disorganised, and so far they have not found success in the courts.

As the counting entered its fifth day, Former vice president Biden had a 264-to-214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that determines the winner, according to Edison Research. Democrats grew increasingly frustrated that networks had not yet called a winner.

Securing Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would put Biden over the 270 he needs to win the presidency after a political career stretching back nearly five decades.

Biden would also win if he prevails in two of the three other key states. Like Pennsylvania, all three were still processing ballots on Friday.

As officials count a deluge of mail-in ballots, Biden has held on to narrow leads in Nevada and Arizona and earlier on Friday overtook Trump in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

In Arizona, Biden led by 29,861 votes with 97 per cent of the tally completed. In Nevada, he led by 22,657 votes with 93pc of the count complete.

In Georgia, he led by a mere 4,289 votes with the count 99pc complete, while in Pennsylvania he led by 27,130 votes with 96pc of the vote complete.

Biden said Trump’s demands to stop the count would not work.

“Your vote will be counted. I don’t care how hard people try to stop it. I will not let it happen,” Biden said.

Trump showed no sign he was ready to concede, as his campaign pursued a series of lawsuits that legal experts said were unlikely to alter the election outcome.

“Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President. I could make that claim also. Legal proceedings are just now beginning!” he wrote on Twitter.

Republicans aimed to raise at least $60m for legal costs, although the fine print on solicitations indicates that more than half the money raised would go to paying down the campaign’s debts.

A Trump adviser described the campaign’s litigation strategy as chaotic and disorganised. Another Republican official said it was doubtful the lawsuits would yield a Trump victory.

“This race is over, and the only person who doesn’t see it is Donald Trump,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In another blow to Trump’s efforts, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been diagnosed with Covid-19, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Meadows, who frequently appears at public events without a mask, is the latest person within Trump’s circle to contract the virus, which has killed more than 236,000 Americans. The news came as a third wave sweeps the United States.

SC denies immediate halt of Pennsylvania count

A US Supreme Court justice on Friday denied a request by Pennsylvania's Republicans to immediately halt the counting of ballots arriving after Election Day — referring the challenge to the full court to consider on Saturday.

Samuel Alito ordered Pennsylvania in the meantime to continue keeping the late-arriving ballots separate, affirming a decision already made by the state's top elections official Kathy Boockvar, who told CNN they were unlikely to affect the outcome in any case.

The last-ditch petition for an emergency injunction targeted thousands of ballots.

Most are believed to favour Biden, and Republicans say they should be disqualified under Pennsylvania state law.

Header Photo: US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks about election results in Wilmington, Delaware, US on Friday. — Reuters

Samuel Alito ordered Pennsylvania in the meantime to continue keeping the late-arriving ballots separate, affirming a decision already made by the state's top elections official Kathy Boockvar, who told CNN they were unlikely affect the outcome in any case.

The last-ditch petition for an emergency injunction — filed as Democrat Joe Biden solidified his lead and was poised to defeat President Donald Trump — targeted thousands of ballots.

Most are believed to favour Biden, and Republicans say they should be disqualified under Pennsylvania state law.

As a first step, the party wanted the high court to order ballots arriving after 8pm on election night to be kept apart from others and prevent them from being tallied.

The concern is that if they are mixed with other ballots, it would render any attempt to disqualify them impossible.

“Given the results of the November 3, 2020 general election, the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next president of the United States,” the Republicans said.

“It is unclear whether all 67 county boards of elections are segregating late-arriving ballots,” the petition added.

Republicans have for months been fighting a state decision to accept mail-in ballots postmarked by November 3 and arriving by Friday. Previously the deadline for acceptance was Election Day itself.

The state supreme court ruled the decision legal and it was then appealed in the federal system.

On October 19, the US Supreme Court, which had a vacant seat, let the state court's decision stand in 4-4 split decision along conservative-liberal lines.

But the high court indicated it could take up the case after the election, and now has nine members after the Trump-nominated conservative Amy Coney Barrett joined in late October.

Trump has explicitly said he wanted Barrett on the court for any election-related case.

Friday's petition appeared more broadly aimed at delaying the eastern state's vote tally from being finalised, which would effectively hand the election to Biden.

A delay could give the high court time to reopen the broader case of the legality of the late ballots.

Even if the court does issue a stay on counting, it might not make a difference. Election analysts say the number of late ballots could be far fewer than Biden's lead over Trump in the state.

