US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be quarantining after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. He although had tested negative, the US State Department said on Wednesday.

"Secretary Pompeo has been identified as having come into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID. For reasons of privacy we can’t identify that individual," a spokesperson for the State Department said.

"The secretary has been tested and is negative. In accordance with CDC guidelines, he will be in quarantine. He is being closely monitored by the department’s medical team."

Pompeo did not attend President Donald Trump's cabinet meeting at the White House which took place earlier on Wednesday.

Diplomats said the State Department cancelled a holiday reception for the foreign missions in Washington that was due to take place later on Wednesday.

Pompeo has come under criticism for going ahead with the planning of several holiday parties, defying guidelines from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which describes large in-person gatherings as "highest risk" for the spread of the disease.

The United States has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus, with confirmed cases over 16.7 million and deaths over 305,000. Many states recently tightened their restrictions due to a rise in the cases.

President Donald Trump and his administration have been widely criticised for their consistently lax approach to mask-wearing and social distancing at the White House. Critics say his handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been among the top reasons why he lost his November 3 re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden, due to take office on January 20.

Trump himself was diagnosed with COVID-19 in October, while a large number of his staff, including some of his closest aides, also tested positive and later recovered.

Also, Washington Post reported that Pompeo cancelled a speech he was due to give at another indoor holiday party that took place late on Tuesday and whose invites had been sent out to 900 people, drawing wide criticism.

(with inputs)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be quarantining after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. He although had tested negative, the US State Department said on Wednesday.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be quarantining after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. He although had tested negative, the US State Department said on Wednesday. "Secretary Pompeo has been identified as having come into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID. For reasons of privacy we can’t identify that individual," a spokesperson for the State Department said. "The secretary has been tested and is negative. In accordance with CDC guidelines, he will be in quarantine. He is being closely monitored by the department’s medical team." Pompeo did not attend President Donald Trump's cabinet meeting at the White House which took place earlier on Wednesday. Diplomats said the State Department cancelled a holiday reception for the foreign missions in Washington that was due to take place later on Wednesday. Pompeo has come under criticism for going ahead with the planning of several holiday parties, defying guidelines from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which describes large in-person gatherings as "highest risk" for the spread of the disease. The United States has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus, with confirmed cases over 16.7 million and deaths over 305,000. Many states recently tightened their restrictions due to a rise in the cases. President Donald Trump and his administration have been widely criticised for their consistently lax approach to mask-wearing and social distancing at the White House. Critics say his handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been among the top reasons why he lost his November 3 re-election bid to Democrat Joe Biden, due to take office on January 20. Trump himself was diagnosed with COVID-19 in October, while a large number of his staff, including some of his closest aides, also tested positive and later recovered. Also, Washington Post reported that Pompeo cancelled a speech he was due to give at another indoor holiday party that took place late on Tuesday and whose invites had been sent out to 900 people, drawing wide criticism. (with inputs)

US Secy of State Pompeo to quarantine after contact with Covid-positive person

As Democrats look to the incoming Biden administration to reverse much of President Donald Trump’s work, the conservative imprint he has left on the federal courts is only deepening.

Much attention in recent months has focused on the Supreme Court and its newly appointed justice, Amy Coney Barrett. But an analysis of decisions by the country’s appellate bench — where nearly all contested federal litigation ends — shows the transformation of the judiciary under Trump.

Early this year, The New York Times reviewed more than 10,000 published decisions and dissents during the first three years of the Trump administration. It found that the president’s picks for the appeals courts were more likely than past Republican appointees to disagree with peers selected by Democrats and more likely to agree with their Republican colleagues, suggesting they were more consistently conservative.

An updated analysis of more than 1,700 opinions published over the first six months of the year shows that the trend has intensified as the judges have established a larger body of work.

“It’s more polarized,” said Joshua Fischman, a law professor at the University of Virginia. “We’ve seen a huge conservative shift. A lot of these judges are very young, and they’ll be there for a long time.”

Trump has named 53 of the 165 judges on the nation’s regional appeals courts, lifetime appointments that will have a vast and enduring effect. Most cases on the courts are decided unanimously by three-person panels, and dissent is relatively rare. But as a group, his selections were nearly four times as likely to clash with colleagues appointed by Democratic presidents as those appointed by Republicans. Judges nominated by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush showed the same tendency, but to half the extent.

The judges who exhibited the pattern included some who had been under consideration for the Supreme Court and some who had deep political connections on Capitol Hill. One had done legal work for Trump’s 2016 campaign and later, as acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, was in charge of defending high-profile presidential policies that came under attack in the courts.

Yet while Trump has made clear that he expects loyalty from his judicial appointees, they have ruled against him in lawsuits that his campaign brought regarding the 2020 election. Most notably, Barrett last week joined her fellow justices in denying an effort by Texas to overturn the Biden victory in four battleground states.

At the appeals level, Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd Circuit, nominated in 2017, wrote a blistering decision last month rejecting the Trump campaign’s election challenge in Pennsylvania. And Judge Andrew L. Brasher of the 11th Circuit, appointed this year, wrote an opinion this month rebuffing the campaign’s effort to bypass the lower federal court and decertify Georgia’s election results.

Fischman said that to rule differently would have been to flout the law. “It’s completely against judicial culture,” he said. “They just could not be taken seriously as judges if they sided with Trump here.”

Bibas and Brasher serve on courts that Trump has flipped toward conservative majorities. While Bibas was not among the most disputatious of the appointees, according to the analysis, he dissented in a significant gun-rights case in which two Democratic appointees upheld New Jersey’s limit on large-capacity magazines.

“We must treat the right to keep and bear arms like other enumerated rights,” he wrote. “We may not water it down and balance it away based on our own sense of wise policy.”

Barrett — who until October served in Indiana on the 7th Circuit, where there is a particular culture of agreement — also followed the pattern, striking out against Democratic-named colleagues over 7% of the time and against Republican appointees 2.5% of the time, the analysis showed.

In one such case, she disagreed that a man who had admitted to killing his wife was denied the right to a lawyer when a judge questioned him. (Her position later held sway when the case was considered by a full slate of 7th Circuit judges.)

On the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Neomi Rao, confirmed to the bench just last year, has already made waves. Of four cases with published opinions that she participated in alongside two Democratic appointees, she dissented three times, the analysis showed. In June, she wrote the majority opinion ordering a lower-court judge to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser.

In a case decided in May, Judge Joel M. Carson III of the 10th Circuit dissented as his Democratic-appointed peers ruled against a challenge to the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, the attachments that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire in sustained bursts. That case is now under consideration by the full circuit.

And this month, Judge Lawrence J.C. VanDyke broke from his colleagues on the 9th Circuit, objecting as they ruled against the Trump administration and called an immigration policy favoring wealthy immigrants for green cards “arbitrary and capricious.” VanDyke was among the handful of Trump nominees at the appellate level whose qualifications were questioned by the American Bar Association.

Not all the judges fit the pattern: Many serve on courts with a majority of Republican appointees, and some belong to circuits with a stronger culture of consensus. But The Times found that Trump appointees were more likely to be involved in a case featuring dissent even when those factors were accounted for.

The analysis examined how often and with whom the judges agreed but not the ideological content of their opinions. Though the cases sometimes touched on big policy debates — abortion, gun rights, policing — they more often concerned matters like employment disputes and criminal and immigration court appeals.

The Trump administration’s work in swiftly filling vacant judgeships has depended heavily on Republicans in the Senate, particularly Mitch McConnell, the majority leader. He has encouraged eligible federal judges to retire to create more openings and has led a confirmation process in which Republicans shunned compromise and sought unbending conservatives and reliable political allies to populate the bench.

As of this month, if pending nominations are taken into account, President-elect Joe Biden stands to inherit fewer than 25 openings across the federal judiciary, compared with the more than 100 that carried over to Trump from Barack Obama's administration.

Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee have appealed to Lindsey Graham, its Republican chairman through the end of the year, asking him not to proceed with any more nominations before Biden is sworn in.

But even with a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans will be in a position to continue their push for conservative appointees, or at least block liberal ones, unless Democrats gain control of the Senate by winning both seats in next month’s special election in Georgia.

“A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” McConnell said in October as Barrett was confirmed. “They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”

As Democrats look to the incoming Biden administration to reverse much of President Donald Trump’s work, the conservative imprint he has left on the federal courts is only deepening.

As Democrats look to the incoming Biden administration to reverse much of President Donald Trump’s work, the conservative imprint he has left on the federal courts is only deepening. Much attention in recent months has focused on the Supreme Court and its newly appointed justice, Amy Coney Barrett. But an analysis of decisions by the country’s appellate bench — where nearly all contested federal litigation ends — shows the transformation of the judiciary under Trump. Early this year, The New York Times reviewed more than 10,000 published decisions and dissents during the first three years of the Trump administration. It found that the president’s picks for the appeals courts were more likely than past Republican appointees to disagree with peers selected by Democrats and more likely to agree with their Republican colleagues, suggesting they were more consistently conservative. An updated analysis of more than 1,700 opinions published over the first six months of the year shows that the trend has intensified as the judges have established a larger body of work. “It’s more polarized,” said Joshua Fischman, a law professor at the University of Virginia. “We’ve seen a huge conservative shift. A lot of these judges are very young, and they’ll be there for a long time.” Trump has named 53 of the 165 judges on the nation’s regional appeals courts, lifetime appointments that will have a vast and enduring effect. Most cases on the courts are decided unanimously by three-person panels, and dissent is relatively rare. But as a group, his selections were nearly four times as likely to clash with colleagues appointed by Democratic presidents as those appointed by Republicans. Judges nominated by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush showed the same tendency, but to half the extent. The judges who exhibited the pattern included some who had been under consideration for the Supreme Court and some who had deep political connections on Capitol Hill. One had done legal work for Trump’s 2016 campaign and later, as acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, was in charge of defending high-profile presidential policies that came under attack in the courts. Yet while Trump has made clear that he expects loyalty from his judicial appointees, they have ruled against him in lawsuits that his campaign brought regarding the 2020 election. Most notably, Barrett last week joined her fellow justices in denying an effort by Texas to overturn the Biden victory in four battleground states. At the appeals level, Judge Stephanos Bibas of the 3rd Circuit, nominated in 2017, wrote a blistering decision last month rejecting the Trump campaign’s election challenge in Pennsylvania. And Judge Andrew L. Brasher of the 11th Circuit, appointed this year, wrote an opinion this month rebuffing the campaign’s effort to bypass the lower federal court and decertify Georgia’s election results. Fischman said that to rule differently would have been to flout the law. “It’s completely against judicial culture,” he said. “They just could not be taken seriously as judges if they sided with Trump here.” Bibas and Brasher serve on courts that Trump has flipped toward conservative majorities. While Bibas was not among the most disputatious of the appointees, according to the analysis, he dissented in a significant gun-rights case in which two Democratic appointees upheld New Jersey’s limit on large-capacity magazines. “We must treat the right to keep and bear arms like other enumerated rights,” he wrote. “We may not water it down and balance it away based on our own sense of wise policy.” Barrett — who until October served in Indiana on the 7th Circuit, where there is a particular culture of agreement — also followed the pattern, striking out against Democratic-named colleagues over 7% of the time and against Republican appointees 2.5% of the time, the analysis showed. In one such case, she disagreed that a man who had admitted to killing his wife was denied the right to a lawyer when a judge questioned him. (Her position later held sway when the case was considered by a full slate of 7th Circuit judges.) On the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Neomi Rao, confirmed to the bench just last year, has already made waves. Of four cases with published opinions that she participated in alongside two Democratic appointees, she dissented three times, the analysis showed. In June, she wrote the majority opinion ordering a lower-court judge to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. In a case decided in May, Judge Joel M. Carson III of the 10th Circuit dissented as his Democratic-appointed peers ruled against a challenge to the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, the attachments that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire in sustained bursts. That case is now under consideration by the full circuit. And this month, Judge Lawrence J.C. VanDyke broke from his colleagues on the 9th Circuit, objecting as they ruled against the Trump administration and called an immigration policy favoring wealthy immigrants for green cards “arbitrary and capricious.” VanDyke was among the handful of Trump nominees at the appellate level whose qualifications were questioned by the American Bar Association. Not all the judges fit the pattern: Many serve on courts with a majority of Republican appointees, and some belong to circuits with a stronger culture of consensus. But The Times found that Trump appointees were more likely to be involved in a case featuring dissent even when those factors were accounted for. The analysis examined how often and with whom the judges agreed but not the ideological content of their opinions. Though the cases sometimes touched on big policy debates — abortion, gun rights, policing — they more often concerned matters like employment disputes and criminal and immigration court appeals. The Trump administration’s work in swiftly filling vacant judgeships has depended heavily on Republicans in the Senate, particularly Mitch McConnell, the majority leader. He has encouraged eligible federal judges to retire to create more openings and has led a confirmation process in which Republicans shunned compromise and sought unbending conservatives and reliable political allies to populate the bench. As of this month, if pending nominations are taken into account, President-elect Joe Biden stands to inherit fewer than 25 openings across the federal judiciary, compared with the more than 100 that carried over to Trump from Barack Obama's administration. Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee have appealed to Lindsey Graham, its Republican chairman through the end of the year, asking him not to proceed with any more nominations before Biden is sworn in. But even with a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans will be in a position to continue their push for conservative appointees, or at least block liberal ones, unless Democrats gain control of the Senate by winning both seats in next month’s special election in Georgia. “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” McConnell said in October as Barrett was confirmed. “They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”

As Trump leaves the White House, his imprint on the judiciary deepens

Two days after the Electoral College confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, a Senate committee provided a platform Wednesday for another round of specious legal arguments and falsehoods about widespread voter fraud that have been repeatedly rejected by courts across the country.

The hearing was the latest effort by the Republican chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, to amplify the claims and concerns of President Donald Trump. Johnson previously used his committee to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, and to elevate fringe theories about the coronavirus pandemic.

Though Johnson conceded in his opening remarks that fraudulent voting did not affect the outcome of the election, he said that “lax enforcement, denying effective bipartisan observation of the complete election process, and failure to be fully transparent or conduct reasonable audits has led to heightened suspicion.”

“The fraud happened. The election in many ways was stolen,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said at one point.

Those claims are false. The Trump campaign has failed to provide evidence in a number of lawsuits that Republican observers were barred from witnessing vote tabulating. Recounts and postelection audits in several battleground states have either concluded and reconfirmed . Biden’s victory, or are underway. There is no evidence that the election was “stolen.”

Witnesses called by Johnson included three men — two lawyers for Trump and a Pennsylvania state representative — who have unsuccessfully sought to overturn election results. They also included Ken Starr, who represented Trump during the impeachment hearing this year.

Even as several witnesses insisted there was proof of widespread fraud — and as their claims were echoed in viral posts on social media — Christopher C. Krebs, the former head of the government’s cybersecurity agency, testified that the election was the most secure in American history.

James Troupis, a lawyer for Trump in Wisconsin, claimed that 200,000 people had voted improperly in the state. He argued that accepting absentee ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties — two Democratic bastions — before Election Day violated state law, and that those votes should be thrown out.

But the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the case Monday, and a conservative justice said that one of Troupis’ four claims was “meritless” and that time had run out on the other three. Justices also noted during the trial that Troupis was not seeking to throw out ballots in other counties that used the same procedures but that Trump had won.

A Republican member of the state’s elections commission observed this month that the Trump campaign “has not made any claims of fraud in this election” but rather leveled “disputes in matters of law.”

Similarly, Trump’s campaign lawyer in Nevada used the hearing to rehash false claims and arguments rejected by courts in the state. The lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said that the campaign’s experts had identified “130,000 unique instances of voter fraud” in Nevada and that their evidence had “never been refuted, only ignored.”

A district court in Nevada rejected those claims and dismissed the lawsuit this month, and the Nevada Supreme Court upheld that decision last week.

The lower court said that it found “no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 general election in Nevada was affected by fraud” and that the campaign’s expert testimony “was of little to no value.” Binnall and others on the legal team “did not prove under any standard of proof” their claims about double voting, deceased people voting, and noncitizens and nonresidents voting, the court wrote.

The state’s highest court, in upholding that decision, wrote that it asked the Trump campaign to identify findings from the district court that it took issue with, but “appellants have not pointed to any unsupported factual findings, and we have identified none.”

State Rep. Francis Ryan of Pennsylvania also repeated a number of claims that appeared in Texas’ lawsuit seeking to toss out election results in Pennsylvania and other swing states. The Supreme Court rejected that lawsuit last week.

Ryan said that a data portal initially and erroneously listed 508,112 ballots counted in Philadelphia County despite only 432,873 ballots being issued to voters. He then acknowledged that the 500,000 figure was corrected later.

He also claimed that the state reported that 3.1 million mail-in ballots were sent out, but the number was 2.7 million “the day before the election.” Pennsylvania, in a filing responding to the lawsuit, noted that Ryan’s analysis was “fundamentally faulty” and that the 3.1 million figure included 2.7 million mail-in ballots and 400,000 absentee ballots.

Additionally, Ryan expressed skepticism that more than 1,500 voters reported being more than 100 years old. But that figure includes dozens of instances where a birthday is entered as Jan. 1, 1900, as a placeholder. It is also consistent with reports from the census and the Centers for Disease for Control and Prevention on the number of people that age in Pennsylvania and the United States.

Starr separately argued that Pennsylvania “flagrantly violated” state law in expanding mail-in voting. A lawsuit making the same point was rejected by the state’s Supreme Court, which was then upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Johnson and Starr also cited Democratic officials who had previously raised concerns about election security to suggest that Republicans were being unfairly maligned in their efforts to cast light on the issue.

“I don’t recall the media or anyone else accusing these eight congressional Democrats of indulging in, quote, quackery and conspiracy theories, unquote,” Johnson said as he read passages from three letters written by Democratic senators.

Those three letters were about potential foreign efforts to hack election security software and the involvement of private equity firms in companies that make election equipment.

Starr repeatedly referred to a 2005 commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III that issued a “warning” about mail-in ballots.

But Carter urged the expansion of mail-in voting this year and his foundation, the Carter Center, noted that the 2005 report found “there was little evidence of voter fraud” in places with adequate safeguards.

Krebs cited and debunked a number of false conspiracy theories and rumors, including those advanced by Trump and his allies.

The claim about “a CIA supercomputer and program that were flipping votes throughout the country, and in Georgia specifically” — pushed by Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Trump — is disproved by the paper ballots, he said.

“You can always go back to the receipts. You can check your math, and Georgia did that three times, and the outcomes were consistent over and over and over again,” Krebs said.

Krebs also addressed a false claim, repeated by Trump, of a 68% error rate in vote counting in Antrim County in Michigan. But that, he said, was based on a misinterpretation of the programming language.

“In fact, it was not that there was 68% of the votes that were errors; it was that the election management system’s logs had recorded 68% of the logs themselves had some sort of alert rate,” Krebs said. “The problem is the report itself doesn’t actually specify any of those errors except for one.”

Krebs added: “We have to stop this. It is undermining confidence in democracy.”

Two days after the Electoral College confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, a Senate committee provided a platform Wednesday for another round of specious legal arguments and falsehoods about widespread voter fraud that have been repeatedly rejected by courts across the country.

