Trump news: President loses Pennsylvania appeal as he backtracks on vow to leave peacefully
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Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results suffered a severe blow on Friday when a judge he had appointed in Pennsylvania ruled against his fraud appeal.
A blistering ruling from Third District’s Stephanos Bibas – a Trump-appointed judge – said “free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy.”
“Charges of unfairness are serious,” he said in his ruling on Friday. "But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here."
One of his lawyers, Jenna Ellis, said they will take their case to the Supreme Court.
Earlier on Friday Mr Trump, currently playing golf, tweeted en route to his Virginia course that Joe Biden must first “prove” that all of his “ridiculous” 80 million votes were obtained legally, before claiming the White House.
Mr Trump’s admission on Thursday that he would leave if Mr Biden won the electoral college made headlines worldwide - despite the fact that it should not have been necessary to state.
The president on Friday appeared irritated by the response, and tweeted: “Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!”
The president’s legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, are continuing to challenge results in the courts, but their hopes - faint from the start - are fading. They have had more than 35 cases dismissed so far.
Latest US coronavirus figures
Some 1,232 people died with coronavirus in the US on Thanksgiving, according to Johns Hopkins University.
There were 110,611 new infections recorded.
Trump falsely claims he won the election ‘by a tremendous amount’
Man sues for refund of $2.5m he donated to Trump election challenge group
A man who donated $2.5m to help Donald Trump's crusade to overturn the elections is asking for his money back, writes Graig Graziosi.
Fred Eshelman, the donor, is suing Houston-based "True the Vote Inc" for what he claims are "empty promises," Bloomberg reported.
True The Vote claimed it had a multi-part plan to "investigate, litigate and expose suspected illegal balloting and fraud in the 2020 general election," the lawsuit said.
Man sues for refund of $2.5m he donated to Trump election challenge group
Group offered man $1m not to sue them
Trump declares Twitter national security threat after #DiaperDon trends following meltdown at miniature table
Donald Trump has angrily declared Twitter a national security threat after #DiaperDon went viral following a news conference in which he repeatedly complained about perceived injustices, writes Tom Embury-Dennis.
“Twitter is sending out totally false ‘Trends’ that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world. They make it up, and only negative ‘stuff’,” the US president tweeted in the early hours of Friday morning.
Trump declares Twitter national security threat after #DiaperDon trends following meltdown
US president demands fundamental change to internet in angry late-night tweets
Opinion: We now know the truth about the US economy — it’s easy to fix if Republicans will do it
Two sentences from the political scientist Michael Robinson stand out as America tries to surge out of the coronavirus crisis: The US economy is the ultimate disproof of the computer programmer’s maxim that if you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Americans make garbage policy all the time, Robinson told a senior seminar I attended during college in 1982, but the US economy is almost always OK.
We’re about to find out if Robinson was right, writes Tim Mullaney.
Opinion: The economy is easy to fix if Republicans will do it
The latest data shows how quickly we can bounce back from Covid, but also how badly we could be hit if the GOP does nothing
Trump says he’ll leave the White House if the Electoral College formalises Biden’s victory
#icymi
Can Donald Trump pardon himself?
Despite Donald Trump's arguments to the contrary, his time in the Oval Office is coming to a close.
Though his time in office has been anything but traditional, the president will almost certainly take advantage of one outgoing presidential tradition; issuing a slew of pardons, writes Graig Graziosi.
Can Donald Trump pardon himself?
There is no legal or historical precedent for a president pardoning themselves.
Trump awakens
So far, it’s just a retweet of his campaign account trailing the first distribution of coronavirus vaccines…
Biden’s win hides a dire warning for Democrats in rural US
Democrats once dominated Koochiching County in the blue-collar Iron Range of northern Minnesota But in this month's presidential election, President Donald Trump won it with 60% of the vote.
That's not because voters there are suddenly shifting to the right, said Tom Bakk, who represents the area in the state Senate. It's because, he said, Democrats have steadily moved too far to the left for many rural voters.
“We’ve got to see if we can get the Democratic Party to moderate and accept the fact that rural Minnesota is not getting more conservative,” said Bakk, who announced last week that he would become an independent after serving 25 years as a Democrat. "It’s that you guys are leaving them behind.”
Biden's win hides a dire warning for Democrats in rural U.S.
Democrat Joe Biden may have produced a winning national formula, but it wasn’t by trimming — or even holding — Donald Trump’s 2016 winning margins in hundreds of counties across the agricultural and industrial north
Covid: America facing ‘darkest days’ in modern medical history if virus isn’t controlled, warns top medic
America could face its "darkest days" in modern medical history if the coronavirus crisis is not brought under control, a top medic has warned.
Dr Varon Joseph, chief of staff at Houston's United Memorial Center, said a surge of infections over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays may push hospitals to breaking point, writes Matt Mathers.
His comments came as US health officials on Wednesday reported 180,830 new coronavirus cases nationwide – a rise of 2,630 from the previous 24 hours, New York Times data shows.
America facing ‘darkest days’ in modern medical history if virus isn’t controlled, warns top medic
‘I know that a lot of people are going to get sick after Thanksgiving’, says doctor
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