In a separate brief, lawyers for 17 states led by Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt also urged the justices to hear the case.

US Election 2020: Donald Trump pins his last hope on Texas lawsuit

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-safe-and-effective-against-covid-latest-study-confirms-348436">Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine safe and effective against COVID: Latest study confirms</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/10/26/166716-untitled-design-1.jpg?itok=TOoTexS1" /> 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/as-uk-begins-vaccination-covid-19-cases-in-europe-top-20-million-348403">As UK begins vaccination, COVID-19 cases in Europe top 20 million</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/12/08/173089-christmas1.jpg?itok=EAXalzDv" /> 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/hopeful-ill-remain-us-president-says-trump-on-same-day-of-legal-defeat-in-us-supreme-court-348441">Hopeful I'll remain US president, says Trump on same day of legal defeat in US Supreme Court</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/11/19/170412-untitled-design-5.jpg?itok=j019RBxW" />

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/violence-in-dr-congo-parliament-as-political-crisis-grows-348448/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/china-removes-tripadvisor-104-other-apps-from-stores-under-cleansing-campaign-348435/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/bangladesh-rohingya-refugees-happy-with-the-facilities-on-bhasan-char-island-348449/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine safe and effective against COVID: Latest study confirms As UK begins vaccination, COVID-19 cases in Europe top 20 million Hopeful I'l

Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine safe and effective against COVID: Latest study confirms As UK begins vaccination, COVID-19 cases in Europe top 20 million Hopeful I'll remain US president, says Trump on same day of legal defeat in US Supreme Court

Morning news brief: Covid vaccine, US polls and more

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said his government would work to establish dialogue with the United States under President-elect Joe Biden

Venezuela's Maduro says he hopes for better dialogue with U.S. under Biden

In what is perhaps the most critical development in the worldwide search for a shot, Britain will start rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. President Donald Trump is aware of aliens from outer space and was about to disclose their existence before being stopped. Start your day with WION's news brief.

 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/beginning-of-the-end-for-pandemic-britain-begins-roll-out-of-pfizers-drug-to-the-public-348249">'Beginning of the end' for pandemic: Britain begins roll-out of Pfizer's drug to the public</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/12/04/172504-pfizer-incs-covid-19-vaccine.jpg?itok=QIPAysh0" /> 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/bharat-biotech-seeks-emergency-use-authorisation-for-indian-covid-19-vaccine-expert-panel-to-review-348232">Bharat Biotech seeks emergency use authorisation for Indian Covid-19 vaccine; expert panel to review</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/10/22/166210-covaxin.JPG?itok=uUPWO92w" /> 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/aliens-exist-but-in-hiding-until-mankind-is-ready-says-ex-israeli-space-head-348239">Aliens exist but in hiding, until mankind is ready, says ex-Israeli space head</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/12/08/172971-untitled-design.jpg?itok=2QanrFGc" /> 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/another-one-hiker-finds-a-new-metal-monolith-in-the-netherlands-348252">Another one: Hiker finds a new metal monolith in the Netherlands</a> 
 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/12/08/172979-monolith-in-the-netherlands.jpg?itok=8KvdLZfj" />

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="http://13.235.153.162/videos/venezuelan-president-maduro-secures-a-landslide-victory-in-legislative-election-348257/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

In what is perhaps the most critical development in the worldwide search for a shot, Britain will start rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

In what is perhaps the most critical development in the worldwide search for a shot, Britain will start rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. President Donald Trump is aware of aliens from outer space and was about to disclose their existence before being stopped. Start your day with WION's news brief. 'Beginning of the end' for pandemic: Britain begins roll-out of Pfizer's drug to the public Bharat Biotech seeks emergency use authorisation for Indian Covid-19 vaccine; expert panel to review Aliens exist but in hiding, until mankind is ready, says ex-Israeli space head Another one: Hiker finds a new metal monolith in the Netherlands

Morning news brief: UK begins vaccination, aliens on earth and more

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/serum-institute-of-india-applies-for-emergency-use-authorisation-for-oxford-vaccine-report-348006">Serum Institute of India applies for emergency use authorisation for Oxford vaccine: Report</a> 
 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/10/27/166978-covid-19-vaccine.jpg?itok=udQug48d" />

 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/chinas-sinovac-secures-515-million-to-boost-covid-vaccine-production-347999">China's Sinovac secures $515 million to boost covid vaccine production&nbsp;</a> 
 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/08/11/154138-untitled-design-7.jpg?itok=pXsZ8gH2" />