Two days after the Electoral College confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, a Senate committee provided a platform Wednesday for another round of specious legal arguments and falsehoods about widespread voter fraud that have been repeatedly rejected by courts across the country. The hearing was the latest effort by the Republican chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, to amplify the claims and concerns of President Donald Trump. Johnson previously used his committee to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, and to elevate fringe theories about the coronavirus pandemic. Though Johnson conceded in his opening remarks that fraudulent voting did not affect the outcome of the election, he said that “lax enforcement, denying effective bipartisan observation of the complete election process, and failure to be fully transparent or conduct reasonable audits has led to heightened suspicion.” “The fraud happened. The election in many ways was stolen,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said at one point. Those claims are false. The Trump campaign has failed to provide evidence in a number of lawsuits that Republican observers were barred from witnessing vote tabulating. Recounts and postelection audits in several battleground states have either concluded and reconfirmed . Biden’s victory, or are underway. There is no evidence that the election was “stolen.” Witnesses called by Johnson included three men — two lawyers for Trump and a Pennsylvania state representative — who have unsuccessfully sought to overturn election results. They also included Ken Starr, who represented Trump during the impeachment hearing this year. Even as several witnesses insisted there was proof of widespread fraud — and as their claims were echoed in viral posts on social media — Christopher C. Krebs, the former head of the government’s cybersecurity agency, testified that the election was the most secure in American history. James Troupis, a lawyer for Trump in Wisconsin, claimed that 200,000 people had voted improperly in the state. He argued that accepting absentee ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties — two Democratic bastions — before Election Day violated state law, and that those votes should be thrown out. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the case Monday, and a conservative justice said that one of Troupis’ four claims was “meritless” and that time had run out on the other three. Justices also noted during the trial that Troupis was not seeking to throw out ballots in other counties that used the same procedures but that Trump had won. A Republican member of the state’s elections commission observed this month that the Trump campaign “has not made any claims of fraud in this election” but rather leveled “disputes in matters of law.” Similarly, Trump’s campaign lawyer in Nevada used the hearing to rehash false claims and arguments rejected by courts in the state. The lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said that the campaign’s experts had identified “130,000 unique instances of voter fraud” in Nevada and that their evidence had “never been refuted, only ignored.” A district court in Nevada rejected those claims and dismissed the lawsuit this month, and the Nevada Supreme Court upheld that decision last week. The lower court said that it found “no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 general election in Nevada was affected by fraud” and that the campaign’s expert testimony “was of little to no value.” Binnall and others on the legal team “did not prove under any standard of proof” their claims about double voting, deceased people voting, and noncitizens and nonresidents voting, the court wrote. The state’s highest court, in upholding that decision, wrote that it asked the Trump campaign to identify findings from the district court that it took issue with, but “appellants have not pointed to any unsupported factual findings, and we have identified none.” State Rep. Francis Ryan of Pennsylvania also repeated a number of claims that appeared in Texas’ lawsuit seeking to toss out election results in Pennsylvania and other swing states. The Supreme Court rejected that lawsuit last week. Ryan said that a data portal initially and erroneously listed 508,112 ballots counted in Philadelphia County despite only 432,873 ballots being issued to voters. He then acknowledged that the 500,000 figure was corrected later. He also claimed that the state reported that 3.1 million mail-in ballots were sent out, but the number was 2.7 million “the day before the election.” Pennsylvania, in a filing responding to the lawsuit, noted that Ryan’s analysis was “fundamentally faulty” and that the 3.1 million figure included 2.7 million mail-in ballots and 400,000 absentee ballots. Additionally, Ryan expressed skepticism that more than 1,500 voters reported being more than 100 years old. But that figure includes dozens of instances where a birthday is entered as Jan. 1, 1900, as a placeholder. It is also consistent with reports from the census and the Centers for Disease for Control and Prevention on the number of people that age in Pennsylvania and the United States. Starr separately argued that Pennsylvania “flagrantly violated” state law in expanding mail-in voting. A lawsuit making the same point was rejected by the state’s Supreme Court, which was then upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Johnson and Starr also cited Democratic officials who had previously raised concerns about election security to suggest that Republicans were being unfairly maligned in their efforts to cast light on the issue. “I don’t recall the media or anyone else accusing these eight congressional Democrats of indulging in, quote, quackery and conspiracy theories, unquote,” Johnson said as he read passages from three letters written by Democratic senators. Those three letters were about potential foreign efforts to hack election security software and the involvement of private equity firms in companies that make election equipment. Starr repeatedly referred to a 2005 commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III that issued a “warning” about mail-in ballots. But Carter urged the expansion of mail-in voting this year and his foundation, the Carter Center, noted that the 2005 report found “there was little evidence of voter fraud” in places with adequate safeguards. Krebs cited and debunked a number of false conspiracy theories and rumors, including those advanced by Trump and his allies. The claim about “a CIA supercomputer and program that were flipping votes throughout the country, and in Georgia specifically” — pushed by Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Trump — is disproved by the paper ballots, he said. “You can always go back to the receipts. You can check your math, and Georgia did that three times, and the outcomes were consistent over and over and over again,” Krebs said. Krebs also addressed a false claim, repeated by Trump, of a 68% error rate in vote counting in Antrim County in Michigan. But that, he said, was based on a misinterpretation of the programming language. “In fact, it was not that there was 68% of the votes that were errors; it was that the election management system’s logs had recorded 68% of the logs themselves had some sort of alert rate,” Krebs said. “The problem is the report itself doesn’t actually specify any of those errors except for one.” Krebs added: “We have to stop this. It is undermining confidence in democracy.”

Senate Committee continues false claims of fraud

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s allies have begun an ambitious campaign to raise millions of dollars from corporations and individuals by offering special “VIP participation” in reimagined inaugural festivities that will be largely virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Far fewer tickets than normal are being distributed for people to attend the actual swearing-in ceremony outside the Capitol on Jan. 20, which is organized and funded by the government.

To create an air of celebration, Biden’s inaugural committee said it was raising private funds to pay for virtual events that will echo the Democratic convention this year, which featured a 50-state roll call from spots around the nation. There are also plans for a “virtual concert” with major performers whose names have not yet been released — and possibly for an in-person event later in the year.

The contrast between the constraints of putting on inaugural festivities in the midst of a public health crisis and fundraising as usual underscores how donations to an inaugural are not just about getting good seats for the swearing-in or tickets to the glitziest black-tie balls. They are also a way for corporations and well-heeled individuals to curry favor with a new administration, a reality that prompted liberal groups on Wednesday to ask Biden’s inaugural committee to forgo corporate donations.

President Donald Trump’s inauguration nearly four years ago took the practice to a new level. It became an access-peddling bazaar of sorts, and aspects of its record fundraising and spending emerged as the subjects of investigations.

Biden’s inaugural committee is promising corporations that give up to $1 million and individuals who contribute $500,000 — the largest amounts the committee said it would accept — some form of “VIP participation” in the virtual concert.

This special access is among the perks detailed on a one-page sponsorship menu from the committee that circulated among donors Wednesday. Perks include “event sponsorship opportunities,” as well as access to virtual briefings with leaders of the inaugural committee and campaign, and invitations to virtual events with Biden and his wife Jill, the future first lady, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.

Top donors will also get a fitting memento for the coronavirus era — “virtual signed photos” with the president-elect and the first lady, as well as Harris and her husband, replacing the traditional in-person rope-line photo opportunities for which donors usually pay handsomely at fundraisers and other political events.

Incoming presidents have long raised private funds to organize and pay for inaugural festivities beyond the swearing-in ceremony, which is hosted by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and funded with taxpayer money.

Top donors typically get intimate in-person access at parties and dinners to celebrate with members of an incoming president’s campaign and administration.

Among the corporate giants who have indicated they are ready to donate despite the lack of in-person events is Boeing, the aerospace manufacturer and military contractor. The company is contributing $1 million to Biden’s inauguration, an amount it said is consistent with its past contributions to inaugural committees. Representatives from Bank of America and Ford Motor Co. also said their companies intended to donate.

“We have supported inauguration events over many administrations on a nonpartisan basis because we view it as part of our civic commitment for an important national event,” Bill Halldin, a spokesman for Bank of America, said in a statement. “The private sector has traditionally done so and we expect to provide support for ceremonies in January as appropriate, given the health crisis and other factors that may impact it.”

A number of corporations that have been major donors to past presidential inaugurations — like Coca-Cola, Google and United Parcel Service — said this week that they still had not decided how much, or whether, to donate, though Google noted it had provided “online security protections for free” to the inaugural committee.

“As you know this is a very different year and as such we have not yet made a decision,” Ann Moore, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the investment bank JPMorgan Chase, which has donated to past inaugurations, said that instead of giving to Biden’s committee, it would be donating to food banks in Washington and the hometowns of Biden (Wilmington, Delaware) and Harris (Oakland, California) “to help those impacted by the pandemic.”

An inauguration spokesman would not say how much had already been raised, or what the fundraising goal was.

Funds raised for inaugurations cannot be transferred to federal campaigns or party committees. Past inaugural committees have donated unspent funds to charities including those engaged in disaster relief, as well as groups involved in decorating and maintaining the White House and the vice president’s residence.

The effort by Biden’s inaugural committee to raise funds from corporate donors prompted puzzlement and objections from liberal activists, who have expressed concern about what they see as the Biden team’s coziness with corporate interests.

A coalition of about 50 liberal groups released a letter to the inaugural committee Wednesday, urging it to forgo donations from corporations to prevent them “from wielding undue influence,” and questioning the need for such donations, given the likelihood that Biden’s inauguration would cost less than previous inaugurations.

“The drive to raise so much money without a clear use for it is perplexing, and the appearance of doing so is disconcerting,” said the letter, which was organized by Demand Progress, a group that has also urged Biden not to hire corporate executives and consultants or lobbyists.

Federal law does not require the disclosure of donations to inaugural committees until 90 days after the event, and limited disclosures about expenditures are not required until months after that. But the Biden inaugural committee said it intends to disclose the names of at least its larger donors before Jan. 20.

There are no legal limits on the sizes of donations that inaugural committees can accept, and there are few restrictions on who can give.

Biden’s inaugural committee announced last month that it would voluntarily forgo donations from fossil fuel companies, registered lobbyists and foreign agents, in addition to limiting corporate donations to $1 million and individual donations to $500,000.

Those restrictions are less stringent than the ones adopted by former President Barack Obama for his 2009 inauguration. His inaugural committee refused corporate donations and said it limited individual donations to $50,000, though he loosened the rules for his second inauguration in 2013.

While Trump’s team said it would not accept contributions from lobbyists for his 2017 inauguration, its fundraising was otherwise mostly unrestricted, resulting in a record $107 million haul.

The Biden team has released few specifics regarding plans for the inauguration, other than a statement Tuesday urging people not to travel to Washington to attend the event given the pandemic and noting that the “ceremony’s footprint will be extremely limited.”

In an expression of just how unusual the event will be, the Biden inaugural committee named Dr. David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, as an adviser to help with decisions on what kinds of events it can hold.

“We are asking Americans to participate in inaugural events from home to protect themselves, their families, friends and communities,” Kessler said in a statement.

In a typical inauguration year, a congressional committee that organizes the swearing-in ceremony typically distributes 200,000 tickets to lawmakers for seats on the platform, risers and seating close to the West Front of the Capitol, which are then distributed to constituents and friends who want to attend.

But this year, the committee announced it would give just two tickets to the outdoor festivities to each of the 535 members of Congress, for them and a guest to attend.

Beyond this event, it is largely up to the Biden inauguration committee, where officials have said in recent days they are still working to “reimagine” and “reinvent” the inauguration.

There will still be some kind of an inauguration parade, but it will be considerably pared down and will most likely feature video or live shots of groups performing from spots across the country.

The inaugural committee this week disclosed that it had retained Ricky Kirshner, a New York-based entertainment industry television and events producer. His past experience includes the Super Bowl halftime show this year that featured Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, as well as past Tony Awards and Kennedy Center Honors events, and the largely virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, among many other events.

Major donors will also get “VIP tickets” to some kind of future event to celebrate the start of the new administration in person, according to the one-page menu of donor perks.

But given the continued uncertainty associated with the pandemic, that event is listed as “date to be determined.”

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s allies have begun an ambitious campaign to raise millions of dollars from corporations and individuals by offering special “VIP participation” in reimagined inaugural festivities that will be largely virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s allies have begun an ambitious campaign to raise millions of dollars from corporations and individuals by offering special “VIP participation” in reimagined inaugural festivities that will be largely virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic. Far fewer tickets than normal are being distributed for people to attend the actual swearing-in ceremony outside the Capitol on Jan. 20, which is organized and funded by the government. To create an air of celebration, Biden’s inaugural committee said it was raising private funds to pay for virtual events that will echo the Democratic convention this year, which featured a 50-state roll call from spots around the nation. There are also plans for a “virtual concert” with major performers whose names have not yet been released — and possibly for an in-person event later in the year. The contrast between the constraints of putting on inaugural festivities in the midst of a public health crisis and fundraising as usual underscores how donations to an inaugural are not just about getting good seats for the swearing-in or tickets to the glitziest black-tie balls. They are also a way for corporations and well-heeled individuals to curry favor with a new administration, a reality that prompted liberal groups on Wednesday to ask Biden’s inaugural committee to forgo corporate donations. President Donald Trump’s inauguration nearly four years ago took the practice to a new level. It became an access-peddling bazaar of sorts, and aspects of its record fundraising and spending emerged as the subjects of investigations. Biden’s inaugural committee is promising corporations that give up to $1 million and individuals who contribute $500,000 — the largest amounts the committee said it would accept — some form of “VIP participation” in the virtual concert. This special access is among the perks detailed on a one-page sponsorship menu from the committee that circulated among donors Wednesday. Perks include “event sponsorship opportunities,” as well as access to virtual briefings with leaders of the inaugural committee and campaign, and invitations to virtual events with Biden and his wife Jill, the future first lady, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. Top donors will also get a fitting memento for the coronavirus era — “virtual signed photos” with the president-elect and the first lady, as well as Harris and her husband, replacing the traditional in-person rope-line photo opportunities for which donors usually pay handsomely at fundraisers and other political events. Incoming presidents have long raised private funds to organize and pay for inaugural festivities beyond the swearing-in ceremony, which is hosted by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and funded with taxpayer money. Top donors typically get intimate in-person access at parties and dinners to celebrate with members of an incoming president’s campaign and administration. Among the corporate giants who have indicated they are ready to donate despite the lack of in-person events is Boeing, the aerospace manufacturer and military contractor. The company is contributing $1 million to Biden’s inauguration, an amount it said is consistent with its past contributions to inaugural committees. Representatives from Bank of America and Ford Motor Co. also said their companies intended to donate. “We have supported inauguration events over many administrations on a nonpartisan basis because we view it as part of our civic commitment for an important national event,” Bill Halldin, a spokesman for Bank of America, said in a statement. “The private sector has traditionally done so and we expect to provide support for ceremonies in January as appropriate, given the health crisis and other factors that may impact it.” A number of corporations that have been major donors to past presidential inaugurations — like Coca-Cola, Google and United Parcel Service — said this week that they still had not decided how much, or whether, to donate, though Google noted it had provided “online security protections for free” to the inaugural committee. “As you know this is a very different year and as such we have not yet made a decision,” Ann Moore, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the investment bank JPMorgan Chase, which has donated to past inaugurations, said that instead of giving to Biden’s committee, it would be donating to food banks in Washington and the hometowns of Biden (Wilmington, Delaware) and Harris (Oakland, California) “to help those impacted by the pandemic.” An inauguration spokesman would not say how much had already been raised, or what the fundraising goal was. Funds raised for inaugurations cannot be transferred to federal campaigns or party committees. Past inaugural committees have donated unspent funds to charities including those engaged in disaster relief, as well as groups involved in decorating and maintaining the White House and the vice president’s residence. The effort by Biden’s inaugural committee to raise funds from corporate donors prompted puzzlement and objections from liberal activists, who have expressed concern about what they see as the Biden team’s coziness with corporate interests. A coalition of about 50 liberal groups released a letter to the inaugural committee Wednesday, urging it to forgo donations from corporations to prevent them “from wielding undue influence,” and questioning the need for such donations, given the likelihood that Biden’s inauguration would cost less than previous inaugurations. “The drive to raise so much money without a clear use for it is perplexing, and the appearance of doing so is disconcerting,” said the letter, which was organized by Demand Progress, a group that has also urged Biden not to hire corporate executives and consultants or lobbyists. Federal law does not require the disclosure of donations to inaugural committees until 90 days after the event, and limited disclosures about expenditures are not required until months after that. But the Biden inaugural committee said it intends to disclose the names of at least its larger donors before Jan. 20. There are no legal limits on the sizes of donations that inaugural committees can accept, and there are few restrictions on who can give. Biden’s inaugural committee announced last month that it would voluntarily forgo donations from fossil fuel companies, registered lobbyists and foreign agents, in addition to limiting corporate donations to $1 million and individual donations to $500,000. Those restrictions are less stringent than the ones adopted by former President Barack Obama for his 2009 inauguration. His inaugural committee refused corporate donations and said it limited individual donations to $50,000, though he loosened the rules for his second inauguration in 2013. While Trump’s team said it would not accept contributions from lobbyists for his 2017 inauguration, its fundraising was otherwise mostly unrestricted, resulting in a record $107 million haul. The Biden team has released few specifics regarding plans for the inauguration, other than a statement Tuesday urging people not to travel to Washington to attend the event given the pandemic and noting that the “ceremony’s footprint will be extremely limited.” In an expression of just how unusual the event will be, the Biden inaugural committee named Dr. David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, as an adviser to help with decisions on what kinds of events it can hold. “We are asking Americans to participate in inaugural events from home to protect themselves, their families, friends and communities,” Kessler said in a statement. In a typical inauguration year, a congressional committee that organizes the swearing-in ceremony typically distributes 200,000 tickets to lawmakers for seats on the platform, risers and seating close to the West Front of the Capitol, which are then distributed to constituents and friends who want to attend. But this year, the committee announced it would give just two tickets to the outdoor festivities to each of the 535 members of Congress, for them and a guest to attend. Beyond this event, it is largely up to the Biden inauguration committee, where officials have said in recent days they are still working to “reimagine” and “reinvent” the inauguration. There will still be some kind of an inauguration parade, but it will be considerably pared down and will most likely feature video or live shots of groups performing from spots across the country. The inaugural committee this week disclosed that it had retained Ricky Kirshner, a New York-based entertainment industry television and events producer. His past experience includes the Super Bowl halftime show this year that featured Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, as well as past Tony Awards and Kennedy Center Honors events, and the largely virtual 2020 Democratic National Convention, among many other events. Major donors will also get “VIP tickets” to some kind of future event to celebrate the start of the new administration in person, according to the one-page menu of donor perks. But given the continued uncertainty associated with the pandemic, that event is listed as “date to be determined.”

Biden’s inaugural will be mostly virtual, but money from donors will be real

I was speaking recently to Matt Dunne, founder of the Center on Rural Innovation, which promotes digital economic development in small-town America, and he was telling me about a Vermont community near his home with a great public library: “You could drive by on any Sunday and the parking lot would be full,” he said. “There was just one problem: The library was closed on Sundays.”

The parking lot was full of cars with kids doing their homework and adults doing their office work — using the wireless connectivity spilling out of the empty building because their rural homes lacked high-speed broadband. Alas, stories abound of rural Americans going to Subway sandwich shops and Dairy Queens in search of free Wi-Fi.

And that is why I want to talk today about Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Harris is too smart and energetic to be just the vice president, a position with few official responsibilities. I’d love to see President-elect Joe Biden give her a more important job: his de facto secretary of rural development, in charge of closing the opportunity gap, the connectivity gap, the learning gap, the startup gap — and the anger and alienation gap — between rural America and the rest of the country.

President Donald Trump feasted off those gaps in our last two presidential elections to dominate Democrats in rural America. Putting Harris in charge of fixing them would be a real statement by the Biden team.

It would provide a vision for American renewal and signal that Democrats were no longer going to cede rural America to Republicans but were instead going to seize it from them. And it would make Harris a super-relevant vice president from Day 1.

Democrats must not kid themselves. Biden won this election by narrowly winning the suburbs and urban centers in key battleground states, where just enough people decided that they wanted to “de-Trump” the White House but not “defund” the police.

That is, a lot of suburban voters rejected Trump personally but also rejected far-left Democratic ideas that had percolated up in the past few years. Democrats won the presidency but took a beating from those same suburban voters in many statehouse, U.S. House and U.S. Senate races.

If Democrats go into 2022 — let alone 2024 — appealing only on the cities and suburbs, they’re crazy. They will be highly vulnerable if the GOP is led by a smarter, less offensive populist than Donald Trump.

Most important, lifting rural America is the right thing to do for all of America and fulfills Biden’s vision of a nation that “grows together” in every way.

That concept remains in the DNA of the Democratic Party, which in my home state, Minnesota, is still known as the “DFL” — the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The party needs to reconstitute that coalition.

“One way to do that is by reconnecting with its populist roots — when it really was a party focused on the empowerment of workers and farmers and ordinary citizens,” argued Harvard’s Michael Sandel, author of “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” “Trump gave populism a bad name. Democrats should provide an alternative to Trump’s xenophobic, plutocratic populism by showing how populism can be a source of civic activism, engagement and renewal across urban and rural America.”

That should be Harris’ mission, and it’s one worthy of a vice president. And it starts in rural America.

“I fear the word ‘rural’ connotes a geography that is not my problem,” Beth Ford, president of Land O’Lakes, the influential farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Minnesota, said to me. But, in fact, spreading connectivity and technology to rural America “is an American issue, an American competitiveness issue and an American national security issue,” she argued.

Persistent “underinvestment in rural America will leave us less secure and less prosperous as a nation” — and less competitive with China, which is rapidly connecting its rural heartland, Ford said. “Some 35% of farmers lack enough bandwidth to run the equipment on their farms, ensure their kids get a good education and that Grandma has access to telemedicine.”

What should a Biden-Harris rural strategy look like? It would start with showing up regularly. “Showing up” and “just listening to people” with respect goes a long way in rural America, Emily Larson, the mayor of Duluth, Minnesota, told me. Actually, nothing earns more respect than listening to people respectfully.

“Rural areas have their own social networks,” Larson said, but they’re different from the metropolitan ones. “Here, people will show up for you in the middle of the night, but they don’t post about it on Facebook.”

On policy specifics, the Biden-Harris team should commit that in four years every rural community in America will have access to broadband — the basic infrastructure needed for an inclusive modern economy.

Dunne suggests a new federal loan program that would offer 50-year, no-interest loans to communities and co-ops (and ease regulations) so rural public-private coalitions can build broadband networks with a minimum 100 megabits per second of speed for downloading and uploading all kinds of remote learning tools, work tools and telehealth tools. Rep. James Clyburn has already won passage of a bill in the House with a similar approach.

Traveling with Dunne last year to Red Wing, Minnesota, to see how gigabit networks can support high-tech startups and traditional farmers, I wrote about a couple of inventors we met who had created a robotic rooster that patrols the poultry house for dead birds and tills the bedding, but with an unexpected byproduct: The birds exercise more and gain weight faster, because they are constantly running away from or pecking at the robot.

While these “Poultry Patrol” robots work autonomously 80% of the time, said Dunne, “there are significant periods when they need to be remotely operated and receive coding updates from afar, which is only possible with very fast broadband.”

But while better connectivity is necessary, it’s not sufficient. “We also need to ensure investment in digital skills training in rural communities and incentives for tech companies to hire remote workers in small towns,” added Dunne. “Today rural America represents 15% of the nation’s workforce, but only 5% of digital economy jobs of the future. But the pandemic has opened people’s eyes to the idea that digital economy jobs can be created anywhere.”

Kamala Harris is a natural for that task. Who better to bridge Silicon Valley and the rural valleys of America?

She is also a natural bridge builder to a more inclusive American heartland, because &lt;em&gt;rural America is not white America.&lt;/em&gt; According to a report by the Urban Institute, “1 in 5 Americans lives in rural communities, and more than one in five (22%) rural residents are people of color.” I wrote last year about Willmar, Minnesota, a town that was all white back in the 1950s and today is nearly half Hispanic, Somali, Asian and Native American.

In Minnesota, small towns like Willmar that can manage inclusion and diversity are the ones now thriving, because they can attract new labor and homebuyers when so many of the young white adults have left for the big cities.