Former Vice President and Democrat Joe Biden overtook Republican President Donald Trump in the number of ballots counted in Georgia and Pennsylvania, two must-win states for Trump. Biden now has a 917-vote advantage in Georgia and an over 5,000-vote advantage in Pennsylvania, according to the Associated Press.

As Biden moved closer to winning the White House, Trump adopted a fighting posture, making false claims to undermine a vote that was not going his way.

Biden has racked up at least 264 of the 270 electoral votes that he needs. Donald Trump has amassed 214 electoral votes so far, and is still in contention in several states that would afford the Republican incumbent a path to re-election.

States yet to finalise winner

• Alaska – 3 votes (Trump leading convincingly)

• Nevada – 6 votes (Biden leading with thin margin)

• Pennsylvania – 20 votes (Biden leading with thin margin)

• North Carolina – 15 votes (Trump leading)

• Georgia – 16 votes (Biden leading with thin margin)

Expected to report final vote counts on Thursday night or Friday are Georgia (16 electoral votes), North Carolina (15), and Nevada (6).

However, mail-in ballots sent on or before Election Day in North Carolina can be counted until November 12.

Three 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.

By flipping yet another critical battleground state that Trump won four years ago, Biden placed himself in a comfortable lead, with only 6 electoral votes shy of the presidency.

Biden could reach the magic number to gain the White House with a win in either Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada, if he keeps Arizona. Trump needs to capture all three to stay competitive.

Nevada, where Biden is favoured, could put him precisely at the number needed to win, if he keeps Arizona. With more than 89 per cent of the vote counted, Biden was leading by less than 11,500 votes.

However, Pennsylvania is the biggest prize remaining, with 20 electoral votes. In the battle ground state of Georgia, Biden pulled ahead by 917 votes, according to AP, as counting continued.

Much of the delay has resulted from a flood of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic — and those votes have tended to favour Democrats. If Biden's lead in Arizona holds, and he wins Nevada or Georgia, he would pass the threshold of 270 electoral votes.

Should Trump hold North Carolina and Georgia but lose Arizona, he must take Nevada as well as Pennsylvania to win.

Simply winning Pennsylvania — where Biden just pushed ahead in the lead — will not be enough for the president, even if he takes Alaska's three electoral votes as expected.

Much to Trump's chagrin, Pennsylvania has decided to allow mailed ballots sent by Election Day but received up to three days afterwards to be counted. Authorities expect to complete the count by Friday.

Another factor that could keep the battle alive: the Trump campaign has unleashed a legal blitz in key states vital to the incumbent's re-election.

It has sued to disqualify late-arriving ballots in Pennsylvania, sued in Nevada and Georgia over alleged irregularities, and has demanded a recount in Wisconsin.

Michigan

Biden carried Michigan and its 16 electoral votes. The flip from red back to blue was a huge blow to Trump, whose victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016 sent him to the White House.

Biden’s campaign had particularly focused on turning out Black voters in Detroit, who failed to show up for Hillary Clinton in the numbers that Barack Obama received during his two presidential bids.

Despite needing to win Michigan, Trump took frequent swipes at the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who was the target of an alleged kidnapping plot that was foiled by federal law enforcement. Chants of “Lock her up!” toward Whitmer echoed at Trump’s rally, and he railed against the governor on Twitter for her cautious approach to the coronavirus pandemic.

Wisconsin

Biden defeated President Trump in battleground Wisconsin, securing the state’s 10 electoral votes and reclaiming a key part of the blue wall that slipped away from Democrats four years ago.

The Associated Press called Wisconsin for Biden after election officials in the state said all outstanding ballots had been counted, save for a few hundred in one township and an expected small number of provisional ballots.

Trump’s campaign has requested a recount. Statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes; Biden leads by .624 percentage points out of nearly 3.3 million ballots counted.

In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes, a breakthrough that along with wins in Michigan and Pennsylvania helped hand him his first term in the White House. Democrats were determined to reclaim Wisconsin, a state that before Trump hadn’t gone for a Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Arizona

Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona and its 11 electoral votes, serving a huge blow to Trump’s chances for reelection. Arizona has backed a Democratic presidential candidate only once in the last 72 years.

Biden’s campaign had focused on Arizona as part of its expanded battleground map through the Sun Belt, citing demographic changes, new residents and realignment away from Republicans among key suburban voters.

Arizona is among the more than half a dozen states that will help determine which candidate gets the 270 electoral votes to capture the White House.

Texas

Trump won Texas and its 38 electoral votes despite a furious, late push by Democrats to turn America’s biggest red state blue.