Harris will soon be the first woman, the first Black and the first Indian American vice president, which certainly resonates with a lot of urban voters. However, if she could make herself the person in the Biden cabinet who always shows up FIRST to listen in rural America and the FIRST to appreciate its concerns and the FIRST to make sure its concerns are addressed, she and the Democrats could make themselves competitive in a lot more rural counties.

Even if it is just 10 or 15% more competitive, it might be enough to deprive today’s deeply warped Trump-led GOP from taking back the White House or the House in the next four years — and maybe force it back to sanity. The Republican Party needs shock therapy, and nothing would shock this GOP more than losing its automatic hold on rural America.

I was speaking recently to Matt Dunne, founder of the Center on Rural Innovation, which promotes digital economic development in small-town America, and he was telling me about a Vermont community near his home with a great public library: “You could drive by on any Sunday and the parking lot would be full,” he said.

I was speaking recently to Matt Dunne, founder of the Center on Rural Innovation, which promotes digital economic development in small-town America, and he was telling me about a Vermont community near his home with a great public library: “You could drive by on any Sunday and the parking lot would be full,” he said. “There was just one problem: The library was closed on Sundays.” The parking lot was full of cars with kids doing their homework and adults doing their office work — using the wireless connectivity spilling out of the empty building because their rural homes lacked high-speed broadband. Alas, stories abound of rural Americans going to Subway sandwich shops and Dairy Queens in search of free Wi-Fi. And that is why I want to talk today about Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Harris is too smart and energetic to be just the vice president, a position with few official responsibilities. I’d love to see President-elect Joe Biden give her a more important job: his de facto secretary of rural development, in charge of closing the opportunity gap, the connectivity gap, the learning gap, the startup gap — and the anger and alienation gap — between rural America and the rest of the country. President Donald Trump feasted off those gaps in our last two presidential elections to dominate Democrats in rural America. Putting Harris in charge of fixing them would be a real statement by the Biden team. It would provide a vision for American renewal and signal that Democrats were no longer going to cede rural America to Republicans but were instead going to seize it from them. And it would make Harris a super-relevant vice president from Day 1. Democrats must not kid themselves. Biden won this election by narrowly winning the suburbs and urban centers in key battleground states, where just enough people decided that they wanted to “de-Trump” the White House but not “defund” the police. That is, a lot of suburban voters rejected Trump personally but also rejected far-left Democratic ideas that had percolated up in the past few years. Democrats won the presidency but took a beating from those same suburban voters in many statehouse, U.S. House and U.S. Senate races. If Democrats go into 2022 — let alone 2024 — appealing only on the cities and suburbs, they’re crazy. They will be highly vulnerable if the GOP is led by a smarter, less offensive populist than Donald Trump. Most important, lifting rural America is the right thing to do for all of America and fulfills Biden’s vision of a nation that “grows together” in every way. That concept remains in the DNA of the Democratic Party, which in my home state, Minnesota, is still known as the “DFL” — the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The party needs to reconstitute that coalition. “One way to do that is by reconnecting with its populist roots — when it really was a party focused on the empowerment of workers and farmers and ordinary citizens,” argued Harvard’s Michael Sandel, author of “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” “Trump gave populism a bad name. Democrats should provide an alternative to Trump’s xenophobic, plutocratic populism by showing how populism can be a source of civic activism, engagement and renewal across urban and rural America.” That should be Harris’ mission, and it’s one worthy of a vice president. And it starts in rural America. “I fear the word ‘rural’ connotes a geography that is not my problem,” Beth Ford, president of Land O’Lakes, the influential farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Minnesota, said to me. But, in fact, spreading connectivity and technology to rural America “is an American issue, an American competitiveness issue and an American national security issue,” she argued. Persistent “underinvestment in rural America will leave us less secure and less prosperous as a nation” — and less competitive with China, which is rapidly connecting its rural heartland, Ford said. “Some 35% of farmers lack enough bandwidth to run the equipment on their farms, ensure their kids get a good education and that Grandma has access to telemedicine.” What should a Biden-Harris rural strategy look like? It would start with showing up regularly. “Showing up” and “just listening to people” with respect goes a long way in rural America, Emily Larson, the mayor of Duluth, Minnesota, told me. Actually, nothing earns more respect than listening to people respectfully. “Rural areas have their own social networks,” Larson said, but they’re different from the metropolitan ones. “Here, people will show up for you in the middle of the night, but they don’t post about it on Facebook.” On policy specifics, the Biden-Harris team should commit that in four years every rural community in America will have access to broadband — the basic infrastructure needed for an inclusive modern economy. Dunne suggests a new federal loan program that would offer 50-year, no-interest loans to communities and co-ops (and ease regulations) so rural public-private coalitions can build broadband networks with a minimum 100 megabits per second of speed for downloading and uploading all kinds of remote learning tools, work tools and telehealth tools. Rep. James Clyburn has already won passage of a bill in the House with a similar approach. Traveling with Dunne last year to Red Wing, Minnesota, to see how gigabit networks can support high-tech startups and traditional farmers, I wrote about a couple of inventors we met who had created a robotic rooster that patrols the poultry house for dead birds and tills the bedding, but with an unexpected byproduct: The birds exercise more and gain weight faster, because they are constantly running away from or pecking at the robot. While these “Poultry Patrol” robots work autonomously 80% of the time, said Dunne, “there are significant periods when they need to be remotely operated and receive coding updates from afar, which is only possible with very fast broadband.” But while better connectivity is necessary, it’s not sufficient. “We also need to ensure investment in digital skills training in rural communities and incentives for tech companies to hire remote workers in small towns,” added Dunne. “Today rural America represents 15% of the nation’s workforce, but only 5% of digital economy jobs of the future. But the pandemic has opened people’s eyes to the idea that digital economy jobs can be created anywhere.” Kamala Harris is a natural for that task. Who better to bridge Silicon Valley and the rural valleys of America? She is also a natural bridge builder to a more inclusive American heartland, because rural America is not white America. According to a report by the Urban Institute, “1 in 5 Americans lives in rural communities, and more than one in five (22%) rural residents are people of color.” I wrote last year about Willmar, Minnesota, a town that was all white back in the 1950s and today is nearly half Hispanic, Somali, Asian and Native American. In Minnesota, small towns like Willmar that can manage inclusion and diversity are the ones now thriving, because they can attract new labor and homebuyers when so many of the young white adults have left for the big cities. Harris will soon be the first woman, the first Black and the first Indian American vice president, which certainly resonates with a lot of urban voters. However, if she could make herself the person in the Biden cabinet who always shows up FIRST to listen in rural America and the FIRST to appreciate its concerns and the FIRST to make sure its concerns are addressed, she and the Democrats could make themselves competitive in a lot more rural counties. Even if it is just 10 or 15% more competitive, it might be enough to deprive today’s deeply warped Trump-led GOP from taking back the White House or the House in the next four years — and maybe force it back to sanity. The Republican Party needs shock therapy, and nothing would shock this GOP more than losing its automatic hold on rural America.

Kamala Harris deserves a more important job

President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that Iran was "very happy" over the looming departure from office of US counterpart Donald Trump, who led a campaign of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic republic.

President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump at the ballot box in November, has signalled a willingness to return to diplomacy with Iran after four tense years under the outgoing president.

"Some say you are overexcited by the advent of Mr. Biden. No, we are not, but we are very happy to see Trump leave," he said in televised comments at a cabinet meeting.

"Thank God, these are his final days," Rouhani added, calling Trump a "tyrant", "the most unruly, lawless president" and a "terrorist and murderer."

The electoral college confirmed Biden as the next US president on Monday even as the incumbent continues to refuse to accept defeat.

The formal handover of power will take place on January 20 when Biden is sworn in.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington soared during Trump's presidency as his administration sought to bring Israel and the Gulf Arab states closer together with a hard line against Iran.

In 2018, Trump pulled Washington out of a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran and reimposed punishing unilateral sanctions.

This January, Trump ordered an air strike near Baghdad airport which killed senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and drew retaliatory Iranian strikes targeting US troops in Iraq.&nbsp;

Trump "creates obstacles for us purchasing (Covid-19) vaccines, (that is) how much this person is bereft of all ethical and human principles," Rouhani said.

Iran is the Middle Eastern country hardest-hit by the coronavirus pandemic with 52,670 deaths from more than 1.1 million cases, according to official figures.

Vaccines and other humanitarian goods are supposed to be exempt from US sanctions but in practice few if any banks are willing to risk processing Iranian transactions for fear of incurring heavy penalties in the US courts.&nbsp;

Since Biden's victory, Rouhani's government has repeatedly signalled its openness to the incoming US administration, although Iran's supreme leader has cautioned against hopes of an opening with the West.

Rouhani said the outcome of the US election showed the American people's desire for a "law-abiding" president and called on the Biden administration to live up to the expectation.

"If it wants to be on the correct path, it's there, and if it wants the wrong one, it's also there," he said.

President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that Iran was "very happy" over the looming departure from office of US counterpart Donald Trump, who led a campaign of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic republic.

President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that Iran was "very happy" over the looming departure from office of US counterpart Donald Trump, who led a campaign of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic republic. President-elect Joe Biden, who defeated Trump at the ballot box in November, has signalled a willingness to return to diplomacy with Iran after four tense years under the outgoing president. "Some say you are overexcited by the advent of Mr. Biden. No, we are not, but we are very happy to see Trump leave," he said in televised comments at a cabinet meeting. "Thank God, these are his final days," Rouhani added, calling Trump a "tyrant", "the most unruly, lawless president" and a "terrorist and murderer." The electoral college confirmed Biden as the next US president on Monday even as the incumbent continues to refuse to accept defeat. The formal handover of power will take place on January 20 when Biden is sworn in. Tensions between Tehran and Washington soared during Trump's presidency as his administration sought to bring Israel and the Gulf Arab states closer together with a hard line against Iran. In 2018, Trump pulled Washington out of a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran and reimposed punishing unilateral sanctions. This January, Trump ordered an air strike near Baghdad airport which killed senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and drew retaliatory Iranian strikes targeting US troops in Iraq. Trump "creates obstacles for us purchasing (Covid-19) vaccines, (that is) how much this person is bereft of all ethical and human principles," Rouhani said. Iran is the Middle Eastern country hardest-hit by the coronavirus pandemic with 52,670 deaths from more than 1.1 million cases, according to official figures. Vaccines and other humanitarian goods are supposed to be exempt from US sanctions but in practice few if any banks are willing to risk processing Iranian transactions for fear of incurring heavy penalties in the US courts. Since Biden's victory, Rouhani's government has repeatedly signalled its openness to the incoming US administration, although Iran's supreme leader has cautioned against hopes of an opening with the West. Rouhani said the outcome of the US election showed the American people's desire for a "law-abiding" president and called on the Biden administration to live up to the expectation. "If it wants to be on the correct path, it's there, and if it wants the wrong one, it's also there," he said.

Iran's Rouhani says he is happy that 'lawless terrorist' Trump is leaving office

Donald Trump's legal campaign to subvert the election is nearly over, with the victory of Joe Biden announced by the Electoral College of the United States.

United States: Top republicans recognise Joe Biden's victory

The electoral college has confirmed Joe Biden's victory in state by state voting in the United States. This has now closed all doors on Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the result the 2020 US Presidential election.

US Election 2020: Joe Biden wins by getting 306 electoral college votes

US Election 2020: Electoral college formalises Joe Biden's victory

'Will &amp;Grace' star Debra Messing's recent tweet on US President Donald Trump has been met with strong criticism.&nbsp; 
 
Messing, who has been a vocal support of the Democrats during the US Presidential elections, raised eyebrows last week when she tweeted attacking Trump. Messing's tweet strongly suggested that she hoped Trump is sexually assaulted in prison after he leaves office.&nbsp; 
 
"@realDonaldTrump you are a weak, scared, stupid, inept, negligent, vindictive, narcissistic, criminal," Messing wrote. "I hope you live a long life in prison where you become the most popular boyfriend to ... all inmates," Messing tweeted which has now been deleted.&nbsp; 
Her tweet was called out as many felt it was homophobic in nature.&nbsp; 
 
Messing on Monday tweeted again to clear the air and pointed out that she has been an ally of the LGBTQ community. 
 
"Let me be clear: I said nothing about LGBTQI/queer LOVE," Messing responded. "Rape is an act of violence. Trump has perpetrated violence on hundreds of millions of people. My hope is (and this is the first time in my life) that the tables are turned and he is the victim of perpetrators. #LGBTQIAally" Messing tweeted. 
 
While Messing tried to explain herself, it still did not sit well with many on Twitter. 
 
"So, to be 'clear,' she's not using a somewhat flippant prison-boyfriend expression to indicate her disdain for the president, she literally wants him to be raped! Well, ok, that clears things up," wrote a journalist.&nbsp; 
 
"this is DISGUSTING. might be the most heinous thing i've seen on twitter. prison rape is a huge problem, not an issue to be taken lightly or wished upon a political enemy," wrote another user. 
 
"There are so many actors, actress, musicians, etc. that I used to like and would continue to like had they never signed up for Twitter. Perhaps not all thoughts need to be blasted out to millions," Manhattan Institute senior fellow Brian Riedl wrote. &nbsp;

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
her clarification: "let me be clear, I hope Trump is raped in prison" 
 
this is DISGUSTING. might be the most heinous thing i've seen on twitter. prison rape is a huge problem, not an issue to be taken lightly or wished upon a political enemy <a href="https://t.co/18i0qZXE9H">https://t.co/18i0qZXE9H</a>
— Jessica O’Donnell (@heckyessica) <a href="https://twitter.com/heckyessica/status/1338592774933843968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Without question one of the most vile people on this site <a href="https://t.co/qsIMFPHHst">https://t.co/qsIMFPHHst</a>
— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) <a href="https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1338605229961596931?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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So, to be "clear," she's not using a somewhat flippant prison-boyfriend expression to indicate her disdain for the president, she literally wants him to be raped! Well, ok, that clears things up. <a href="https://t.co/Hj7p54krA5">https://t.co/Hj7p54krA5</a>
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerylBier/status/1338591115449147394?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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So, to be "clear," she's not using a somewhat flippant prison-boyfriend expression to indicate her disdain for the president, she literally wants him to be raped! Well, ok, that clears things up. <a href="https://t.co/Hj7p54krA5">https://t.co/Hj7p54krA5</a>
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerylBier/status/1338591115449147394?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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In the past few months, Messing has used Twitter to campaign for Biden-Harris team and used Twitter to spread awareness about the importance of voting.&nbsp;

'Will &Grace' star Debra Messing's recent tweet on US President Donald Trump has been met with strong criticism. Messing, who has been a vocal support of the Democrats during the US Presidential elections, raised eyebrows last week when she tweeted attacking Trump.

'Will &Grace' star Debra Messing's recent tweet on US President Donald Trump has been met with strong criticism. Messing, who has been a vocal support of the Democrats during the US Presidential elections, raised eyebrows last week when she tweeted attacking Trump. Messing's tweet strongly suggested that she hoped Trump is sexually assaulted in prison after he leaves office. "@realDonaldTrump you are a weak, scared, stupid, inept, negligent, vindictive, narcissistic, criminal," Messing wrote. "I hope you live a long life in prison where you become the most popular boyfriend to ... all inmates," Messing tweeted which has now been deleted. Her tweet was called out as many felt it was homophobic in nature. Messing on Monday tweeted again to clear the air and pointed out that she has been an ally of the LGBTQ community. "Let me be clear: I said nothing about LGBTQI/queer LOVE," Messing responded. "Rape is an act of violence. Trump has perpetrated violence on hundreds of millions of people. My hope is (and this is the first time in my life) that the tables are turned and he is the victim of perpetrators. #LGBTQIAally" Messing tweeted. While Messing tried to explain herself, it still did not sit well with many on Twitter. "So, to be 'clear,' she's not using a somewhat flippant prison-boyfriend expression to indicate her disdain for the president, she literally wants him to be raped! Well, ok, that clears things up," wrote a journalist. "this is DISGUSTING. might be the most heinous thing i've seen on twitter. prison rape is a huge problem, not an issue to be taken lightly or wished upon a political enemy," wrote another user. "There are so many actors, actress, musicians, etc. that I used to like and would continue to like had they never signed up for Twitter. Perhaps not all thoughts need to be blasted out to millions," Manhattan Institute senior fellow Brian Riedl wrote. her clarification: "let me be clear, I hope Trump is raped in prison" this is DISGUSTING. might be the most heinous thing i've seen on twitter. prison rape is a huge problem, not an issue to be taken lightly or wished upon a political enemy https://t.co/18i0qZXE9H — Jessica O’Donnell (@heckyessica) December 14, 2020 × Without question one of the most vile people on this site https://t.co/qsIMFPHHst — Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) December 14, 2020 × So, to be "clear," she's not using a somewhat flippant prison-boyfriend expression to indicate her disdain for the president, she literally wants him to be raped! Well, ok, that clears things up. https://t.co/Hj7p54krA5 — Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) December 14, 2020 × So, to be "clear," she's not using a somewhat flippant prison-boyfriend expression to indicate her disdain for the president, she literally wants him to be raped! Well, ok, that clears things up. https://t.co/Hj7p54krA5 — Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) December 14, 2020 × In the past few months, Messing has used Twitter to campaign for Biden-Harris team and used Twitter to spread awareness about the importance of voting.

Debra Messing faces criticism for suggesting Trump should be raped in prison

US&nbsp;Attorney General William Barr will step down next week, he said on Monday, shortly after the Electoral College confirmed President Donald Trump`s loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. 
 
Barr, who had angered Trump by not supporting his incorrect claims that the Nov. 3 election result had been tainted by widespread fraud, said he would leave office on Dec. 23, a little less than a month before Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20. 
 
Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen will take over as acting attorney general after Barr`s departure, Trump said. 
 
"Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!" Trump said of Barr on Twitter. 
 
A White House official told Reuters that Barr resigned on his own accord. 
 
Trump lashed out at Barr on Twitter over the weekend after the Wall Street Journal reported that Barr knew earlier this year about an investigation into Biden`s son Hunter`s taxes. 
 
Trump retweeted a comment from radio host Todd Starnes saying Barr should be fired for not disclosing the probe during the campaign. "A big disappointment!" Trump said in his tweet. 
 
Barr`s fate in the waning days of the Trump administration had been in question since he said earlier this month that a Justice Department investigation had found no sign of major fraud in the election, contradicting Trump`s claims. 
 
Trump`s legal team accused Barr of failing to conduct a proper inquiry into the allegations. 
 
Barr`s resignation letter was released shortly after he briefed the president about the Justice Department`s review into the Trump campaign`s voter fraud claims. In it, Barr pledged the allegations "would continue to be pursued." 
 
The White House official said Barr`s meeting with Trump was amicable. 
 
In the letter, Barr also praised what he called Trump`s historic record, saying he had helped boost the economy, strengthen the military and curb illegal immigration. 
 
"I am proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people," Barr wrote. 
 
Biden beat Trump by 306 to 232 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College that chooses the president, as well as by more than 7 million ballots in the popular vote. 
 
Despite that, Trump has refused to concede and continues to promote his baseless voting fraud allegations, which have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal officials. 
 
Trump has pursued a series of legal challenges in numerous states, but he has not managed to prevail in any of them. 
 
Last week, the US&nbsp;Supreme Court rejected a long-shot lawsuit by Texas that was backed by Trump and a number of other states seeking to throw out voting results in four states, dealing what is seen as the fatal blow in his quest to undo his election loss. 
 
CORE TRUMP SUPPORTER 
 
Barr has long been a staunch Trump ally, drawing scorn from Democrats and many of the department`s own career prosecutors who have accused him of putting Trump`s personal interests ahead of those of the country. 
 
"William Barr was willing to do the President’s bidding on every front but one. Barr refused to play along with President Trump’s nonsensical claims to have won the election," Democratic House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement. 
 
"Whomever Joe Biden chooses as the new Attorney General will have a tremendous amount of work to do to repair the integrity of the Department of Justice," Nadler added. 
 
Prior to the 2020 election, Barr repeated Trump`s unfounded claims that mail-in ballots could be subject to fraud, and he also intervened in several high-profile criminal cases in ways that benefited Trump`s political allies such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. 
 
In May 2019, Barr tapped federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials for possible crimes in connection with their early stage probe into whether Trump`s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government. 
 
On Dec. 1, Barr disclosed he had elevated Durham to the role of special counsel in October so that he could continue his criminal investigation - a move that will make it politically difficult for Biden to remove him from the post until the probe has concluded. 
 
Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor who is now executive director for the progressive advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said on Monday that Barr "has done tremendous damage to the Department of Justice and to the American people`s very faith in our justice system. 
 
"It is beyond ironic that Barr seems to have been pushed out for not going quite far enough to abuse his position for Trump`s benefit, however unconscionably far he did go," Bookbinder`s statement said. "The reason may be ridiculous, but good riddance.”

US Attorney General William Barr will step down next week, he said on Monday, shortly after the Electoral College confirmed President Donald Trump`s loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden.

US Attorney General William Barr will step down next week, he said on Monday, shortly after the Electoral College confirmed President Donald Trump`s loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. Barr, who had angered Trump by not supporting his incorrect claims that the Nov. 3 election result had been tainted by widespread fraud, said he would leave office on Dec. 23, a little less than a month before Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20. Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen will take over as acting attorney general after Barr`s departure, Trump said. "Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!" Trump said of Barr on Twitter. A White House official told Reuters that Barr resigned on his own accord. Trump lashed out at Barr on Twitter over the weekend after the Wall Street Journal reported that Barr knew earlier this year about an investigation into Biden`s son Hunter`s taxes. Trump retweeted a comment from radio host Todd Starnes saying Barr should be fired for not disclosing the probe during the campaign. "A big disappointment!" Trump said in his tweet. Barr`s fate in the waning days of the Trump administration had been in question since he said earlier this month that a Justice Department investigation had found no sign of major fraud in the election, contradicting Trump`s claims. Trump`s legal team accused Barr of failing to conduct a proper inquiry into the allegations. Barr`s resignation letter was released shortly after he briefed the president about the Justice Department`s review into the Trump campaign`s voter fraud claims. In it, Barr pledged the allegations "would continue to be pursued." The White House official said Barr`s meeting with Trump was amicable. In the letter, Barr also praised what he called Trump`s historic record, saying he had helped boost the economy, strengthen the military and curb illegal immigration. "I am proud to have played a role in the many successes and unprecedented achievements you have delivered for the American people," Barr wrote. Biden beat Trump by 306 to 232 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College that chooses the president, as well as by more than 7 million ballots in the popular vote. Despite that, Trump has refused to concede and continues to promote his baseless voting fraud allegations, which have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal officials. Trump has pursued a series of legal challenges in numerous states, but he has not managed to prevail in any of them. Last week, the US Supreme Court rejected a long-shot lawsuit by Texas that was backed by Trump and a number of other states seeking to throw out voting results in four states, dealing what is seen as the fatal blow in his quest to undo his election loss. CORE TRUMP SUPPORTER Barr has long been a staunch Trump ally, drawing scorn from Democrats and many of the department`s own career prosecutors who have accused him of putting Trump`s personal interests ahead of those of the country. "William Barr was willing to do the President’s bidding on every front but one. Barr refused to play along with President Trump’s nonsensical claims to have won the election," Democratic House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement. "Whomever Joe Biden chooses as the new Attorney General will have a tremendous amount of work to do to repair the integrity of the Department of Justice," Nadler added. Prior to the 2020 election, Barr repeated Trump`s unfounded claims that mail-in ballots could be subject to fraud, and he also intervened in several high-profile criminal cases in ways that benefited Trump`s political allies such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. In May 2019, Barr tapped federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials for possible crimes in connection with their early stage probe into whether Trump`s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government. On Dec. 1, Barr disclosed he had elevated Durham to the role of special counsel in October so that he could continue his criminal investigation - a move that will make it politically difficult for Biden to remove him from the post until the probe has concluded. Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor who is now executive director for the progressive advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said on Monday that Barr "has done tremendous damage to the Department of Justice and to the American people`s very faith in our justice system. "It is beyond ironic that Barr seems to have been pushed out for not going quite far enough to abuse his position for Trump`s benefit, however unconscionably far he did go," Bookbinder`s statement said. "The reason may be ridiculous, but good riddance.”

US Attorney General Barr steps down as Trump election defeat confirmed

President-elect Joe Biden tore into Donald Trump on Monday with his strongest criticism since the election, saying the Republican and his allies defied the constitution and the "will of the people" in not accepting the results.

"It's a position so extreme we've never seen it before. A position that refused to respect the will of the people refused to respect the rule of law, and refused to honour our constitution," Biden said in a speech after the Electoral College formally confirmed his victory.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/trump-vows-to-reject-defense-bill-passed-by-veto-proof-majority-349569" hreflang="en">Trump vows to reject defense bill passed by veto-proof majority</a>

Biden was referring to a Republican lawsuit, supported by Trump, that sought to overturn Biden's wins in several key states, but which was rejected by the Supreme Court last Friday.

Biden praised voters for turning out in record numbers despite fears of Covid-19 and "enormous political pressure, verbal abuse and even threats of physical violence" against those running the elections.

Also read|<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/misogynistic-op-ed-urging-incoming-first-lady-jill-biden-to-drop-dr-stirs-a-furore-on-social-media-349673">&nbsp;'Misogynistic' op-ed urging incoming First Lady Jill Biden to drop 'Dr.' stirs a furore on social media</a>

"The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that," Biden said.

"It is my sincere hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse we saw in this election," Biden said, calling the harassment of officials "unconscionable."

Biden said that Trump has had full opportunity to contest the results in court and "in every case no cause or evidence was found to reverse or question or dispute."

Biden lashed out at the Republican Party for standing behind Trump's evidence-free claims of mass fraud. But he said the Supreme Court last week sent "a clear signal."

Following the Electoral College vote, Biden said, "It’s time to turn the page."

"I'm convinced we can work together for the good of the nation," he said.

President-elect Joe Biden tore into Donald Trump on Monday with his strongest criticism since the election, saying the Republican and his allies defied the constitution and the "will of the people" in not accepting the results.

President-elect Joe Biden tore into Donald Trump on Monday with his strongest criticism since the election, saying the Republican and his allies defied the constitution and the "will of the people" in not accepting the results. "It's a position so extreme we've never seen it before. A position that refused to respect the will of the people refused to respect the rule of law, and refused to honour our constitution," Biden said in a speech after the Electoral College formally confirmed his victory. Also read: Trump vows to reject defense bill passed by veto-proof majority Biden was referring to a Republican lawsuit, supported by Trump, that sought to overturn Biden's wins in several key states, but which was rejected by the Supreme Court last Friday. Biden praised voters for turning out in record numbers despite fears of Covid-19 and "enormous political pressure, verbal abuse and even threats of physical violence" against those running the elections. Also read| 'Misogynistic' op-ed urging incoming First Lady Jill Biden to drop 'Dr.' stirs a furore on social media "The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that," Biden said. "It is my sincere hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse we saw in this election," Biden said, calling the harassment of officials "unconscionable." Biden said that Trump has had full opportunity to contest the results in court and "in every case no cause or evidence was found to reverse or question or dispute." Biden lashed out at the Republican Party for standing behind Trump's evidence-free claims of mass fraud. But he said the Supreme Court last week sent "a clear signal." Following the Electoral College vote, Biden said, "It’s time to turn the page." "I'm convinced we can work together for the good of the nation," he said.

Donald Trump ‘refused to respect the will of the people’, says Joe Biden 

You could say that the Donald Trump presidency effectively ended when the polls closed election night or when news outlets called the contest for Joe Biden four days later. You could say that it ended when the Electoral College voted Monday to make Biden the president, or that it will end when Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.

But by one measure, the Trump presidency ended in mid-November, when online conservatives went bonkers over a picture of Harry Styles in a dress.

The photo of the British singer on the cover of the December Vogue prompted YouTube personality Candace Owens to tweet, “Bring back manly men.” To Ben Shapiro, the photo shoot was an assault on the concept of manhood itself: “Anyone who pretends that it is not a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses is treating you as a full-on idiot.”

What does all this have to do with the president’s impending exit? First, it suggests that other conservatives are retaking the role of Troll-Warrior-in-Chief that Trump conferred on himself.

But it’s also a reminder that the kind of button-pushing cultural politics that predated him — that in many ways helped make a President Trump possible — will survive his tenure.

‘Duck Dynasty’ Politics

A million years ago in the Obama era, proxy wars over culture were handled on the periphery of conservatism, in social media and right-wing talk. It was the era of the Gamergate attacks on feminists in the video gaming community, of umbrage over the foreign-language lyrics of a Coca-Cola commercial and over a female-cast reboot of “Ghostbusters.”

With the election of Trump, a pop-culture figure himself who intuited the connection between cultural fandom and political tribalism (he himself made a “Ghostbusters” outrage video the year he announced his campaign), the political and culture-war wings of conservatism merged.

For four years, we had a president whose portfolio of concerns included protests at NFL games, speeches at TV awards ceremonies, the loyalty of Fox News and the reboot of “Roseanne.” He scoured and fretted over Nielsen ratings — his own and those of shows he saw as allies and enemies — with the intensity a wartime president might devote to troop movements.

Now, with a waning Trump self-soothing with OANN and Newsmax and tweeting out the elaborate sci-fi serial that the election was stolen from him, command of that battle is returning from the White House to the field.

For decades, the expression of politics through culture war has been a staple of conservative media. Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing online publisher, declared that “politics is downstream from culture” (borrowing an idea from Marxist theorists like Antonio Gramsci). Fox News made an annual production of the “war on Christmas” (with occasional spinoffs like “Santa Claus and Jesus are white”).

The appeal was emotional; people have a personal connection to family holidays and their favorite shows that they don’t to, say, marginal tax-rate policy. But it was also a way to appeal to a specific audience in a country where, increasingly, people had not just different political beliefs but entirely different cultural experiences.

As far back as the early 1970s, the “rural purge” in TV — which eliminated bucolic sitcoms like “Green Acres” to make room for urban ones like “All in the Family” — reinforced the idea that there were different Americas with different, and even competing, popular cultures. This dynamic only spread with cable TV and the internet, which sliced and diced us into a nation of niche demos, sharing a geography but occupying different psychic spaces.

As historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer write in “Fault Lines,” their study of American polarization since the 1970s, all this led to “a world with fewer points of commonality in terms of what people heard or saw.” This was true in politics and in entertainment, and the two often overlapped.

There was now identifiable red and blue pop culture. A 2016 New York Times study found a TV divide that mirrored the rural-urban split in the election. “Deadliest Catch,” the reality show about Alaskan crab fishing, was popular in red America; in blue zones, “Orange Is the New Black,” the Netflix drama and critique of the prison system.

A 2014 poll found that 53% of Democrats, compared with 15% of Republicans, believed “Twelve Years a Slave” should win the best-picture Oscar. Neither party had taken a position on the movie; the culture war was just well-enough ingrained that people could intuit where their side would land, just as the Iraq War movie “American Sniper” became a conservative favorite and liberal target.

Knowingly or not, audience members enlisted in the culture war as volunteers. For conservatives in particular, the liberal tilt of Hollywood was a useful font of grievance, allowing them to claim cultural victimhood no matter how much political and judicial power they held.

And people increasingly saw their favorite stars as their proxies and champions. When Phil Robertson, the bayou patriarch of “Duck Dynasty,” was briefly suspended from the reality show in 2013 for homophobic and racist comments, one America saw it as political correctness taking down a beloved star for speaking his mind. Another America — if they had ever heard of “Duck Dynasty” at all — saw a bigot getting what he had coming to him.

The Culture-Troll-in-Chief

All of this, in retrospect, was an advance trailer for the it-came-from-“The Apprentice” Trump era.

Politicians, especially on the right, have dabbled in culture war before: George H.W. Bush vs. “The Simpsons,” Dan Quayle vs. “Murphy Brown,” Bob Dole vs. rap. But their forays tended to be awkward, tone-deaf and often as not, self-defeating.

But Trump, a child of TV who made himself into a TV character as an adult, understood media instinctively. It was where he lived, ever since he gave up his youthful fantasies of running a movie studio, vowed to “put show business into real estate” and forged his tabloid persona in the 1980s.

Having used media to build a reality-show career and a business-success myth, having experienced the rush of prime-time celebrity, he knew that culture makes the kind of gut connection that mere politicians can only dream of. Ordinary politics argues: Those other people don’t believe what you believe. Culture-war politics argues: Those other people don’t love what you love.

So Trump’s campaign, as much as it was about wall-building or Islamophobia or “law and order,” was also about a promise to defend and uphold his followers’ culture over the enemy’s. His rallies combined a concert vibe with the theatrics of pro wrestling (another genre Trump had experience with).

To an audience that had been told for years that showbiz celebrities disdained their values, here was one of&nbsp;their&nbsp;celebrities, a&nbsp;real&nbsp;celebrity from TV, taking their side. An alt-rightist essay on Breitbart.com hailed the erstwhile NBC host as “the first truly cultural candidate for president” since Patrick J. Buchanan, the CNN “Crossfire” co-host who declared a “cultural war” for “the soul of America” at the 1992 Republican National Convention.

Trump’s 2016 RNC didn’t have a lot of high-profile politicians, but it did have a “Duck Dynasty” star. As president, he gloried in inviting conservative celebrities like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent (who once called President Barack Obama a “subhuman mongrel”), as well as the newly conservative-curious Kanye West, to take photos in the Oval Office.

The pictures felt like spoils of war, a political end-zone dance. And his fiercest celebrity critics often played into his me-vs.-Hollywood narrative, cursing him out at the Tony Awards or feuding with him on Twitter.

He praised Western culture as superior because “we write symphonies,” tooting a white-nationalist dog whistle from the orchestra pit. And he threw himself wholeheartedly into fights like the one over ABC’s reboot of “Roseanne,” whose star, Roseanne Barr, had become a real-life, vituperative Twitter Trumpist, and which worked her politics into the storylines.

He didn’t, like previous presidents attending the Kennedy Center honors or sharing a something-for-everyone Spotify playlist, see culture as a way to find common ground. He saw it as a battleground with winners and losers, and one full of opportunities to inflame divisions.

When the “Roseanne” premiere dominated the ratings, he crowed about it as his team trouncing the enemy. “It’s about us!” he told a crowd of supporters.

Later, when ABC fired Barr from the show over a racist tweet, Trump joined the argument, not to condemn Barr’s remarks but to accuse the network of hypocrisy because of “HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC.” It echoed his Twitter attack on the network in 2014 when it picked up the sitcom “black-ish”: “Can you imagine the furor of a show, ‘Whiteish’! Racism at highest level?”

His bellyaching against Hollywood wasn’t just a bread-and-circuses distraction. It was political messaging. Pushing back on Barr’s firing — for likening a Black former Obama aide to an ape — echoed the right’s fixation on “cancel culture.” The message: Your stars are being canceled. Your shows are being canceled.&nbsp;You&nbsp;are being canceled. Only I am the network executive who can ensure your renewal.

His fixation on ratings (dating back to “The Apprentice,” whose ratings he routinely lied about) vibed with his worldview of competition and scorekeeping. Fights about representation, American identity and the boundaries of acceptable speech aligned with messages expressed, in more blunt and ugly ways, by Trump’s campaign and supporters — especially the insidious language of “replacement.”

“Now they’re making ‘Ghostbusters’ with only women. What’s going on!” was a way of telling men that he would protect them from becoming superfluous. “We can say ‘Merry Christmas’ again” was a way of saying: Your culture used to be the assumed default in America, and I’m going to bring that back. The enemy wants to demote you to a supporting player; I’m going to make you the star again.

The Tug-of-Culture-War Goes On

Much of this, of course, was a reaction to the expansion of the American story implied by the election of America’s first Black president and by the representative pop culture of Obama’s era, like “black-ish” and “Hamilton.” Often, there’s a sense (at least in retrospect) of a new cultural era beginning with a new presidential administration: JFK, the New Frontier and youth culture; Reagan, “Family Ties” and “greed is good.”

Though the Biden administration has yet to begin, it doesn’t feel like that kind of definitive shift at the moment, so much as the flag moving to the other side of the centerline in a continuing tug of war. Things may get quieter on the surface; Biden is neither as big a pop-culture guy nor as zealous a culture warrior as the president he’s replacing.

But as every tempest over a Vogue cover proves, the fight goes on. The divides are too deep, the incentives for widening them too great. Whether Trump continues to have a major part in this after he leaves office, or whether his ratings ragetweets simply echo in some musty corner of the internet, the ongoing narrative he has left us with will continue.

The secret of a long-running show, after all, is that it can survive a cast change.

You could say that the Donald Trump presidency effectively ended when the polls closed election night or when news outlets called the contest for Joe Biden four days later.

You could say that the Donald Trump presidency effectively ended when the polls closed election night or when news outlets called the contest for Joe Biden four days later. You could say that it ended when the Electoral College voted Monday to make Biden the president, or that it will end when Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20. But by one measure, the Trump presidency ended in mid-November, when online conservatives went bonkers over a picture of Harry Styles in a dress. The photo of the British singer on the cover of the December Vogue prompted YouTube personality Candace Owens to tweet, “Bring back manly men.” To Ben Shapiro, the photo shoot was an assault on the concept of manhood itself: “Anyone who pretends that it is not a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses is treating you as a full-on idiot.” What does all this have to do with the president’s impending exit? First, it suggests that other conservatives are retaking the role of Troll-Warrior-in-Chief that Trump conferred on himself. But it’s also a reminder that the kind of button-pushing cultural politics that predated him — that in many ways helped make a President Trump possible — will survive his tenure. ‘Duck Dynasty’ Politics A million years ago in the Obama era, proxy wars over culture were handled on the periphery of conservatism, in social media and right-wing talk. It was the era of the Gamergate attacks on feminists in the video gaming community, of umbrage over the foreign-language lyrics of a Coca-Cola commercial and over a female-cast reboot of “Ghostbusters.” With the election of Trump, a pop-culture figure himself who intuited the connection between cultural fandom and political tribalism (he himself made a “Ghostbusters” outrage video the year he announced his campaign), the political and culture-war wings of conservatism merged. For four years, we had a president whose portfolio of concerns included protests at NFL games, speeches at TV awards ceremonies, the loyalty of Fox News and the reboot of “Roseanne.” He scoured and fretted over Nielsen ratings — his own and those of shows he saw as allies and enemies — with the intensity a wartime president might devote to troop movements. Now, with a waning Trump self-soothing with OANN and Newsmax and tweeting out the elaborate sci-fi serial that the election was stolen from him, command of that battle is returning from the White House to the field. For decades, the expression of politics through culture war has been a staple of conservative media. Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing online publisher, declared that “politics is downstream from culture” (borrowing an idea from Marxist theorists like Antonio Gramsci). Fox News made an annual production of the “war on Christmas” (with occasional spinoffs like “Santa Claus and Jesus are white”). The appeal was emotional; people have a personal connection to family holidays and their favorite shows that they don’t to, say, marginal tax-rate policy. But it was also a way to appeal to a specific audience in a country where, increasingly, people had not just different political beliefs but entirely different cultural experiences. As far back as the early 1970s, the “rural purge” in TV — which eliminated bucolic sitcoms like “Green Acres” to make room for urban ones like “All in the Family” — reinforced the idea that there were different Americas with different, and even competing, popular cultures. This dynamic only spread with cable TV and the internet, which sliced and diced us into a nation of niche demos, sharing a geography but occupying different psychic spaces. As historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer write in “Fault Lines,” their study of American polarization since the 1970s, all this led to “a world with fewer points of commonality in terms of what people heard or saw.” This was true in politics and in entertainment, and the two often overlapped. There was now identifiable red and blue pop culture. A 2016 New York Times study found a TV divide that mirrored the rural-urban split in the election. “Deadliest Catch,” the reality show about Alaskan crab fishing, was popular in red America; in blue zones, “Orange Is the New Black,” the Netflix drama and critique of the prison system. A 2014 poll found that 53% of Democrats, compared with 15% of Republicans, believed “Twelve Years a Slave” should win the best-picture Oscar. Neither party had taken a position on the movie; the culture war was just well-enough ingrained that people could intuit where their side would land, just as the Iraq War movie “American Sniper” became a conservative favorite and liberal target. Knowingly or not, audience members enlisted in the culture war as volunteers. For conservatives in particular, the liberal tilt of Hollywood was a useful font of grievance, allowing them to claim cultural victimhood no matter how much political and judicial power they held. And people increasingly saw their favorite stars as their proxies and champions. When Phil Robertson, the bayou patriarch of “Duck Dynasty,” was briefly suspended from the reality show in 2013 for homophobic and racist comments, one America saw it as political correctness taking down a beloved star for speaking his mind. Another America — if they had ever heard of “Duck Dynasty” at all — saw a bigot getting what he had coming to him. The Culture-Troll-in-Chief All of this, in retrospect, was an advance trailer for the it-came-from-“The Apprentice” Trump era. Politicians, especially on the right, have dabbled in culture war before: George H.W. Bush vs. “The Simpsons,” Dan Quayle vs. “Murphy Brown,” Bob Dole vs. rap. But their forays tended to be awkward, tone-deaf and often as not, self-defeating. But Trump, a child of TV who made himself into a TV character as an adult, understood media instinctively. It was where he lived, ever since he gave up his youthful fantasies of running a movie studio, vowed to “put show business into real estate” and forged his tabloid persona in the 1980s. Having used media to build a reality-show career and a business-success myth, having experienced the rush of prime-time celebrity, he knew that culture makes the kind of gut connection that mere politicians can only dream of. Ordinary politics argues: Those other people don’t believe what you believe. Culture-war politics argues: Those other people don’t love what you love. So Trump’s campaign, as much as it was about wall-building or Islamophobia or “law and order,” was also about a promise to defend and uphold his followers’ culture over the enemy’s. His rallies combined a concert vibe with the theatrics of pro wrestling (another genre Trump had experience with). To an audience that had been told for years that showbiz celebrities disdained their values, here was one of their celebrities, a real celebrity from TV, taking their side. An alt-rightist essay on Breitbart.com hailed the erstwhile NBC host as “the first truly cultural candidate for president” since Patrick J. Buchanan, the CNN “Crossfire” co-host who declared a “cultural war” for “the soul of America” at the 1992 Republican National Convention. Trump’s 2016 RNC didn’t have a lot of high-profile politicians, but it did have a “Duck Dynasty” star. As president, he gloried in inviting conservative celebrities like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent (who once called President Barack Obama a “subhuman mongrel”), as well as the newly conservative-curious Kanye West, to take photos in the Oval Office. The pictures felt like spoils of war, a political end-zone dance. And his fiercest celebrity critics often played into his me-vs.-Hollywood narrative, cursing him out at the Tony Awards or feuding with him on Twitter. He praised Western culture as superior because “we write symphonies,” tooting a white-nationalist dog whistle from the orchestra pit. And he threw himself wholeheartedly into fights like the one over ABC’s reboot of “Roseanne,” whose star, Roseanne Barr, had become a real-life, vituperative Twitter Trumpist, and which worked her politics into the storylines. He didn’t, like previous presidents attending the Kennedy Center honors or sharing a something-for-everyone Spotify playlist, see culture as a way to find common ground. He saw it as a battleground with winners and losers, and one full of opportunities to inflame divisions. When the “Roseanne” premiere dominated the ratings, he crowed about it as his team trouncing the enemy. “It’s about us!” he told a crowd of supporters. Later, when ABC fired Barr from the show over a racist tweet, Trump joined the argument, not to condemn Barr’s remarks but to accuse the network of hypocrisy because of “HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC.” It echoed his Twitter attack on the network in 2014 when it picked up the sitcom “black-ish”: “Can you imagine the furor of a show, ‘Whiteish’! Racism at highest level?” His bellyaching against Hollywood wasn’t just a bread-and-circuses distraction. It was political messaging. Pushing back on Barr’s firing — for likening a Black former Obama aide to an ape — echoed the right’s fixation on “cancel culture.” The message: Your stars are being canceled. Your shows are being canceled. You are being canceled. Only I am the network executive who can ensure your renewal. His fixation on ratings (dating back to “The Apprentice,” whose ratings he routinely lied about) vibed with his worldview of competition and scorekeeping. Fights about representation, American identity and the boundaries of acceptable speech aligned with messages expressed, in more blunt and ugly ways, by Trump’s campaign and supporters — especially the insidious language of “replacement.” “Now they’re making ‘Ghostbusters’ with only women. What’s going on!” was a way of telling men that he would protect them from becoming superfluous. “We can say ‘Merry Christmas’ again” was a way of saying: Your culture used to be the assumed default in America, and I’m going to bring that back. The enemy wants to demote you to a supporting player; I’m going to make you the star again. The Tug-of-Culture-War Goes On Much of this, of course, was a reaction to the expansion of the American story implied by the election of America’s first Black president and by the representative pop culture of Obama’s era, like “black-ish” and “Hamilton.” Often, there’s a sense (at least in retrospect) of a new cultural era beginning with a new presidential administration: JFK, the New Frontier and youth culture; Reagan, “Family Ties” and “greed is good.” Though the Biden administration has yet to begin, it doesn’t feel like that kind of definitive shift at the moment, so much as the flag moving to the other side of the centerline in a continuing tug of war. Things may get quieter on the surface; Biden is neither as big a pop-culture guy nor as zealous a culture warrior as the president he’s replacing. But as every tempest over a Vogue cover proves, the fight goes on. The divides are too deep, the incentives for widening them too great. Whether Trump continues to have a major part in this after he leaves office, or whether his ratings ragetweets simply echo in some musty corner of the internet, the ongoing narrative he has left us with will continue. The secret of a long-running show, after all, is that it can survive a cast change.