An avalanche of early votes fed Democrats’ high hopes of ending decades of losses in Texas, where polls showed Joe Biden running unusually close. But Trump carried Texas for a second straight year.

Trump won Texas by 9 percentage points in 2016 and all but took a win here for granted. He didn’t swing through Texas for campaign rallies or swamp television airwaves, and his conservative allies on the ground scoffed at Biden’s chances as a far reach.

Florida

Trump also won Florida and its 29 electoral votes, the biggest prize among the perennial battlegrounds and a state crucial to his reelection hopes.

A victory in Florida means re-election is within Trump’s grasp. A loss in the state would have made it nearly impossible for Trump to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to retain the White House.

Maine

President Trump won one of Maine's four electoral votes, just as he did in 2016.

Trump carried the state's 2nd Congressional District, the more rural and conservative of Maine's congressional districts.

While Biden easily carried the state itself, Maine is one of only two states that divide their electoral votes.

Biden won the 1st Congressional District and the statewide tally, good for three electoral votes. Trump's victory in the 2nd Congressional District means he wins one electoral vote.

Results pour in

Biden won California, Oregon and Washington state, while President Donald Trump won Idaho.

California, Oregon and Washington are all liberal states, while Idaho is conservative.

California has 55 electoral votes, the biggest haul of any state. It’s also the home of Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. She served as the San Francisco district attorney and the state’s attorney general before winning election to the Senate in 2016.

Trump won Ohio and its 18 electoral votes, holding on to a battleground state where the race against Biden had tightened in recent months.

The Republican nominee comfortably carried the Midwestern state four years ago, but polls heading into the final weeks showed Biden well within range, forcing the president to spend more time in the state than anyone expected.

Trump also won four of Nebraska’s five electoral votes, while Biden won one electoral vote from the state. Biden’s win in the 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, is a flip from 2016, when Trump narrowly won it against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Early wins

Soon after the polling time ended, AP reported that President Trump had won Kentucky, and Biden had carried Vermont.

There were also some predictable victories for each candidate, with Trump taking Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma and Biden winning Massachusetts, his home state of Delaware and Virginia, a former battleground that has become a Democratic stronghold.

Trump also took West Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Meanwhile, Biden won Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Mexico, New York, the District of Columbia and Colorado.

Record-setting polling

Voters, many wearing masks and maintaining social distancing to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, experienced long lines in a few locales and short waits in many other places. There were no signs of disruptions or violence at polling sites, as some officials had feared.

The winner — who may not be determined for days — will lead a nation strained by a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more jobless, racial tensions and political polarisation that has only worsened during a vitriolic campaign.

Control of the Senate is at stake, too: Democrats needed to net three seats if Biden captured the White House to gain control of all of Washington for the first time in a decade. The House was expected to remain under Democratic control.

A new anti-scaling fence was erected around the White House, and in downtowns from New York to Denver to Minneapolis, workers boarded up businesses lest the vote lead to unrest.

With the worst public health crisis in a century still fiercely present, the pandemic — and Trump’s handling of it — was the inescapable focus for 2020.

For Trump, the election stood as a judgment on his four years in office, a term in which he bent Washington to his will, challenged faith in its institutions and changed how America was viewed across the globe.

Rarely trying to unite a country divided along lines of race and class, he has often acted as an insurgent against the government he led while undermining the nation’s scientists, bureaucracy and media.

At the White House on Tuesday night, more than 100 family members, friends, donors and staff were set to watch returns from the East Room.

Trump was watching votes come in upstairs in the residence with a few close aides. Most top campaign officials were monitoring returns from a “war room” set up in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Read: On US election day, Trump says he feels 'very good' about chances

Biden spent the day last-minute campaigning in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was born, and in Philadelphia with a couple of local stops in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was spending Election Night.

The president began his day on an upbeat note, predicting that he’d do even better than in 2016. But during a midday visit to his campaign headquarters, he spoke in a gravelly, subdued tone.

“Winning is easy,” Trump told reporters. “Losing is never easy, not for me it’s not.”

Biden, on the other hand, took a more cautious approach. “I’m superstitious about predicting what an outcome’s gonna be until it happens [...] but I’m hopeful,” said Biden. “It’s just so uncertain [...] you can’t think of an election in the recent past where so many states were up for grabs.”

With the coronavirus now surging anew, voters ranked the pandemic and the economy as top concerns in the race between Trump and Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

Voters were especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind. Fewer named health care, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change

The survey found that Trump’s leadership loomed large in voters’ decision-making. Nearly two-thirds of voters said their vote was about Trump — either for him or against him.