Donald Trump lost his battle. The culture war goes on.

President Donald Trump said Sunday night that he would delay a plan for senior White House staff members to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the coming days, hours after The New York Times reported that the administration was planning to rapidly distribute the vaccine to its staff at a time when the first doses are generally being reserved for high-risk health care workers.

Trump, who tested positive for the coronavirus in October and recovered after being hospitalized, also implied that he would get the vaccine himself at some point in the future, but said he had no immediate plans to do so.

“People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary,” Trump tweeted, hours after a National Security Council spokesperson had defended the plan. “I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time. Thank you!”

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-pence-among-top-us-officials-to-be-offered-covid-19-vaccine-on-priority-report-349600">Trump, Pence among top US officials to be offered COVID-19 vaccine on priority</a>

It was not immediately clear why the president decided to change the policy, or whether he had even been aware of it ahead of time. But White House staff members who work in close quarters with him had been told that they were scheduled to receive injections of the coronavirus vaccine soon, two people familiar with the distribution plans said.

The goal of distributing the vaccine in the West Wing was to prevent additional government officials from falling ill in the final weeks of the Trump administration. The hope was to eventually distribute the vaccine to everyone who works in the White House, one of the people said.

It was not clear how many doses were being allocated to the White House or how many were needed, since many staff members had already tested positive for the virus and recovered. While many Trump officials said they were eager to receive the vaccine and would take it if it were offered, others said they were concerned it would send the wrong message by making it appear as if Trump staff members were hopping the line to protect a president who has already recovered from the virus and bragged that he is now “immune.”

The first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine left a facility in Michigan early Sunday, with UPS and FedEx teaming up to ship doses to all 50 states for distribution.

“Senior officials across all three branches of government will receive vaccinations pursuant to continuity of government protocols established in executive policy,” John Ullyot, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, had said in a statement earlier Sunday, defending the planned vaccinations. “The American people should have confidence that they are receiving the same safe and effective vaccine as senior officials of the United States government.”

The picture was murky on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have struggled for months to balance the need to carry on with legislative business despite fluctuating numbers of coronavirus cases in its own ranks. A congressional aide said Sunday evening that leaders on Capitol Hill had not yet been told how many doses would initially be available for lawmakers. Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician of Congress, has overseen the coronavirus response inside the Capitol complex, but he has yet to make public any plans for vaccine distribution there.

A spokesperson for President-elect Joe Biden declined to say whether Biden or incoming officials would receive early doses of the vaccine. But the president-elect said in a recent CNN interview that he would take the vaccine to serve as an example once Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said it was safe. “It’s important to communicate to the American people it’s safe; it’s safe to do this,” Biden said.

After months during which Trump and his senior advisers played down the virus, hosting campaign rallies and holiday parties where face masks were encouraged but never required, the news of White House officials suddenly taking the virus seriously enough to claim early doses of a vaccine was greeted by outrage from Democrats as well as the president’s longtime critics.

George T. Conway III, a prominent conservative lawyer and a vocal critic of Trump, noted that because the vaccine required a second dose 21 to 28 days after the first injection, there was little public benefit for White House staff members to receive them. The president has only 37 days left in office.

“If they were truly interested in protecting staffers,” Conway wrote on Twitter, “they would have been better off not holding super spreader events.”

Tim Hogan, a Democratic consultant and a former top aide to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s presidential campaign, said that Washington “will not come close to covering every health care worker with its first allotment of the vaccine, but a White House that downplayed the virus and held a half-year nationwide superspreader tour gets to cut the line.”

He called the White House vaccinations “a final middle finger to the nurses and doctors on the front lines from the Trump administration.”

A senior administration official said that vaccinating officials was necessary for “providing visible leadership to the nation and the world, and maintaining the trust and confidence of the American people.” The official added that vaccinating West Wing officials would help to “continue essential operations, without interruption” to help continue to fight the pandemic nationwide.

There have been multiple outbreaks of the coronavirus at the White House in recent months. Trump, the first lady and a half-dozen advisers tested positive at the end of September and in early October. Fauci later called a Rose Garden ceremony to announce Trump’s choice of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court a “superspreader event.”

A few weeks later, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and a group of other Pence staff members and advisers tested positive.

And a third wave hit the West Wing after the president’s election night party at the White House, where supporters gathered indoors and did not wear masks. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, got sick around that time, as did a number of other Trump advisers.

Most recently, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani tested positive, along with Jenna Ellis, another lawyer on the president’s legal team.

President Donald Trump said Sunday night that he would delay a plan for senior White House staff members to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the coming days, hours after The New York Times reported that the administration was planning to rapidly distribute the vaccine to its staff at a time when the first doses are generally being reserved for high-risk health care workers.

President Donald Trump said Sunday night that he would delay a plan for senior White House staff members to receive the coronavirus vaccine in the coming days, hours after The New York Times reported that the administration was planning to rapidly distribute the vaccine to its staff at a time when the first doses are generally being reserved for high-risk health care workers. Trump, who tested positive for the coronavirus in October and recovered after being hospitalized, also implied that he would get the vaccine himself at some point in the future, but said he had no immediate plans to do so. “People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the program, unless specifically necessary,” Trump tweeted, hours after a National Security Council spokesperson had defended the plan. “I have asked that this adjustment be made. I am not scheduled to take the vaccine, but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time. Thank you!” Also read: Trump, Pence among top US officials to be offered COVID-19 vaccine on priority It was not immediately clear why the president decided to change the policy, or whether he had even been aware of it ahead of time. But White House staff members who work in close quarters with him had been told that they were scheduled to receive injections of the coronavirus vaccine soon, two people familiar with the distribution plans said. The goal of distributing the vaccine in the West Wing was to prevent additional government officials from falling ill in the final weeks of the Trump administration. The hope was to eventually distribute the vaccine to everyone who works in the White House, one of the people said. It was not clear how many doses were being allocated to the White House or how many were needed, since many staff members had already tested positive for the virus and recovered. While many Trump officials said they were eager to receive the vaccine and would take it if it were offered, others said they were concerned it would send the wrong message by making it appear as if Trump staff members were hopping the line to protect a president who has already recovered from the virus and bragged that he is now “immune.” The first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine left a facility in Michigan early Sunday, with UPS and FedEx teaming up to ship doses to all 50 states for distribution. “Senior officials across all three branches of government will receive vaccinations pursuant to continuity of government protocols established in executive policy,” John Ullyot, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, had said in a statement earlier Sunday, defending the planned vaccinations. “The American people should have confidence that they are receiving the same safe and effective vaccine as senior officials of the United States government.” The picture was murky on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have struggled for months to balance the need to carry on with legislative business despite fluctuating numbers of coronavirus cases in its own ranks. A congressional aide said Sunday evening that leaders on Capitol Hill had not yet been told how many doses would initially be available for lawmakers. Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician of Congress, has overseen the coronavirus response inside the Capitol complex, but he has yet to make public any plans for vaccine distribution there. A spokesperson for President-elect Joe Biden declined to say whether Biden or incoming officials would receive early doses of the vaccine. But the president-elect said in a recent CNN interview that he would take the vaccine to serve as an example once Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said it was safe. “It’s important to communicate to the American people it’s safe; it’s safe to do this,” Biden said. After months during which Trump and his senior advisers played down the virus, hosting campaign rallies and holiday parties where face masks were encouraged but never required, the news of White House officials suddenly taking the virus seriously enough to claim early doses of a vaccine was greeted by outrage from Democrats as well as the president’s longtime critics. George T. Conway III, a prominent conservative lawyer and a vocal critic of Trump, noted that because the vaccine required a second dose 21 to 28 days after the first injection, there was little public benefit for White House staff members to receive them. The president has only 37 days left in office. “If they were truly interested in protecting staffers,” Conway wrote on Twitter, “they would have been better off not holding super spreader events.” Tim Hogan, a Democratic consultant and a former top aide to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s presidential campaign, said that Washington “will not come close to covering every health care worker with its first allotment of the vaccine, but a White House that downplayed the virus and held a half-year nationwide superspreader tour gets to cut the line.” He called the White House vaccinations “a final middle finger to the nurses and doctors on the front lines from the Trump administration.” A senior administration official said that vaccinating officials was necessary for “providing visible leadership to the nation and the world, and maintaining the trust and confidence of the American people.” The official added that vaccinating West Wing officials would help to “continue essential operations, without interruption” to help continue to fight the pandemic nationwide. There have been multiple outbreaks of the coronavirus at the White House in recent months. Trump, the first lady and a half-dozen advisers tested positive at the end of September and in early October. Fauci later called a Rose Garden ceremony to announce Trump’s choice of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court a “superspreader event.” A few weeks later, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and a group of other Pence staff members and advisers tested positive. And a third wave hit the West Wing after the president’s election night party at the White House, where supporters gathered indoors and did not wear masks. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, got sick around that time, as did a number of other Trump advisers. Most recently, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani tested positive, along with Jenna Ellis, another lawyer on the president’s legal team.

Trump rescinds plan for White House staff to be quickly vaccinated

Joe Biden's march to the White House -- overshadowed by President Donald Trump's frantic attempts to overturn the US election -- is to be formalized Monday when the Electoral College meets to confirm the Democrat's win.

Electors in all 50 states were meeting to cast their votes in a tradition that has long been considered mostly a formality for confirming the will of the people expressed at the polls.

But this year the somewhat arcane procedure is at the center of an unprecedented -- and many warn dangerous -- challenge to the credibility of US democracy led by Trump.

Also read|<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-pence-among-top-us-officials-to-be-offered-covid-19-vaccine-on-priority-report-349600">&nbsp;Trump, Pence among top US officials to be offered COVID-19 vaccine on priority: Report</a>

Soundly beaten by Biden on November 3, Trump continues to claim, without evidence, that he was the real winner. Court after court has turned down his team's claims of election fraud around the country and last Friday the Supreme Court dealt a final legal blow when it threw out an appeal lodged by Trump allies from Texas and other Republican-led states.

Based on the already legally certified state-by-state vote tallies, the Electoral College representatives are expected to vote by 306 to 232 in favor of Biden over Trump -- a process expected to take much of Monday.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/trump-vows-to-reject-defense-bill-passed-by-veto-proof-majority-349569" hreflang="en">Trump vows to reject defense bill passed by veto-proof majority</a>

This will draw a thick line under a contest that saw Biden make Trump a rare one-term president after campaigning on a message of vanquishing the Covid-19 pandemic, healing bitter political division and restoring traditional US diplomacy on the world stage.

Biden, who has largely avoided responding to Trump's conspiracy theories, announced he would deliver an address in the evening dedicated to "the strength and resilience" of US democracy.

Disinformation

Until now, a majority of Republicans in Congress have either backed Trump's claims or at least turned a blind eye, with many refusing to call Biden the president-elect.

Also read|<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/misogynistic-op-ed-urging-incoming-first-lady-jill-biden-to-drop-dr-stirs-a-furore-on-social-media-349673">&nbsp;'Misogynistic' op-ed urging incoming First Lady Jill Biden to drop 'Dr.' stirs a furore on social media</a>

Disinformation spearheaded by the president and spread by popular commentators on Fox News and new conspiracy theory-mongering outlets like Newsmax means that many Americans have all but given up faith in their own institutions.

Polls show that as few as one in four Republican voters accept the election results.

Thousands of Trump supporters, including members of far-right groups, protested in Washington at the weekend, fighting with counter-protesters. The threat of violence required that extraordinary security measures be established for the Electoral College meetings in several states, including Arizona and Michigan, The New York Times reported.

Also read|&nbsp;Trump rescinds plan for White House staff to be quickly vaccinated

Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, a senior Trump advisor, told Fox News on Monday that an "alternate slate of electors" had been created to send its own results to Congress.

"We have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election," Miller said, without explaining the idea of a shadow Electoral College.

Trump was also still at it on Monday, tweeting more accusations with no basis in reality.

"Swing States that have found massive VOTER FRAUD, which is all of them, CANNOT LEGALLY CERTIFY these votes as complete &amp; correct without committing a severely punishable crime," he said.

The legal Electoral College vote, however, will leave the Trump train almost no place left to go.

Only one big formality remains before Biden's inauguration on January 20, when Congress, presided over by Vice President Mike Pence, opens up and counts the electoral votes on January 6.

Despite rumblings that Trump allies may seek to turn this largely ceremonial event into another battlefront against the election results, it seems clear that support for continued theatrics is steadily ebbing.

In the latest sign of a shifting tide, the staunchly Trump-supporting editorial board of The Wall Street Journal told Trump on Monday that his time is up.

"President Trump's legal challenges have run their course, and he and the rest of the Republican Party can help the country and themselves by acknowledging the result and moving on," the editorial said.

No one expects Trump to refuse to leave the White House. However, there is no indication he will ever agree to concede, let alone bow to tradition by inviting Biden to the White House for a friendly chat.

Asked on Fox News this weekend whether he would even attend Biden's inauguration, Trump answered: "I don't want to talk about that."

Joe Biden's march to the White House -- overshadowed by President Donald Trump's frantic attempts to overturn the US election -- is to be formalized Monday when the Electoral College meets to confirm the Democrat's win.

Joe Biden's march to the White House -- overshadowed by President Donald Trump's frantic attempts to overturn the US election -- is to be formalized Monday when the Electoral College meets to confirm the Democrat's win. Electors in all 50 states were meeting to cast their votes in a tradition that has long been considered mostly a formality for confirming the will of the people expressed at the polls. But this year the somewhat arcane procedure is at the center of an unprecedented -- and many warn dangerous -- challenge to the credibility of US democracy led by Trump. Also read| Trump, Pence among top US officials to be offered COVID-19 vaccine on priority: Report Soundly beaten by Biden on November 3, Trump continues to claim, without evidence, that he was the real winner. Court after court has turned down his team's claims of election fraud around the country and last Friday the Supreme Court dealt a final legal blow when it threw out an appeal lodged by Trump allies from Texas and other Republican-led states. Based on the already legally certified state-by-state vote tallies, the Electoral College representatives are expected to vote by 306 to 232 in favor of Biden over Trump -- a process expected to take much of Monday. Also read: Trump vows to reject defense bill passed by veto-proof majority This will draw a thick line under a contest that saw Biden make Trump a rare one-term president after campaigning on a message of vanquishing the Covid-19 pandemic, healing bitter political division and restoring traditional US diplomacy on the world stage. Biden, who has largely avoided responding to Trump's conspiracy theories, announced he would deliver an address in the evening dedicated to "the strength and resilience" of US democracy. Disinformation Until now, a majority of Republicans in Congress have either backed Trump's claims or at least turned a blind eye, with many refusing to call Biden the president-elect. Also read| 'Misogynistic' op-ed urging incoming First Lady Jill Biden to drop 'Dr.' stirs a furore on social media Disinformation spearheaded by the president and spread by popular commentators on Fox News and new conspiracy theory-mongering outlets like Newsmax means that many Americans have all but given up faith in their own institutions. Polls show that as few as one in four Republican voters accept the election results. Thousands of Trump supporters, including members of far-right groups, protested in Washington at the weekend, fighting with counter-protesters. The threat of violence required that extraordinary security measures be established for the Electoral College meetings in several states, including Arizona and Michigan, The New York Times reported. Also read| Trump rescinds plan for White House staff to be quickly vaccinated Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, a senior Trump advisor, told Fox News on Monday that an "alternate slate of electors" had been created to send its own results to Congress. "We have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election," Miller said, without explaining the idea of a shadow Electoral College. Trump was also still at it on Monday, tweeting more accusations with no basis in reality. "Swing States that have found massive VOTER FRAUD, which is all of them, CANNOT LEGALLY CERTIFY these votes as complete & correct without committing a severely punishable crime," he said. The legal Electoral College vote, however, will leave the Trump train almost no place left to go. Only one big formality remains before Biden's inauguration on January 20, when Congress, presided over by Vice President Mike Pence, opens up and counts the electoral votes on January 6. Despite rumblings that Trump allies may seek to turn this largely ceremonial event into another battlefront against the election results, it seems clear that support for continued theatrics is steadily ebbing. In the latest sign of a shifting tide, the staunchly Trump-supporting editorial board of The Wall Street Journal told Trump on Monday that his time is up. "President Trump's legal challenges have run their course, and he and the rest of the Republican Party can help the country and themselves by acknowledging the result and moving on," the editorial said. No one expects Trump to refuse to leave the White House. However, there is no indication he will ever agree to concede, let alone bow to tradition by inviting Biden to the White House for a friendly chat. Asked on Fox News this weekend whether he would even attend Biden's inauguration, Trump answered: "I don't want to talk about that."

US Electoral College to formalize Joe Biden's win

While drafting the constitution, America's founders struggled with how the new nation should choose its leader and ultimately created the electoral college system.

WION Fineprint: What happens when the U.S. electoral college meets?

US President Donald Trump on Monday announced that his country has inoculated the first person&nbsp;with Pfizer's <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/coronavirus-vaccine">coronavirus vaccine</a>, marking a pivotal turn in its&nbsp;effort to control the deadly virus.

Trump took to Twitter and tweeted: ''First vaccine administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations world!''

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First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1338490171801661441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Trump's tweet came minutes after Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York, an early epicenter of the country's COVID-19 outbreak, receiving applause on a live stream with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

"It didn't feel any different from taking any other vaccine," Lindsay said. "I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe."

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-to-distribute-40-million-vaccine-doses-by-2020-end-349713/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The coronavirus vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner&nbsp;BioNTech, won emergency-use approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95 per cent&nbsp;effective in preventing illness in a large clinical trial.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, watching the landmark moment via video-link, told Lindsay he hoped the vaccine would give her and other frontline health care workers "a sense of security and safety."

"It's going to take months before the vaccine hits critical mass. So, this is the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a long tunnel," he said, reminding people to keep following social distancing guidelines.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-pence-among-top-us-officials-to-be-offered-covid-19-vaccine-on-priority-report-349600" hreflang="en">Trump, Pence among top US officials to be offered COVID-19 vaccine on priority: Report</a>

The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infections.

As of Monday, the United States had registered 16,286,343 cases and 299,489 deaths from the virus.

Hospitals in Texas, Utah and Minnesota said they also anticipated receiving their first doses of the vaccine at select hospitals on Monday, to be administered right away.

COVID-19 has ravaged the United States. More than 299,000 Americans have been killed by the virus, including over 35,000 residents of New York state.

Logistical challenge

The first US&nbsp;shipments of coronavirus vaccine departed from Pfizer's facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday, packed into trucks with dry-ice to maintain the necessary sub-Arctic temperatures, and then were transported to UPS and FedEx planes waiting at air fields in Lansing and Grand Rapids, kicking off a national immunization endeavor of unprecedented complexity.

<img alt="COVID" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="f8e34e6c-e0e0-4207-b57b-5249daeebf08" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Untitled%20design%20%2837%29_9.jpg" />

In picture:&nbsp;Boxes containing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine are unloaded from air shipping containers at UPS Worldport, in Louisville, Kentucky/Reuters

The jets delivered the shipments to UPS and FedEx cargo hubs in Louisville and Memphis, respectively, from where they were loaded onto planes and trucks to be distributed to the first 145 of 636 vaccine-staging areas across the country. Second and third waves of vaccine shipments were due to go out to the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"This is the most difficult vaccine rollout in history. There will be hiccups undoubtedly but we've done everything from a federal level and working with partners to make it go as smoothly as possible. Please be patient with us," Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday, adding that he would get the shot as soon as he can.

The logistical effort is further complicated by the need to transport and store the Pfizer/BioNTech&nbsp;vaccine at minus 70 Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), requiring enormous quantities of dry ice or specialized ultra-cold freezers.

Workers clapped and whistled as the first boxes were loaded onto trucks at the Pfizer factory on Sunday.

"We know we're all suffering, our families are suffering. We're going into the Christmas holiday with shutdowns and people are going to be very impacted by this pandemic. We know how much people are hurting," UPS Healthcare President Wes Wheeler said on Sunday from the company’s command center in Louisville, Kentucky

Healthcare workers and elderly residents of long-term care homes will be first in line to get the inoculations of a two-dose regimen given about three weeks apart.

US President Donald Trump on Monday announced that his country has inoculated the first person with Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine, marking a pivotal turn in its effort to control the deadly virus.

US President Donald Trump on Monday announced that his country has inoculated the first person with Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine, marking a pivotal turn in its effort to control the deadly virus. Trump took to Twitter and tweeted: ''First vaccine administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations world!'' First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2020 × Trump's tweet came minutes after Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse, was given the vaccine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York, an early epicenter of the country's COVID-19 outbreak, receiving applause on a live stream with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. "It didn't feel any different from taking any other vaccine," Lindsay said. "I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history. I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe." The coronavirus vaccine, developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, won emergency-use approval from federal regulators on Friday after it was found to be 95 per cent effective in preventing illness in a large clinical trial. Governor Andrew Cuomo, watching the landmark moment via video-link, told Lindsay he hoped the vaccine would give her and other frontline health care workers "a sense of security and safety." "It's going to take months before the vaccine hits critical mass. So, this is the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a long tunnel," he said, reminding people to keep following social distancing guidelines. Also read: Trump, Pence among top US officials to be offered COVID-19 vaccine on priority: Report The first 2.9 million doses began to be shipped to distribution centers around the country on Sunday, just 11 months after the United States documented its first COVID-19 infections. As of Monday, the United States had registered 16,286,343 cases and 299,489 deaths from the virus. Hospitals in Texas, Utah and Minnesota said they also anticipated receiving their first doses of the vaccine at select hospitals on Monday, to be administered right away. COVID-19 has ravaged the United States. More than 299,000 Americans have been killed by the virus, including over 35,000 residents of New York state. Logistical challenge The first US shipments of coronavirus vaccine departed from Pfizer's facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Sunday, packed into trucks with dry-ice to maintain the necessary sub-Arctic temperatures, and then were transported to UPS and FedEx planes waiting at air fields in Lansing and Grand Rapids, kicking off a national immunization endeavor of unprecedented complexity. In picture: Boxes containing Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine are unloaded from air shipping containers at UPS Worldport, in Louisville, Kentucky/Reuters The jets delivered the shipments to UPS and FedEx cargo hubs in Louisville and Memphis, respectively, from where they were loaded onto planes and trucks to be distributed to the first 145 of 636 vaccine-staging areas across the country. Second and third waves of vaccine shipments were due to go out to the remaining sites on Tuesday and Wednesday. "This is the most difficult vaccine rollout in history. There will be hiccups undoubtedly but we've done everything from a federal level and working with partners to make it go as smoothly as possible. Please be patient with us," Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday, adding that he would get the shot as soon as he can. The logistical effort is further complicated by the need to transport and store the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at minus 70 Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), requiring enormous quantities of dry ice or specialized ultra-cold freezers. Workers clapped and whistled as the first boxes were loaded onto trucks at the Pfizer factory on Sunday. "We know we're all suffering, our families are suffering. We're going into the Christmas holiday with shutdowns and people are going to be very impacted by this pandemic. We know how much people are hurting," UPS Healthcare President Wes Wheeler said on Sunday from the company’s command center in Louisville, Kentucky Healthcare workers and elderly residents of long-term care homes will be first in line to get the inoculations of a two-dose regimen given about three weeks apart.

US administers first coronavirus vaccine; Donald Trump congratulates Americans

Morocco on Thursday became the fourth Arab state this year, after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, to announce it had agreed to normalise relations with Israel.

WION Dispatch: US adopts map of Morocco that includes disputed Western Sahara

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that President Donald Trump's administration, in a&nbsp;"fundamental change", has removed Sudan from the List of state sponsors of terrorism, a move that could help the African country get international loans to revive its battered economy and end its pariah status.&nbsp;

"Sudan's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is officially rescinded.&nbsp;This represents a fundamental change in our bilateral relationship toward greater collaboration and support for Sudan's historic democratic transition," Pompeo said in a <a href="https://www.state.gov/sudans-state-sponsor-of-terrorism-designation-rescinded/">statement</a>.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/sudan-to-normalise-relations-with-israel-trump-announces-337538">Sudan to normalise relations with Israel, Trump announces</a>

Sudan has had the designation since 1993, on the grounds that ousted President Omar al-Bashir briefly hosted al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted militants. Sudan was also believed to have served as a pipeline for Iran to supply weapons to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The move comes after a 45-day Congressional review period following Trump's announcement of his intention to remove Sudan from the list, which was swiftly followed by the announcement that Israel and Sudan intend to normalise relations.

Delisting Sudan is also a key incentive for the government in Khartoum to normalise relations with Israel.

The two countries have agreed to have full diplomatic ties, making Sudan the third Arab state&nbsp;after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain&nbsp;to move to normalize relations with Israel this year. After Sudan, Morocco also established diplomatic ties with Israel.

Sudan is on a fragile transition to democracy following an uprising that led to the military's ouster of former autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

The county is now ruled by a joint military and civilian government that seeks better ties with Washington and the West.

In October, Trump announced that he would remove Sudan from the list if it follows through on its pledge to pay $335 million to American terror victims and their families.

Sudan has agreed to pay compensation for victims of the 1998 bombings of the US&nbsp;Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks carried out by al-Qaida while bin Laden was living in Sudan.

According to the October announcement, once the compensation money was deposited, Trump was to sign an order removing Sudan from the terrorism list on which it has languished under heavy American sanctions for 27 years.

Since Trump's announcement, the Sudanese government also inked an agreement with the US&nbsp;That could effectively stop any future compensation claims being filed against the African country in US&nbsp;Courts.

That deal restores in US&nbsp;Courts what is known as sovereign immunity to the Sudanese government. It would however enter into force after U.S. Congress passes legislation needed to implement the agreement. Khartoum has said the $335 million in compensation money would be held in an escrow account until then.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that President Donald Trump's administration, in a "fundamental change", has removed Sudan from the List of state sponsors of terrorism, a move that could help the African country get international loans to revive its battered economy and end its pariah status.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that President Donald Trump's administration, in a "fundamental change", has removed Sudan from the List of state sponsors of terrorism, a move that could help the African country get international loans to revive its battered economy and end its pariah status. "Sudan's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is officially rescinded. This represents a fundamental change in our bilateral relationship toward greater collaboration and support for Sudan's historic democratic transition," Pompeo said in a statement. Also read: Sudan to normalise relations with Israel, Trump announces Sudan has had the designation since 1993, on the grounds that ousted President Omar al-Bashir briefly hosted al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted militants. Sudan was also believed to have served as a pipeline for Iran to supply weapons to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. The move comes after a 45-day Congressional review period following Trump's announcement of his intention to remove Sudan from the list, which was swiftly followed by the announcement that Israel and Sudan intend to normalise relations. Delisting Sudan is also a key incentive for the government in Khartoum to normalise relations with Israel. The two countries have agreed to have full diplomatic ties, making Sudan the third Arab state after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to move to normalize relations with Israel this year. After Sudan, Morocco also established diplomatic ties with Israel. Sudan is on a fragile transition to democracy following an uprising that led to the military's ouster of former autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. The county is now ruled by a joint military and civilian government that seeks better ties with Washington and the West. In October, Trump announced that he would remove Sudan from the list if it follows through on its pledge to pay $335 million to American terror victims and their families. Sudan has agreed to pay compensation for victims of the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks carried out by al-Qaida while bin Laden was living in Sudan. According to the October announcement, once the compensation money was deposited, Trump was to sign an order removing Sudan from the terrorism list on which it has languished under heavy American sanctions for 27 years. Since Trump's announcement, the Sudanese government also inked an agreement with the US That could effectively stop any future compensation claims being filed against the African country in US Courts. That deal restores in US Courts what is known as sovereign immunity to the Sudanese government. It would however enter into force after U.S. Congress passes legislation needed to implement the agreement. Khartoum has said the $335 million in compensation money would be held in an escrow account until then.

'Fundamental change': Mike Pompeo says Sudan no longer on list of terror sponsors

Twitter Inc had "inadvertently" limited engagements for a brief period on US President Donald Trump's tweets with "disputed" labels but later reversed its action.

Some users on the social media platform had noticed earlier on Saturday that the ability to like, re-tweet or reply to Trump's tweets with a "disputed" label was not working.

To this end, a Twitter spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement on Saturday: "We inadvertently took action to limit engagements on the labeled Tweet you referenced. This action has been reversed."

The development was earlier reported by The Verge and The Hill.

Twitter has recently added multiple warnings and labels to tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account of the president, including many that have made unfounded allegations of voting fraud in the US elections.

Trump also made such tweets on Saturday, including one in which he falsely claimed that he won the election in a "landslide" in "legal votes". Twitter flagged them with a label saying: "This claim about election fraud is disputed".

The social media platform first hid one of his tweets behind a "public interest" label in May when the president violated the company's policy against glorifying violence.

Trump will be subject to the same Twitter rules as any other user when President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, the social media company said last month.

Twitter places "public interest" notices on some rule-breaking tweets from "world leaders" that would otherwise be removed.

(with inputs)

Twitter Inc had "inadvertently" limited engagements for a brief period on US President Donald Trump's tweets with "disputed" labels but later reversed its action.

Twitter Inc had "inadvertently" limited engagements for a brief period on US President Donald Trump's tweets with "disputed" labels but later reversed its action. Some users on the social media platform had noticed earlier on Saturday that the ability to like, re-tweet or reply to Trump's tweets with a "disputed" label was not working. To this end, a Twitter spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement on Saturday: "We inadvertently took action to limit engagements on the labeled Tweet you referenced. This action has been reversed." The development was earlier reported by The Verge and The Hill. Twitter has recently added multiple warnings and labels to tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account of the president, including many that have made unfounded allegations of voting fraud in the US elections. Trump also made such tweets on Saturday, including one in which he falsely claimed that he won the election in a "landslide" in "legal votes". Twitter flagged them with a label saying: "This claim about election fraud is disputed". The social media platform first hid one of his tweets behind a "public interest" label in May when the president violated the company's policy against glorifying violence. Trump will be subject to the same Twitter rules as any other user when President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, the social media company said last month. Twitter places "public interest" notices on some rule-breaking tweets from "world leaders" that would otherwise be removed. (with inputs)

Twitter says it inadvertently limited engagements on Trump's flagged tweets

The Supreme Court repudiation of President Donald Trump’s desperate bid for a second term not only shredded his effort to overturn the will of voters: It also was a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders in Congress and the states that were willing to damage American democracy by embracing a partisan power grab over a free and fair election.

The court’s decision on Friday night, an inflection point after weeks of legal flailing by Trump and ahead of the Electoral College vote for President-elect Joe Biden on Monday, leaves the president’s party in an extraordinary position. Through their explicit endorsements or complicity of silence, much of the GOP leadership now shares responsibility for the quixotic attempt to ignore the nation’s founding principles and engineer a different verdict from the one voters cast in November.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-supreme-court-dismisses-trumps-bid-to-overturn-election-result-349183" hreflang="en">US Supreme Court dismisses Trump's bid to overturn election result</a>

Many regular Republicans supported this effort, too — a sign that Trump has not just bent the party to his will, but pressed a mainstay of American politics for nearly two centuries into the service of overturning an election outcome and assaulting public faith in the electoral system. The GOP sought to undo the vote by such spurious means that the Supreme Court quickly rejected the argument.

Even some Republican leaders delivered a withering assessment of the 126 GOP House members and 18 attorneys general who chose to side with Trump over the democratic process, by backing a lawsuit that asked the Supreme Court to throw out some 20 million votes in four key states that cemented the president’s loss.

“The act itself by the 126 members of the United States House of Representatives, is an affront to the country,” said Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “It’s an offense to the Constitution and it leaves an indelible stain that will be hard for these 126 members to wipe off their political skin for a long time to come.”

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/five-reasons-why-donald-trump-should-not-be-considered-as-a-useless-president-349181" hreflang="en">Five reasons why Donald Trump should not be considered as a useless president</a>

Speaking on CNN on Friday, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican, said, “What happened with the Supreme Court, that’s kind of it, where they’ve kind of exhausted all the legal challenges; we’ve got to move on.” It was time, he said, for Congress to “actually do something for the American people, surrounding the vaccines, surrounding COVID.”

With direct buy-in from senior officials like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the president’s effort required the party to promote false theory upon unsubstantiated claim upon outright lie about unproved, widespread fraud — in an election that Republican and Democratic election officials agreed was notably smooth given the challenges of the pandemic.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-17-states-back-texas-bid-to-overturn-us-election-result-at-supreme-court-348692" hreflang="en">Trump, 17 states back Texas bid to overturn US election result at Supreme Court</a>

And it meant that Republican leaders now stand for a new notion: that the final decisions of voters can be challenged without a basis in fact if the results are not to the liking of the losing side, running counter to decades of work by the United States to convince developing nations that peaceful transfers of power are key to any freely elected government’s credibility.

“From a global perspective this certainly looks like many of the cases we’ve seen around the world where an incumbent tries to hold onto power," said Michael Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy abroad with support from both parties.

Following the court decision, one of the 126 House Republicans who backed the lawsuit, Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, said that the court’s decision meant the end of Trump’s efforts and “closed the books on challenges to the 2020 election results.”

Democrats took heart in the court’s decision in the case filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas, one of several dozen that judges have soundly rejected on legal or factual bases, even if more lawsuits are certain to come ahead of Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

“Our democracy has withstood Donald Trump for four years,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees election law. “It can withstand these baseless lawsuits for four more weeks.”

But civil rights attorneys saw the potential for long-lasting damage outside of the legal realm where the Republican efforts — and the lie that Biden’s win was the result of widespread fraud — have so definitively failed.

Republican state legislators across the country are already contemplating new laws to make voting harder, as they continue to falsely portray the expansion and ease of mail-in voting during the pandemic as nefarious. Many of them view this year’s expanded voting ranks as bad for their party, despite Republican successes further down the ballot. Their consideration of new voting restrictions amounts to an ongoing attack on the integrity of the voting system, involving still more false and debunked claims.

“There is an anti-democratic virus that has spread in mainstream Republicanism, among mainstream Republican elected officials,” said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU. “And that loss of faith in the machinery of democracy is a much bigger problem than any individual lawsuit.”

Indeed, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Texas Republican Party effectively called for secession by red states whose attorneys general joined in the Texas suit.

“Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution,” a statement from its chairman, Allen West, read. It followed an observation Rush Limbaugh made earlier in the week, when he said, “I actually think that we’re trending toward secession.”

The talk of secession came during a week in which election officials across the country, from both political parties, said they had become the subjects of menacing threats of violence, including to family members, for standing by Biden’s victory.

A website of unknown provenance that caught the attention of law enforcement appeared to promote a hit list of mostly Republican officials who had resisted Trump’s demands to overturn an election he lost, listing their personal information and imposing red cross hairs over their pictures.

Trump made it clear that the Supreme Court decision would not slow a post-campaign campaign, the futility of which has dampened neither its ferocity nor its pertinacity. On Twitter, Trump on Saturday called it a “disgraceful miscarriage of justice” and wrote “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!”

Hours before the court made its decision public the Trump campaign released two ads repeating debunked allegations, indicating it would continue to pressure elected Republican officials to somehow reverse Trump’s political fate. “Demand an honest election and an honest count, contact your legislators today,” one ad exhorted. (The campaign claimed that the ads would begin airing on cable television on Saturday morning, but at least one ad tracking firm said they had not seen any reservations made as of Friday night.)

The Supreme Court repudiation of President Donald Trump’s desperate bid for a second term not only shredded his effort to overturn the will of voters: It also was a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders in Congress and the states that were willing to damage American democracy by embracing a partisan power grab over a free and fair election.

The Supreme Court repudiation of President Donald Trump’s desperate bid for a second term not only shredded his effort to overturn the will of voters: It also was a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders in Congress and the states that were willing to damage American democracy by embracing a partisan power grab over a free and fair election. The court’s decision on Friday night, an inflection point after weeks of legal flailing by Trump and ahead of the Electoral College vote for President-elect Joe Biden on Monday, leaves the president’s party in an extraordinary position. Through their explicit endorsements or complicity of silence, much of the GOP leadership now shares responsibility for the quixotic attempt to ignore the nation’s founding principles and engineer a different verdict from the one voters cast in November. Also read| US Supreme Court dismisses Trump's bid to overturn election result Many regular Republicans supported this effort, too — a sign that Trump has not just bent the party to his will, but pressed a mainstay of American politics for nearly two centuries into the service of overturning an election outcome and assaulting public faith in the electoral system. The GOP sought to undo the vote by such spurious means that the Supreme Court quickly rejected the argument. Even some Republican leaders delivered a withering assessment of the 126 GOP House members and 18 attorneys general who chose to side with Trump over the democratic process, by backing a lawsuit that asked the Supreme Court to throw out some 20 million votes in four key states that cemented the president’s loss. “The act itself by the 126 members of the United States House of Representatives, is an affront to the country,” said Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “It’s an offense to the Constitution and it leaves an indelible stain that will be hard for these 126 members to wipe off their political skin for a long time to come.” Also read| Five reasons why Donald Trump should not be considered as a useless president Speaking on CNN on Friday, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican, said, “What happened with the Supreme Court, that’s kind of it, where they’ve kind of exhausted all the legal challenges; we’ve got to move on.” It was time, he said, for Congress to “actually do something for the American people, surrounding the vaccines, surrounding COVID.” With direct buy-in from senior officials like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the president’s effort required the party to promote false theory upon unsubstantiated claim upon outright lie about unproved, widespread fraud — in an election that Republican and Democratic election officials agreed was notably smooth given the challenges of the pandemic. Also read| Trump, 17 states back Texas bid to overturn US election result at Supreme Court And it meant that Republican leaders now stand for a new notion: that the final decisions of voters can be challenged without a basis in fact if the results are not to the liking of the losing side, running counter to decades of work by the United States to convince developing nations that peaceful transfers of power are key to any freely elected government’s credibility. “From a global perspective this certainly looks like many of the cases we’ve seen around the world where an incumbent tries to hold onto power," said Michael Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, a Washington-based group that promotes democracy abroad with support from both parties. Following the court decision, one of the 126 House Republicans who backed the lawsuit, Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, said that the court’s decision meant the end of Trump’s efforts and “closed the books on challenges to the 2020 election results.” Democrats took heart in the court’s decision in the case filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas, one of several dozen that judges have soundly rejected on legal or factual bases, even if more lawsuits are certain to come ahead of Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. “Our democracy has withstood Donald Trump for four years,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees election law. “It can withstand these baseless lawsuits for four more weeks.” But civil rights attorneys saw the potential for long-lasting damage outside of the legal realm where the Republican efforts — and the lie that Biden’s win was the result of widespread fraud — have so definitively failed. Republican state legislators across the country are already contemplating new laws to make voting harder, as they continue to falsely portray the expansion and ease of mail-in voting during the pandemic as nefarious. Many of them view this year’s expanded voting ranks as bad for their party, despite Republican successes further down the ballot. Their consideration of new voting restrictions amounts to an ongoing attack on the integrity of the voting system, involving still more false and debunked claims. “There is an anti-democratic virus that has spread in mainstream Republicanism, among mainstream Republican elected officials,” said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU. “And that loss of faith in the machinery of democracy is a much bigger problem than any individual lawsuit.” Indeed, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Texas Republican Party effectively called for secession by red states whose attorneys general joined in the Texas suit. “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution,” a statement from its chairman, Allen West, read. It followed an observation Rush Limbaugh made earlier in the week, when he said, “I actually think that we’re trending toward secession.” The talk of secession came during a week in which election officials across the country, from both political parties, said they had become the subjects of menacing threats of violence, including to family members, for standing by Biden’s victory. A website of unknown provenance that caught the attention of law enforcement appeared to promote a hit list of mostly Republican officials who had resisted Trump’s demands to overturn an election he lost, listing their personal information and imposing red cross hairs over their pictures. Trump made it clear that the Supreme Court decision would not slow a post-campaign campaign, the futility of which has dampened neither its ferocity nor its pertinacity. On Twitter, Trump on Saturday called it a “disgraceful miscarriage of justice” and wrote “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” Hours before the court made its decision public the Trump campaign released two ads repeating debunked allegations, indicating it would continue to pressure elected Republican officials to somehow reverse Trump’s political fate. “Demand an honest election and an honest count, contact your legislators today,” one ad exhorted. (The campaign claimed that the ads would begin airing on cable television on Saturday morning, but at least one ad tracking firm said they had not seen any reservations made as of Friday night.)

‘An indelible stain’: How the GOP tried to topple a pillar of democracy

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> on Sunday repeated his pledge to veto a sweeping defense budget bill, which US lawmakers passed by margins that would allow them to override the president's rejection.

With just weeks remaining in the White House, Trump has criticized the $740.5 billion measure in part because it does not abolish a law granting social media firms liability protection for third-party content on their platforms.

Trump has said social media giants like Facebook and Google are biased against him.

He has also voiced disapproval of the bill's language calling for renaming US military bases that honor commanders from the pro-slavery South in the Civil War.

In a short, all-caps Twitter message, Trump said, "The biggest winner of our new defense bill is China. I will veto!"

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
THE BIGGEST WINNER OF OUR NEW DEFENSE BILL IS CHINA!. I WILL VETO!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1338149139205550086?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
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The legislation was approved with well beyond the two-thirds "super-majority" needed to overcome a veto: 84-13 in the Republican-led Senate, and 335-78 in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

Presuming Trump follows through on his pledge, the legislation would be sent back to Congress where lawmakers would have to approve it by a two-thirds majority to override the president.