The momentum from early voting carried into Election Day, as an energised electorate produced long lines at polling sites throughout the country.

Voters braved worries of the coronavirus, threats of polling place intimidation and expectations of long lines caused by changes to voting systems, but appeared undeterred as turnout appeared it would easily surpass the 139 million ballots cast four years ago.

No major problems arose on Tuesday, outside the typical glitches of a presidential election: Some polling places opened late, robocalls provided false information to voters in Iowa and Michigan, and machines or software malfunctioned in some counties in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.

The cybersecurity agency at the Department of Homeland Security said there were no outward signs by midday of any malicious activity.

The record-setting early vote — and legal skirmishing over how it would be counted — drew unsupported allegations of fraud from Trump, who had repeatedly refused to guarantee he would honour the election’s result.

Referendum on Trump

Supporters of both candidates called the election a referendum on Trump and his tumultuous first term. No US president has lost a re-election bid since Republican George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Trump is seeking another term in office after a chaotic four years marked by the coronavirus crisis, an economy battered by pandemic shutdowns, an impeachment drama, inquiries into Russian election interference, US racial tensions and contentious immigration policies.

Biden is looking to win the presidency on his third attempt after a five-decade political career including eight years as vice president under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

Biden has promised a renewed effort to fight the public health crisis, fix the economy and bridge America’s political divide. The country this year was also shaken by months of protests against racism and police brutality.

Romney, now a senator from Utah, said Trump was within his rights to request recounts and call for investigations where evidence of irregularities exists.

But Trump “is wrong to say the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen″, Romney said on Twitter. Trump’s claim ”damages the cause of freedom here and around the world ... and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions″, Romney said.

Romney’s comments came as GOP Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — whose state is a key battleground in the presidential election, where votes are still being tallied — called Trump’s claim of fraud “very disturbing”.

“There’s simply no evidence anyone has shown me of any widespread corruption or fraud,” Toomey told “CBS This Morning”.

“The president’s speech last night was very disturbing to me because he made very, very serious allegations without any evidence to support it,” said Toomey.

While he voted for Trump, “I want the next president to be the person who legitimately wins the Electoral College and I will accept whoever that is,″ Toomey said.

Trump, who has complained for weeks about mail-in ballots, escalated his allegations late Thursday, saying at the White House that the ballot-counting process is unfair and corrupt. Trump did not back up his claims with any details or evidence, and state and federal officials have not reported any instances of widespread voter fraud.

Yet Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell struck a more neutral tone, and other top Republicans more defiantly urged Trump to fight to defeat Democrat Joe Biden.

“Every legal vote should be counted,” McConnell tweeted early Friday. “All sides must get to observe the process.”

McConnell grew testy during a press conference later in Kentucky when was repeatedly asked to say more. “Beyond that, I don’t have anything to say,” McConnell said. “It won’t make any difference how many times you ask; I’ve already given my answer.”

Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, a member of the GOP leadership, said on Friday that Trump’s campaign was making inconsistent arguments.

“You can’t stop the count in one state and decide you want the count to continue in another state. That might be how you’d like to see the system work but that’s not how the system works,” Blunt said at the Capitol.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy took a more confrontational tone, insisting inaccurately that Trump “won” the election — even though officials in several states are still counting Americans’ ballots.

“So everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet, do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes,” McCarthy, R-California, said on Thursday on Fox News. “Join together and let’s stop this.”

The split showed the grip Trump still has on his party, particularly after Republicans in Congress won seats in the House and Senate running for reelection alongside the president.

One top Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, told reporters on Friday that he supports Trump’s efforts to challenge ballot counts in several states yet to be called in the presidential race. The South Carolina Republican said he had talked to the Trump campaign and expects evidence of voting irregularities to surface in the next 48 hours, but added that it was up to the Trump campaign to make that case.

While he’s “not conceding” that Biden is going to win the presidency, Graham said he will try to work with a potential Democratic administration. “It’s important for me to be me, and that is, be a solid conservative, fight like hell for stopping a radical agenda for the conservative cause, but also recognising that, if Biden does win, he’s president, and try to work with him when we can,″ Graham said.

Other GOP senators, governors and other elected officials swiftly pushed back against Trump.

Maryland GOP Governor Larry Hogan, a potential 2024 presidential hopeful who has often criticised the president, said unequivocally: “There is no defence for the president’s comments tonight undermining our democratic process. America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before.”

Trump’s tweets on Thursday declaring victory and calling for officials to “STOP THE COUNT” were a test of how strongly he can keep Republicans in line as he tries to challenge the voting process in court.