The defense bill was a particular priority for some Republicans.

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Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called it "the most important bill of the year."&nbsp;

The bill also mandates that the president slap sanctions on Turkey within 30 days for its acquisition of a Russian-made missile defense system. Trump has resisted such punishments against Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Donald Trump on Sunday repeated his pledge to veto a sweeping defense budget bill, which US lawmakers passed by margins that would allow them to override the president's rejection.

Donald Trump on Sunday repeated his pledge to veto a sweeping defense budget bill, which US lawmakers passed by margins that would allow them to override the president's rejection. With just weeks remaining in the White House, Trump has criticized the $740.5 billion measure in part because it does not abolish a law granting social media firms liability protection for third-party content on their platforms. Trump has said social media giants like Facebook and Google are biased against him. He has also voiced disapproval of the bill's language calling for renaming US military bases that honor commanders from the pro-slavery South in the Civil War. In a short, all-caps Twitter message, Trump said, "The biggest winner of our new defense bill is China. I will veto!" THE BIGGEST WINNER OF OUR NEW DEFENSE BILL IS CHINA!. I WILL VETO! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2020 × The legislation was approved with well beyond the two-thirds "super-majority" needed to overcome a veto: 84-13 in the Republican-led Senate, and 335-78 in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Presuming Trump follows through on his pledge, the legislation would be sent back to Congress where lawmakers would have to approve it by a two-thirds majority to override the president. The defense bill was a particular priority for some Republicans. × Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called it "the most important bill of the year." The bill also mandates that the president slap sanctions on Turkey within 30 days for its acquisition of a Russian-made missile defense system. Trump has resisted such punishments against Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Trump vows to reject defense bill passed by veto-proof majority

Ahead of electoral college vote, thousands of supporters of U.S President Donald Trump gathered in Washington DC to denounced the results of November 3rd election. Trumps supporters take to streets and chanted 'Four more years' and waving flags &chanting Trumps name.

Nationwide march in support of Donald Trump's Poll claims

Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was,&nbsp;Good luck with that.

After all, we were talking about the internet, which doesn’t seem to reward anything uplifting or nuanced these days. In addition, Trump is a digital powerhouse, with an enormous and passionate following; a coalition of popular right-wing media outlets boosting his signal; and a flair for saying the kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing things that are catnip to the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And after I wrote about Biden’s comparatively tiny internet presence last spring, I heard from legions of nervous Democratic strategists who worried that using “heal the nation” messaging against the MAGA meme army was like bringing a pinwheel to a prizefight.

Have a look|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/donald-trumps-supporters-take-to-streets-for-another-million-maga-march-349361">Donald Trump's supporters take to streets for another 'Million MAGA March'</a>

But in the end, the bed-wetters were wrong. Biden won, and despite having many fewer followers and much less engagement on social media than Trump, his campaign raised record amounts of money and ultimately neutralized Trump’s vaunted “Death Star” — the name his erstwhile campaign manager, Brad Parscale, gave to the campaign’s digital operation.

Figuring out whether any particular online strategy decisively moved the needle for Biden is probably impossible. Offline factors, such as Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused, undoubtedly played a major role. But since successful campaigns breed imitators, it’s worth looking under the hood of the Biden digital strategy to see what future campaigns might learn from it.

After the election, I spoke with Flaherty, along with more than a dozen other people who worked on the Biden digital team. They told me that while the internet alone didn’t get Biden elected, a few key decisions helped his chances.

1. Lean on Influencers and Validators

In the early days of his campaign, Biden’s team envisioned setting up its own digital media empire. It posted videos to his official YouTube channel, conducted virtual forums and even set up a podcast hosted by Biden, “Here’s the Deal.” But those efforts were marred by technical glitches and lukewarm receptions, and they never came close to rivaling the reach of Trump’s social media machine.

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So the campaign pivoted to a different strategy, which involved expanding Biden’s reach by working with social media influencers and “validators,” people who were trusted by the kinds of voters the campaign hoped to reach.

“We were not the biggest megaphone compared to Trump, so we had to help arm any who were,” said Andrew Bleeker, president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic strategy firm that worked with the Biden campaign.

One validator at the top of the team’s list was Brené Brown, a popular author and podcast host who speaks and writes about topics like courage and vulnerability. Brown has a devoted following among suburban women — a critical demographic for Biden’s campaign — and when Biden appeared as a guest on her podcast to talk about his own stories of grief and empathy, the campaign viewed it as a coup.

Also high on the list was actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, whose following skews center-right and male. Johnson’s endorsement this fall of Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, created a so-called permission structure for his followers — including some who may have voted for Trump in 2016 — to support Biden, members of the campaign staff told me.

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Celebrity endorsements aren’t a new campaign strategy. But Biden’s team also worked with lesser-known influencers, including YouTubers like Liza Koshy, and struck a partnership with a group of creators known as TikTok for Biden, which the campaign paid to promote pro-Biden content on the teen-dominated video app TikTok.

Perhaps the campaign’s most unlikely validator was Fox News. Headlines from the outlet that reflected well on Biden were relatively rare, but the campaign’s tests showed that they were more persuasive to on-the-fence voters than headlines from other outlets. So when they appeared — as they did in October when Fox News covered an endorsement that Biden received from more than 120 Republican former national security and military officials — the campaign paid to promote them on Facebook and other platforms.

“The headlines from the sources that were the most surprising were the ones that had the most impact,” said Rebecca Rinkevich, Biden’s digital rapid response director. “When people saw a Fox News headline endorsing Joe Biden, it made them stop scrolling and think.”

2. Tune Out Twitter and Focus on ‘Facebook Moms’

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A frequent criticism of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was that it was too focused on appealing to the elite, high-information crowd on Twitter instead of paying attention to the much larger group of voters who get their news and information on Facebook. In 2020, Biden’s digital team was committed to avoiding a repeat.

“The whole Biden campaign ethos was, ‘Twitter isn’t real life,’” Flaherty said. “There are risks of running a campaign that is too hyperaware of your own ideological corner.”

As it focused on Facebook, the Biden campaign paid extra attention to “Facebook moms” — women who spend a lot of time sharing cute and uplifting content, and who the campaign believed could be persuaded to vote for Biden with positive messages about his character. Its target audience, Flaherty said, was women “who would go out and share a video of troops coming home or who would follow The Dodo,” a website known for heartwarming animal videos.

The campaign experimented with lighter fare, putting virtual Biden for President lawn signs in Animal Crossing, the hit Nintendo game, and setting up a custom “Build Back Better” map in Fortnite, the popular battle royale game, in hopes of reaching younger voters. Some of these efforts were more gimmicky than others. But they all reflected the campaign’s decision to take a pro-Biden message to as many corners of the internet as possible.

“Our goal was really to meet people where they were,” said Christian Tom, head of Biden’s digital partnerships team.

3. Build a Facebook Brain Trust

One of the campaign’s goals, Biden staff members told me, was promoting content that increased “social trust” — in other words, avoiding the kind of energizing, divisive fare that Trump has used to great effect.

But Biden’s digital strategy wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. The campaign also joined ranks with a number of popular left-wing Facebook pages, many of which are known for putting out aggressive anti-Trump content.

They called this group the “Rebel Alliance,” a jokey nod to Parscale’s “Death Star,” and it eventually grew to include the proprietors of pages like Occupy Democrats, Call to Activism, The Other 98 Percent and Being Liberal. On the messaging app Signal, the page owners formed a group text that became a kind of rapid-response brain trust for the campaign.

These left-wing pages gave the campaign a bigger Facebook audience than it could have reached on its own. But they also allowed Biden to keep most of his messaging positive while still tapping into the anger and outrage many Democratic voters felt.

4. Promote ‘Small-Batch Creators,’ Not Just Slick Commercials

In its internal tests, the Biden campaign found that traditional political ads — professionally produced, slick-looking 30-second spots — were far less effective than impromptu, behind-the-scenes footage and ads that featured regular voters talking directly into their smartphones or webcams about why they were voting for Biden.

“All our testing showed that higher production value was not better,” said Nathaniel Lubin, a Biden campaign consultant. “The things that were realer, more grainy and cheaper to produce were more credible.”

So the campaign commissioned a series of simple, lo-fi ads targeted at key groups of voters, like a series of self-recorded videos by Biden supporters who didn’t vote in 2016, talking about their regrets.

In addition to hiring traditional Democratic ad firms, the campaign also teamed up with what it called “small-batch creators” — lesser-known producers and digital creators, some of whom had little experience making political ads. Among the small-batch creators it hired: Scotty Wagner, a former art school professor from California, who produced a video about young people who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary sharing things they didn’t know about Biden, and Jawanza Tucker, a TikTok creator, who made a video styled after a TikTok meme about why he was voting for Biden.

5. Fight Misinformation, but Pick Your Battles

One of the biggest obstacles the Biden campaign faced was a tsunami of misinformation, much of it amplified by the Trump campaign and its right-wing media allies. There were baseless rumors about Biden’s health, unfounded questions about Harris' citizenship and spurious claims about the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter.

The campaign formed an in-house effort to combat these rumors, known as the “Malarkey Factory.” But it picked its battles carefully, using data from voter testing to guide its responses.

When the Hunter Biden laptop story emerged, for example, some Democrats — worried that it would be 2020’s version of the Hillary Clinton email story — suggested that the Biden campaign should forcefully denounce it. But the campaign’s testing found that most voters in its key groups couldn’t follow the complexities of the allegations and that it wasn’t changing their opinion of Joe Biden.

“The Hunter Biden conversation was many times larger than the Hillary Clinton email conversation, but it really didn’t stick because people think Joe Biden’s a good guy,” said Bleeker of Bully Pulpit Interactive.

The campaign still responded to the reports, and Biden defended his son on the debate stage. But it stopped short of mounting a full-throated counter-messaging campaign.

When it did respond to misinformation, the Biden team tried to address the root of the narrative. After right-wing influencers posted compilation videos of Biden stumbling over his words and appearing forgetful, the campaign surveyed voters to try to figure out whether the attempt to paint him as mentally unfit was resonating. It discovered that the real concern for many people wasn’t Biden’s age or his health, per se, but whether he was an easily manipulated tool of the radical left.

The Biden team identified the voters who were most likely to see those clips and ran a targeted digital ad campaign showing them videos of Biden speaking lucidly at debates and public events.

Flaherty, the campaign digital director, said the campaign’s focus on empathy had informed how it treated misinformation: not as a cynical Trump ploy that was swallowed by credulous dupes but as something that required listening to voters to understand their concerns and worries before fighting back. Ultimately, he said, the campaign’s entire digital strategy — the Malarkey Factory, the TikTok creators and Facebook moms, the Fortnite signs and small-batch creators — was about trying to reach a kinder, gentler version of the internet that it still believed existed.

“It was about, how do we throw the incentives of the internet for a bit of a loop?” he said. “We made a decision early that we were going to be authentically Joe Biden online, even when people were saying that was a trap.”

Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was, Good luck with that.

Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was, Good luck with that. After all, we were talking about the internet, which doesn’t seem to reward anything uplifting or nuanced these days. In addition, Trump is a digital powerhouse, with an enormous and passionate following; a coalition of popular right-wing media outlets boosting his signal; and a flair for saying the kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing things that are catnip to the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And after I wrote about Biden’s comparatively tiny internet presence last spring, I heard from legions of nervous Democratic strategists who worried that using “heal the nation” messaging against the MAGA meme army was like bringing a pinwheel to a prizefight. Have a look| Donald Trump's supporters take to streets for another 'Million MAGA March' But in the end, the bed-wetters were wrong. Biden won, and despite having many fewer followers and much less engagement on social media than Trump, his campaign raised record amounts of money and ultimately neutralized Trump’s vaunted “Death Star” — the name his erstwhile campaign manager, Brad Parscale, gave to the campaign’s digital operation. Figuring out whether any particular online strategy decisively moved the needle for Biden is probably impossible. Offline factors, such as Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused, undoubtedly played a major role. But since successful campaigns breed imitators, it’s worth looking under the hood of the Biden digital strategy to see what future campaigns might learn from it. After the election, I spoke with Flaherty, along with more than a dozen other people who worked on the Biden digital team. They told me that while the internet alone didn’t get Biden elected, a few key decisions helped his chances. 1. Lean on Influencers and Validators In the early days of his campaign, Biden’s team envisioned setting up its own digital media empire. It posted videos to his official YouTube channel, conducted virtual forums and even set up a podcast hosted by Biden, “Here’s the Deal.” But those efforts were marred by technical glitches and lukewarm receptions, and they never came close to rivaling the reach of Trump’s social media machine. × So the campaign pivoted to a different strategy, which involved expanding Biden’s reach by working with social media influencers and “validators,” people who were trusted by the kinds of voters the campaign hoped to reach. “We were not the biggest megaphone compared to Trump, so we had to help arm any who were,” said Andrew Bleeker, president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic strategy firm that worked with the Biden campaign. One validator at the top of the team’s list was Brené Brown, a popular author and podcast host who speaks and writes about topics like courage and vulnerability. Brown has a devoted following among suburban women — a critical demographic for Biden’s campaign — and when Biden appeared as a guest on her podcast to talk about his own stories of grief and empathy, the campaign viewed it as a coup. Also high on the list was actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, whose following skews center-right and male. Johnson’s endorsement this fall of Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, created a so-called permission structure for his followers — including some who may have voted for Trump in 2016 — to support Biden, members of the campaign staff told me. Also read| Tensions rise in Washington as pro-Trump protesters continue to decry his loss Celebrity endorsements aren’t a new campaign strategy. But Biden’s team also worked with lesser-known influencers, including YouTubers like Liza Koshy, and struck a partnership with a group of creators known as TikTok for Biden, which the campaign paid to promote pro-Biden content on the teen-dominated video app TikTok. Perhaps the campaign’s most unlikely validator was Fox News. Headlines from the outlet that reflected well on Biden were relatively rare, but the campaign’s tests showed that they were more persuasive to on-the-fence voters than headlines from other outlets. So when they appeared — as they did in October when Fox News covered an endorsement that Biden received from more than 120 Republican former national security and military officials — the campaign paid to promote them on Facebook and other platforms. “The headlines from the sources that were the most surprising were the ones that had the most impact,” said Rebecca Rinkevich, Biden’s digital rapid response director. “When people saw a Fox News headline endorsing Joe Biden, it made them stop scrolling and think.” 2. Tune Out Twitter and Focus on ‘Facebook Moms’ Also read| Twitter says it inadvertently limited engagements on Trump's flagged tweets A frequent criticism of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was that it was too focused on appealing to the elite, high-information crowd on Twitter instead of paying attention to the much larger group of voters who get their news and information on Facebook. In 2020, Biden’s digital team was committed to avoiding a repeat. “The whole Biden campaign ethos was, ‘Twitter isn’t real life,’” Flaherty said. “There are risks of running a campaign that is too hyperaware of your own ideological corner.” As it focused on Facebook, the Biden campaign paid extra attention to “Facebook moms” — women who spend a lot of time sharing cute and uplifting content, and who the campaign believed could be persuaded to vote for Biden with positive messages about his character. Its target audience, Flaherty said, was women “who would go out and share a video of troops coming home or who would follow The Dodo,” a website known for heartwarming animal videos. The campaign experimented with lighter fare, putting virtual Biden for President lawn signs in Animal Crossing, the hit Nintendo game, and setting up a custom “Build Back Better” map in Fortnite, the popular battle royale game, in hopes of reaching younger voters. Some of these efforts were more gimmicky than others. But they all reflected the campaign’s decision to take a pro-Biden message to as many corners of the internet as possible. “Our goal was really to meet people where they were,” said Christian Tom, head of Biden’s digital partnerships team. 3. Build a Facebook Brain Trust One of the campaign’s goals, Biden staff members told me, was promoting content that increased “social trust” — in other words, avoiding the kind of energizing, divisive fare that Trump has used to great effect. But Biden’s digital strategy wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. The campaign also joined ranks with a number of popular left-wing Facebook pages, many of which are known for putting out aggressive anti-Trump content. They called this group the “Rebel Alliance,” a jokey nod to Parscale’s “Death Star,” and it eventually grew to include the proprietors of pages like Occupy Democrats, Call to Activism, The Other 98 Percent and Being Liberal. On the messaging app Signal, the page owners formed a group text that became a kind of rapid-response brain trust for the campaign. These left-wing pages gave the campaign a bigger Facebook audience than it could have reached on its own. But they also allowed Biden to keep most of his messaging positive while still tapping into the anger and outrage many Democratic voters felt. 4. Promote ‘Small-Batch Creators,’ Not Just Slick Commercials In its internal tests, the Biden campaign found that traditional political ads — professionally produced, slick-looking 30-second spots — were far less effective than impromptu, behind-the-scenes footage and ads that featured regular voters talking directly into their smartphones or webcams about why they were voting for Biden. “All our testing showed that higher production value was not better,” said Nathaniel Lubin, a Biden campaign consultant. “The things that were realer, more grainy and cheaper to produce were more credible.” So the campaign commissioned a series of simple, lo-fi ads targeted at key groups of voters, like a series of self-recorded videos by Biden supporters who didn’t vote in 2016, talking about their regrets. In addition to hiring traditional Democratic ad firms, the campaign also teamed up with what it called “small-batch creators” — lesser-known producers and digital creators, some of whom had little experience making political ads. Among the small-batch creators it hired: Scotty Wagner, a former art school professor from California, who produced a video about young people who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary sharing things they didn’t know about Biden, and Jawanza Tucker, a TikTok creator, who made a video styled after a TikTok meme about why he was voting for Biden. 5. Fight Misinformation, but Pick Your Battles One of the biggest obstacles the Biden campaign faced was a tsunami of misinformation, much of it amplified by the Trump campaign and its right-wing media allies. There were baseless rumors about Biden’s health, unfounded questions about Harris' citizenship and spurious claims about the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter. The campaign formed an in-house effort to combat these rumors, known as the “Malarkey Factory.” But it picked its battles carefully, using data from voter testing to guide its responses. When the Hunter Biden laptop story emerged, for example, some Democrats — worried that it would be 2020’s version of the Hillary Clinton email story — suggested that the Biden campaign should forcefully denounce it. But the campaign’s testing found that most voters in its key groups couldn’t follow the complexities of the allegations and that it wasn’t changing their opinion of Joe Biden. “The Hunter Biden conversation was many times larger than the Hillary Clinton email conversation, but it really didn’t stick because people think Joe Biden’s a good guy,” said Bleeker of Bully Pulpit Interactive. The campaign still responded to the reports, and Biden defended his son on the debate stage. But it stopped short of mounting a full-throated counter-messaging campaign. When it did respond to misinformation, the Biden team tried to address the root of the narrative. After right-wing influencers posted compilation videos of Biden stumbling over his words and appearing forgetful, the campaign surveyed voters to try to figure out whether the attempt to paint him as mentally unfit was resonating. It discovered that the real concern for many people wasn’t Biden’s age or his health, per se, but whether he was an easily manipulated tool of the radical left. The Biden team identified the voters who were most likely to see those clips and ran a targeted digital ad campaign showing them videos of Biden speaking lucidly at debates and public events. Flaherty, the campaign digital director, said the campaign’s focus on empathy had informed how it treated misinformation: not as a cynical Trump ploy that was swallowed by credulous dupes but as something that required listening to voters to understand their concerns and worries before fighting back. Ultimately, he said, the campaign’s entire digital strategy — the Malarkey Factory, the TikTok creators and Facebook moms, the Fortnite signs and small-batch creators — was about trying to reach a kinder, gentler version of the internet that it still believed existed. “It was about, how do we throw the incentives of the internet for a bit of a loop?” he said. “We made a decision early that we were going to be authentically Joe Biden online, even when people were saying that was a trap.”

How Joe Biden’s digital team tamed the MAGA internet

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Morning news brief: Brexit talks, pro-Trump rally and preps for Covid vaccine

Conservative groups continued to protest across the United States on Saturday, as tensions rose in downtown Washington after dark as scores of pro-Trump "Proud Boys" protesters and "Antifa" counterprotesters faced off.

The campaigners have been alleging without evidence that President-elect Joe Biden stole the US election.

Organisers of Stop The Steal, linked to pro-Trump operative Roger Stone, and church groups urged supporters to participate in "Jericho Marches" and prayer rallies.

Trump's supporters carrying flags and signs made their way in small knots toward Congress and the Supreme Court through downtown Washington, which was closed to traffic by police vehicles and dump trucks.

Only few of the marchers wore masks, despite soaring COVID-19 deaths and cases, defying a mayoral directive for them to be worn outside. Several thousand people rallied in Washington, fewer than during a similar protest last month.

As some in the crowd echoed far right conspiracy theories about the election, a truck-pulled trailer flew Trump 2020 flags and a sign reading "Trump Unity" while blaring the country song "God Bless the USA."

Around 200 members of the Proud Boys, a violent far right group, had joined the marches earlier on Saturday near the Trump hotel. Many wore combat fatigues and ballistic vests, carried helmets and flashed hand signals used by white nationalists.

The two groups shouted insults at each other across a street near McPherson Square and some set off fireworks, but police kept them apart, according to a Reuters reporter on the scene.

Police pepper-sprayed at least two counter-protesters before the Proud Boys left the area and regrouped several blocks away.

Protests were also planned in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, where Trump's campaign has sought to overturn vote counts.

More than 50 federal and state court rulings have upheld Biden's victory. The US Supreme Court on Friday rejected a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states.

General Mike Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor, spoke in his first public address since Trump pardoned him on Nov. 24.

"My charge to you is to go back to where you are from" and make demands, Flynn told the crowd, without being more specific. The US Constitution is "not about collective liberty it is about individual liberties, and they designed it that way," he said.

Trump has refused to concede defeat, alleging without evidence that he was denied victory by massive fraud. On his way to Andrews Air Force Base and then the Army-Navy football game in New York, Trump made three passes in the Marine One helicopter over the cheering protesters.