Before Trump’s speech in the White House briefing room, several Republicans challenged his attempts to halt vote-counting in Pennsylvania and other battleground states.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, urged “everyone to be patient″ as results come in. “It is critical that we give election officials time to complete their jobs, and that we ensure all lawfully cast ballots are allowed and counted,″ she said in a statement.

Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican who did not seek reelection, called Trump’s comments about corruption “dangerous” and “wrong″. Trump’s remarks undermine the US political process and “the very foundation this nation was built upon″, Hurd said.

While Biden was close on Friday to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, it was unclear when a national winner would be determined after a long, bitter campaign dominated by the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on Americans and the national economy.

"I can tell you that my wife and my mother are very concerned for me," said Joe Gloria, the registrar in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas. He said his staff was bolstering security and tracking vehicles coming and going from the election offices.

But he added that he and others would not be stopped from “doing what our duty is and counting ballots".

Groups of Trump supporters gathered at vote tabulation sites in Detroit and Philadelphia again Friday, decrying counts that showed Democrat Joe Biden leading in those and other key states.

While the protests have not been violent or very large, local officials were distressed by the gatherings and concerned about the relentless accusations.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel tweeted a plea Thursday to stop making harassing and threatening calls to her staff.

"Asking them to shove sharpies in uncomfortable places is never appropriate & is a sad commentary on the state of our nation," wrote Nessel, a Democrat, referring to a false conspiracy theory that Trump supporters were told to fill out ballots with Sharpie markers instead of regular pens so that their votes wouldn't be counted by the machines.

Dozens of Trump supporters rallied outside Detroit's convention centre on Friday morning, where election workers have counted ballots.

"Stop the steal," the protesters chanted. Some carried signs that read, "Make Elections Fair Again", and "We Love Trump". Police cordoned off streets leading to the tabulation centre and maintained a close watch on the protest.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, speaking on CNN, said her main concern was staff safety but that sheriff's deputies were providing protection. She said the protesters were causing delay and disruption and preventing those employees from doing their job.

On Thursday, about 100 Trump supporters gathered in front of the Maricopa County election centre in Phoenix, some carrying military-style rifles and handguns. Arizona law allows people to openly carry guns.

Authorities at the centre used fences to create a freedom of speech zone and keep the entrance to the building open. The crowd took turns chanting "Count the votes!” and "Four more years!” and complaining through a megaphone about the voting process.

They paused to listen as Trump spoke from the White House, where he repeated many of his groundless assertions of a rigged vote.

They whooped and clapped when the president said, "We're on track to win Arizona." The Associated Press has called Arizona for Biden.

In Atlanta, roughly 100 chanting Trump supporters gathered outside State Farm Arena Thursday as votes were being counted. Several Atlanta police officers monitored the scene.

Tom Haas, 50, who said he was visiting Atlanta from Chicago on business, said he was convinced Trump had won the election. "There's obvious voter fraud, and it's coming out of the larger Democratic-run cities," he said. "Atlanta is one of them."

"Our democracy is under attack,” he said, echoing Trump's language. “We're losing America because we're losing a fair election for the nation."

In Las Vegas, about 100 backers of the president chanted as they stood along the road in front of the election offices.

Meanwhile, Facebook banned a large group called Stop the Steal that Trump supporters were using to organise protests against the vote count. Some members had called for violence, while many falsely claimed Democrats are stealing the election. The group had amassed more than 350,000 members before Facebook took it down.

Democratic challenger Biden is edging towards the presidency after pulling ahead in the key states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.

But Trump has made it clear that he is not ready to concede, launching unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and claiming falsely that he had been cheated out of re-election.

“As we said on July 19th, the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House,” said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.

In an interview with Fox News in July, Trump refused to commit to accepting the results of the election and a peaceful transfer of power if he lost.

With tens of thousands of votes remaining to be counted, many of them from heavily Democratic areas, Biden opened up a 9,000-vote lead over the Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania, real-time state election results showed.

Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes would be enough to put the 77-year-old Biden past the magic number of 270 votes in the Electoral College, which determines the presidency.

Biden has also taken a razor-thin lead in Georgia, a state once seen as reliably Republican, which announced Friday that it will recount the votes.

As of late morning there was no word on Biden's movements on Friday.

He last spoke on Thursday afternoon when he told reporters in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware, that he had “no doubt” he would be declared the winner of the election.

With his victory looking increasingly likely, the US Secret Service increased its protective bubble around the former vice president, The Washington Post reported Friday.