Some protesters referenced the Biblical miracle of the battle of Jericho, in which the walls of the city crumbled after soldiers and priests blowing horns marched around it.

Conservative groups continued to protest across the United States on Saturday, as tensions rose in downtown Washington after dark as scores of pro-Trump "Proud Boys" protesters and "Antifa" counterprotesters faced off.

Conservative groups continued to protest across the United States on Saturday, as tensions rose in downtown Washington after dark as scores of pro-Trump "Proud Boys" protesters and "Antifa" counterprotesters faced off. The campaigners have been alleging without evidence that President-elect Joe Biden stole the US election. Organisers of Stop The Steal, linked to pro-Trump operative Roger Stone, and church groups urged supporters to participate in "Jericho Marches" and prayer rallies. Trump's supporters carrying flags and signs made their way in small knots toward Congress and the Supreme Court through downtown Washington, which was closed to traffic by police vehicles and dump trucks. Only few of the marchers wore masks, despite soaring COVID-19 deaths and cases, defying a mayoral directive for them to be worn outside. Several thousand people rallied in Washington, fewer than during a similar protest last month. As some in the crowd echoed far right conspiracy theories about the election, a truck-pulled trailer flew Trump 2020 flags and a sign reading "Trump Unity" while blaring the country song "God Bless the USA." Around 200 members of the Proud Boys, a violent far right group, had joined the marches earlier on Saturday near the Trump hotel. Many wore combat fatigues and ballistic vests, carried helmets and flashed hand signals used by white nationalists. The two groups shouted insults at each other across a street near McPherson Square and some set off fireworks, but police kept them apart, according to a Reuters reporter on the scene. Police pepper-sprayed at least two counter-protesters before the Proud Boys left the area and regrouped several blocks away. Protests were also planned in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, where Trump's campaign has sought to overturn vote counts. More than 50 federal and state court rulings have upheld Biden's victory. The US Supreme Court on Friday rejected a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states. General Mike Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor, spoke in his first public address since Trump pardoned him on Nov. 24. "My charge to you is to go back to where you are from" and make demands, Flynn told the crowd, without being more specific. The US Constitution is "not about collective liberty it is about individual liberties, and they designed it that way," he said. Trump has refused to concede defeat, alleging without evidence that he was denied victory by massive fraud. On his way to Andrews Air Force Base and then the Army-Navy football game in New York, Trump made three passes in the Marine One helicopter over the cheering protesters. Some protesters referenced the Biblical miracle of the battle of Jericho, in which the walls of the city crumbled after soldiers and priests blowing horns marched around it.

Tensions rise in Washington as pro-Trump protesters continue to decry his loss

A day after President Donald Trump’s stinging defeat in the Supreme Court, Republicans around the country seemed to be having trouble finding the right words.

The bellicose statements from some quarters that had characterized the postelection period — claims of switched and missing votes, a “rigged” election and even threats of secession from Texas Republicans after the ruling on Friday — had given way to something resembling muted resignation and an acceptance of the inevitable.

Many were completely silent, even in the face of a tweet from Trump himself in which he vowed, “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!”

Of 17 Republican attorneys general who had endorsed the case, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, none agreed to be interviewed by The New York Times. Paxton, who had issued a statement calling the decision “unfortunate,” did not respond to a request for comment.

Other attorneys general who issued statements mostly seemed to acknowledge that all legal avenues had been exhausted in efforts to overturn the election results.

Mike Hunter, the Oklahoma attorney general, saw the end of the road. “The Supreme Court has ruled. The Electoral College is going to meet Monday. We’ve got to accept the results,” Hunter said in a Facebook interview in Oklahoma City. “We need to play the hand we’re dealt.”

A statement by Wayne Stenehjem, the North Dakota attorney general, echoed that. “It now appears that all reasonably arguable legal challenges have been exhausted, and the members of the Electoral College will meet across the country on Monday.”

Derek Schmidt, the Kansas attorney general, summed it up with a statement saying, “It is time to put this election behind us.”

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who had disagreed with the decision by his state’s attorney general to join the case, said there was no viable path forward for Trump.

“The electoral votes should be cast on Monday, and all indications are that Joe Biden will be the president-elect at that time,” Hutchinson said in a telephone interview, urging the country to move on. “It’s the tradition of our country and the history of our democracy that we do move on beyond that hard-fought election and we unite and we recognize the president-elect’s leadership.”

Hutchinson said he believed the effort led by Texas was based on a flawed legal theory, a view shared by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who had been among the first in her party to congratulate the president-elect on his victory. She called the court’s ruling “an unsurprising affirmation of the principle that one state cannot tell another state how to run its elections.”

On Capitol Hill, the response was particularly muted among the 126 House Republicans who signed onto an extraordinary amicus brief backing the suit. Aides to Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the party’s top leaders in the House, had no comment. And questions and requests for comments sent to the office of more than two dozen top congressional Republicans on Saturday were either declined or ignored.

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who assembled the House’s friend of the court brief, merely posted a quote on Twitter from John Quincy Adams, implying he had done what he could: “Duty is ours, results are God’s.”

Just one lawmaker who signed on, Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, appeared newly ready to accept the president’s road had run out.

In a statement, he called the Texas suit “the best and likely last opportunity” to get the Supreme Court to rule on the election, and said the court’s decision “closed the books on the challenges to the 2020 election results.”

“The casting of electoral votes will end a hotly contested election, and we should come together as Americans to work together for the future of our country,” Westerman said, adding that Biden would be the president-elect by Monday.

Others, like Reps. Jodey Arrington of Texas and Ken Buck of Colorado, stressed that the court had not actually rejected the case based on its merits and insinuated, vaguely, that those claims could still have their day in court. But even as they pledged a continued fight, it was clear their options were dwindling.

Speaking on Fox News, Buck called for congressional hearings on election security and while discussing a pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia, indicated obliquely that he believed Biden would be president.

Another ally of the president, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, raised the prospect of using a normally perfunctory joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the electoral results, though most lawmakers agree that path is very likely futile.

If anything, the brushback from the Supreme Court served to highlight the divisions running through the president’s party more than a month after Election Day.

“At some point, we have to be that nation of laws,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said on Fox, as he sought to instill confidence among fellow Republicans that the election had been decided fairly, and in Biden’s favor.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., was harsher, warning his party on Twitter against excesses like the secession talk thrown around on Friday by Texas GOP chairman Allen West or any further efforts by Republicans to stoke false hopes among their voters.

“I want to be clear: the Supreme Court is not the deep state,” Kinzinger wrote in one tweet. “The case had no merit and was dispatched 9-0. There was no win here. Complaining and bellyaching is not a manly trait, it’s actually sad. Real men accept a loss with grace.”

A day after President Donald Trump’s stinging defeat in the Supreme Court, Republicans around the country seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. The bellicose statements from some quarters that had characterized the postelection period — claims of switched and missing votes, a “rigged” election and even threats of secession from Texas Republicans after the ruling on Friday — had given way to something resembling muted resignation and an acceptance of the inevitable.

A day after President Donald Trump’s stinging defeat in the Supreme Court, Republicans around the country seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. The bellicose statements from some quarters that had characterized the postelection period — claims of switched and missing votes, a “rigged” election and even threats of secession from Texas Republicans after the ruling on Friday — had given way to something resembling muted resignation and an acceptance of the inevitable. Many were completely silent, even in the face of a tweet from Trump himself in which he vowed, “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!” Of 17 Republican attorneys general who had endorsed the case, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, none agreed to be interviewed by The New York Times. Paxton, who had issued a statement calling the decision “unfortunate,” did not respond to a request for comment. Other attorneys general who issued statements mostly seemed to acknowledge that all legal avenues had been exhausted in efforts to overturn the election results. Mike Hunter, the Oklahoma attorney general, saw the end of the road. “The Supreme Court has ruled. The Electoral College is going to meet Monday. We’ve got to accept the results,” Hunter said in a Facebook interview in Oklahoma City. “We need to play the hand we’re dealt.” A statement by Wayne Stenehjem, the North Dakota attorney general, echoed that. “It now appears that all reasonably arguable legal challenges have been exhausted, and the members of the Electoral College will meet across the country on Monday.” Derek Schmidt, the Kansas attorney general, summed it up with a statement saying, “It is time to put this election behind us.” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who had disagreed with the decision by his state’s attorney general to join the case, said there was no viable path forward for Trump. “The electoral votes should be cast on Monday, and all indications are that Joe Biden will be the president-elect at that time,” Hutchinson said in a telephone interview, urging the country to move on. “It’s the tradition of our country and the history of our democracy that we do move on beyond that hard-fought election and we unite and we recognize the president-elect’s leadership.” Hutchinson said he believed the effort led by Texas was based on a flawed legal theory, a view shared by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who had been among the first in her party to congratulate the president-elect on his victory. She called the court’s ruling “an unsurprising affirmation of the principle that one state cannot tell another state how to run its elections.” On Capitol Hill, the response was particularly muted among the 126 House Republicans who signed onto an extraordinary amicus brief backing the suit. Aides to Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California and Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the party’s top leaders in the House, had no comment. And questions and requests for comments sent to the office of more than two dozen top congressional Republicans on Saturday were either declined or ignored. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who assembled the House’s friend of the court brief, merely posted a quote on Twitter from John Quincy Adams, implying he had done what he could: “Duty is ours, results are God’s.” Just one lawmaker who signed on, Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, appeared newly ready to accept the president’s road had run out. In a statement, he called the Texas suit “the best and likely last opportunity” to get the Supreme Court to rule on the election, and said the court’s decision “closed the books on the challenges to the 2020 election results.” “The casting of electoral votes will end a hotly contested election, and we should come together as Americans to work together for the future of our country,” Westerman said, adding that Biden would be the president-elect by Monday. Others, like Reps. Jodey Arrington of Texas and Ken Buck of Colorado, stressed that the court had not actually rejected the case based on its merits and insinuated, vaguely, that those claims could still have their day in court. But even as they pledged a continued fight, it was clear their options were dwindling. Speaking on Fox News, Buck called for congressional hearings on election security and while discussing a pair of Senate runoffs in Georgia, indicated obliquely that he believed Biden would be president. Another ally of the president, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, raised the prospect of using a normally perfunctory joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the electoral results, though most lawmakers agree that path is very likely futile. If anything, the brushback from the Supreme Court served to highlight the divisions running through the president’s party more than a month after Election Day. “At some point, we have to be that nation of laws,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said on Fox, as he sought to instill confidence among fellow Republicans that the election had been decided fairly, and in Biden’s favor. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., was harsher, warning his party on Twitter against excesses like the secession talk thrown around on Friday by Texas GOP chairman Allen West or any further efforts by Republicans to stoke false hopes among their voters. “I want to be clear: the Supreme Court is not the deep state,” Kinzinger wrote in one tweet. “The case had no merit and was dispatched 9-0. There was no win here. Complaining and bellyaching is not a manly trait, it’s actually sad. Real men accept a loss with grace.”

Republicans find themselves speechless following a Supreme Court defeat

Four people were stabbed and one shot as rallies backing&nbsp;President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud led to clashes in major US cities on Saturday.

Scuffles broke out in many places between rally-goers and counter-protesters who turned up to criticize the president, who lost the November 3 election to Democrat Joe Biden but is yet to concede.

Washington State Police said in a tweet late Saturday that a shooting had taken place after clashes near the capitol building in Olympia, and that a suspect had been detained.

In the US capital, DC Fire and EMS Department communications chief Doug Buchanan told AFP that four people had been stabbed and were now hospitalized "with serious injuries." The New York Times reported that 23 had been arrested throughout the day.

There was no indication of whether any of the victims had been involved in the protests, on either side of the divide.

The day had begun with a festive atmosphere as thousands of red-hatted protesters filled Washington's streets to support the president, undeterred by the US Supreme Court's rejection on Friday of what may have been his last chance to overturn the results.

Similar events took place in Olympia, Atlanta and St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as in smaller towns in Nebraska, Alabama and elsewhere.

Demonstrators at the DC rally -- noticeably smaller than a similar protest last month -- told AFP they were steadfast in their support for the embattled president.

"We're not gonna give up," said Luke Wilson, a sixty-something protester who had come all the way from the western state of Idaho.

"I believe there is a big injustice being done to the American people," added Dell Quick, a regular at Trump's political rallies, as he brandished a flag defending gun rights.

Protesters offered no shortage of explanations for the poll results, even though they have been affirmed by state election officials -- several of them Republican -- and by judges in several key states.

Every state has now certified the results, giving Biden 306 votes in the Electoral College to Trump's 232. Electors are to formally cast their votes Monday.

But protesters insisted, as Trump has repeatedly, that there was widespread fraud in the election.

Some pointed to "foreign interference," others to software that allegedly erased millions of votes for the president -- but not those for other Republican candidates on the same ballots.&nbsp;

Quick told AFP that "there's no way possible" that Biden won.

Susan Bowman, a 62-year-old from Hampton, Virginia, said "this is not a banana republic. We need to fix the election."

Those who addressed the crowd included Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser who was recently pardoned by the president after admitting that he lied to the FBI over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

- 'Stolen' election -

Dozens of court cases alleging fraud or contesting the result have been decided -- virtually all in Biden's favor, with some judges offering stinging criticism of the lack of evidence.

But that was not enough for 47-year-old Darlene Denton, who wore a "Trump 2024" badge on her sweatshirt.

"Nobody wants to hear evidence, nobody wants to hear cases, everything just gets thrown out," said Denton, who had come from Tennessee to support a president she said had given "a voice to the people."

Trump, in stark defiance of the clear result and of US tradition, has refused to concede to Biden.

"Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal," he tweeted early Saturday. "Didn't know about this, but I'll be seeing them!"

Not long afterward, his helicopter lifted off from the White House grounds and passed over the crowd -- many singing the US national anthem -- as Trump headed to New York to attend the annual Army-Navy football game.

Among the protesters, members of the far-right militia group the Proud Boys were clearly visible -- in their signature black-and-yellow outfits, some wearing bulletproof vests -- and they often drew cheers from others in the crowd.

Some blocks away, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement held their own, much smaller, rally, chanting "Nazis out!"

Police, some in riot gear, used their bodies and bicycles to keep the groups apart. There was also at least one clash between police and counter-protesters.

Four people were stabbed and one shot as rallies backing President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud led to clashes in major US cities on Saturday.

Four people were stabbed and one shot as rallies backing President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud led to clashes in major US cities on Saturday. Scuffles broke out in many places between rally-goers and counter-protesters who turned up to criticize the president, who lost the November 3 election to Democrat Joe Biden but is yet to concede. Washington State Police said in a tweet late Saturday that a shooting had taken place after clashes near the capitol building in Olympia, and that a suspect had been detained. In the US capital, DC Fire and EMS Department communications chief Doug Buchanan told AFP that four people had been stabbed and were now hospitalized "with serious injuries." The New York Times reported that 23 had been arrested throughout the day. There was no indication of whether any of the victims had been involved in the protests, on either side of the divide. The day had begun with a festive atmosphere as thousands of red-hatted protesters filled Washington's streets to support the president, undeterred by the US Supreme Court's rejection on Friday of what may have been his last chance to overturn the results. Similar events took place in Olympia, Atlanta and St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as in smaller towns in Nebraska, Alabama and elsewhere. Demonstrators at the DC rally -- noticeably smaller than a similar protest last month -- told AFP they were steadfast in their support for the embattled president. "We're not gonna give up," said Luke Wilson, a sixty-something protester who had come all the way from the western state of Idaho. "I believe there is a big injustice being done to the American people," added Dell Quick, a regular at Trump's political rallies, as he brandished a flag defending gun rights. Protesters offered no shortage of explanations for the poll results, even though they have been affirmed by state election officials -- several of them Republican -- and by judges in several key states. Every state has now certified the results, giving Biden 306 votes in the Electoral College to Trump's 232. Electors are to formally cast their votes Monday. But protesters insisted, as Trump has repeatedly, that there was widespread fraud in the election. Some pointed to "foreign interference," others to software that allegedly erased millions of votes for the president -- but not those for other Republican candidates on the same ballots. Quick told AFP that "there's no way possible" that Biden won. Susan Bowman, a 62-year-old from Hampton, Virginia, said "this is not a banana republic. We need to fix the election." Those who addressed the crowd included Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser who was recently pardoned by the president after admitting that he lied to the FBI over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. - 'Stolen' election - Dozens of court cases alleging fraud or contesting the result have been decided -- virtually all in Biden's favor, with some judges offering stinging criticism of the lack of evidence. But that was not enough for 47-year-old Darlene Denton, who wore a "Trump 2024" badge on her sweatshirt. "Nobody wants to hear evidence, nobody wants to hear cases, everything just gets thrown out," said Denton, who had come from Tennessee to support a president she said had given "a voice to the people." Trump, in stark defiance of the clear result and of US tradition, has refused to concede to Biden. "Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal," he tweeted early Saturday. "Didn't know about this, but I'll be seeing them!" Not long afterward, his helicopter lifted off from the White House grounds and passed over the crowd -- many singing the US national anthem -- as Trump headed to New York to attend the annual Army-Navy football game. Among the protesters, members of the far-right militia group the Proud Boys were clearly visible -- in their signature black-and-yellow outfits, some wearing bulletproof vests -- and they often drew cheers from others in the crowd. Some blocks away, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement held their own, much smaller, rally, chanting "Nazis out!" Police, some in riot gear, used their bodies and bicycles to keep the groups apart. There was also at least one clash between police and counter-protesters.

Four stabbed and one shot after pro-Trump rallies

Donald Trump's supporters take to streets for another 'Million MAGA March'

US authorities on Friday carried out their 10th execution of the year, the last in a series of capital punishments that President Donald Trump's administration has carried out before he leaves office.

Alfred Bourgeois, a Black man sentenced to death for the murder of his two-year-old daughter, was executed by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

"Bourgeois was pronounced deceased at 8:21 pm Eastern Standard Time by the Vigo County Coroner," the federal prison said in a statement.

The execution occurred a day after another convicted prisoner, Brandon Bernard, was also executed in Terre Haute.

Following a paternity test, Bourgeois, a 55-year-old former truck driver, took temporary custody of his daughter and brought her on a trucking route for part of the summer of 2002.

He severely abused her and eventually smashed her skull on the windshield.

Since the crime took place on a military base where he was making a delivery, he was tried in federal court and sentenced to death in 2004.&nbsp;

He remained on death row, with the United States having suspended federal executions beginning in 2003, in particular because of questions over the legality of drugs used in injections.

Trump however restarted federal executions in July -- even though states still using capital punishment have delayed theirs due to the dangers posed to prison staff and witnesses by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Seven federal executions occurred before the November 3 election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, who is due to be sworn in on January 20 despite the outgoing president's refusal to concede.

Biden has pledged to work with Congress to bring an end to federal executions.

For 131 years, outgoing presidents traditionally suspended federal executions during the transition period.

But the Trump administration had announced six executions between November and January, including Bourgeois.

His lawyers had asked the US Supreme Court to intervene, saying he suffers from a mental disability.

"The jury that sentenced Mr Bourgeois to death never learned that he was a person with intellectual disability because his trial lawyers did not present the evidence that was available to them," said his new lawyer Victor Abreu.

After the execution, his legal team issued a statement saying that "tonight, the United States killed a man with intellectual disability in spite of clear directives from the US Supreme Court and federal laws that prohibited it."&nbsp;

Bourgeois was the 17th person executed in the United States in 2020, a historic low linked to the suspensions at the state level.

He was the 10th executed at the federal level, the highest in more than a century.

US authorities on Friday carried out their 10th execution of the year, the last in a series of capital punishments that President Donald Trump's administration has carried out before he leaves office.

US authorities on Friday carried out their 10th execution of the year, the last in a series of capital punishments that President Donald Trump's administration has carried out before he leaves office. Alfred Bourgeois, a Black man sentenced to death for the murder of his two-year-old daughter, was executed by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. "Bourgeois was pronounced deceased at 8:21 pm Eastern Standard Time by the Vigo County Coroner," the federal prison said in a statement. The execution occurred a day after another convicted prisoner, Brandon Bernard, was also executed in Terre Haute. Following a paternity test, Bourgeois, a 55-year-old former truck driver, took temporary custody of his daughter and brought her on a trucking route for part of the summer of 2002. He severely abused her and eventually smashed her skull on the windshield. Since the crime took place on a military base where he was making a delivery, he was tried in federal court and sentenced to death in 2004. He remained on death row, with the United States having suspended federal executions beginning in 2003, in particular because of questions over the legality of drugs used in injections. Trump however restarted federal executions in July -- even though states still using capital punishment have delayed theirs due to the dangers posed to prison staff and witnesses by the Covid-19 pandemic. Seven federal executions occurred before the November 3 election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, who is due to be sworn in on January 20 despite the outgoing president's refusal to concede. Biden has pledged to work with Congress to bring an end to federal executions. For 131 years, outgoing presidents traditionally suspended federal executions during the transition period. But the Trump administration had announced six executions between November and January, including Bourgeois. His lawyers had asked the US Supreme Court to intervene, saying he suffers from a mental disability. "The jury that sentenced Mr Bourgeois to death never learned that he was a person with intellectual disability because his trial lawyers did not present the evidence that was available to them," said his new lawyer Victor Abreu. After the execution, his legal team issued a statement saying that "tonight, the United States killed a man with intellectual disability in spite of clear directives from the US Supreme Court and federal laws that prohibited it." Bourgeois was the 17th person executed in the United States in 2020, a historic low linked to the suspensions at the state level. He was the 10th executed at the federal level, the highest in more than a century.

US executes another inmate before Trump leaves office

Donald Trump has some parting gifts for Israel. With around a month left for his departure, the outgoing US President has announced that Israel and Morocco will normalise ties. What does this deal mean for West Asia?

Gravitas: Trump's parting gifts to Israel

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