 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trumps-lawyer-rudy-giuliani-hospitalised-after-testing-positive-for-covid-19-348004">Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani hospitalised after testing positive for covid-19</a> 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2019/12/04/118761-untitled-design-7.jpg?itok=6-gkfGQK" />

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/iran-says-nuclear-scientist-killed-by-satellite-controlled-machine-gun-348012/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/4000-people-assemble-in-london-13-arrested-for-flouting-covid-rules-348013/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Serum Institute of India applies for emergency use authorisation for Oxford vaccine: Report China's Sinovac secures $515 million to boost covid vaccine producti

Serum Institute of India applies for emergency use authorisation for Oxford vaccine: Report China's Sinovac secures $515 million to boost covid vaccine production Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani hospitalised after testing positive for covid-19

Morning news brief: Serum seeks approval for Covid vaccine and more

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.

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.

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’

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.

One successful clip aimed at this group showed Biden giving his American flag lapel pin to a young boy at a campaign stop. Another video showed Biden, who has talked about overcoming a stutter in his youth, meeting Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy with one. Both were viewed millions of times.

Voters also responded positively to videos in which Biden showed his command of foreign policy. In January, after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the campaign posted a three-minute Facebook video of Biden explaining the situation. Despite the snoozy title — “Joe Biden Discusses Donald Trump’s Recent Actions in the Middle East” — the video became one of the campaign’s earliest viral successes.

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.

“I had the freedom to go for the jugular,” said Rafael Rivero, a co-founder of Occupy Democrats and Ridin’ With Biden, another big pro-Biden Facebook page.

Rivero, who was paid by the Biden campaign as a consultant, told me that in addition to cross-posting its content on Occupy Democrats, he often offered the campaign advice based on what was performing well on his pages.

During the Republican National Convention, for example, Rivero noticed that a meme posted by Ridin’ With Biden about Trump’s comments on Medicare and Social Security was going viral. He notified the rest of the Rebel Alliance group and recommended that the campaign borrow the message for Biden’s official Twitter account.

“It was sort of a big, distributed message test,” Flaherty said of the Rebel Alliance. “If it was popping through Occupy or any of our other partners, we knew there was heat there.”

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 countermessaging 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. 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. 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’ 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. One successful clip aimed at this group showed Biden giving his American flag lapel pin to a young boy at a campaign stop. Another video showed Biden, who has talked about overcoming a stutter in his youth, meeting Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy with one. Both were viewed millions of times. Voters also responded positively to videos in which Biden showed his command of foreign policy. In January, after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the campaign posted a three-minute Facebook video of Biden explaining the situation. Despite the snoozy title — “Joe Biden Discusses Donald Trump’s Recent Actions in the Middle East” — the video became one of the campaign’s earliest viral successes. 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. “I had the freedom to go for the jugular,” said Rafael Rivero, a co-founder of Occupy Democrats and Ridin’ With Biden, another big pro-Biden Facebook page. Rivero, who was paid by the Biden campaign as a consultant, told me that in addition to cross-posting its content on Occupy Democrats, he often offered the campaign advice based on what was performing well on his pages. During the Republican National Convention, for example, Rivero noticed that a meme posted by Ridin’ With Biden about Trump’s comments on Medicare and Social Security was going viral. He notified the rest of the Rebel Alliance group and recommended that the campaign borrow the message for Biden’s official Twitter account. “It was sort of a big, distributed message test,” Flaherty said of the Rebel Alliance. “If it was popping through Occupy or any of our other partners, we knew there was heat there.” 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 countermessaging 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

Over the past week, President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.

Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/were-winning-this-election-trump-at-first-post-poll-rally-347807" hreflang="en">'We're winning this election': Trump at first post-poll rally</a>

The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/the-white-house">White House</a>. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant land defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile, or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court.

And while he will leave office in 45 days, the last few weeks may only foreshadow what he will be like after he departs. Trump will almost certainly try to shape the national conversation from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his relentless campaign to discredit the election could undercut his successor, President-elect Joe Biden. Although many Republicans would like to move on, he appears intent on forcing them to remain in thrall to his need for vindication and vilification, even after his term expires.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-allies-take-pennsylvania-vote-complaint-to-us-supreme-court-347797" hreflang="en">Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court</a>

On Saturday night, Trump took his unreality show to Georgia for his first major public appearance since the Nov. 3 election. A rally to support two Republican senators in a runoff next month offered a high-profile opportunity to vent his grievances and promote his false claims that he was somehow cheated of a second term by a vast conspiracy.

“You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” he told supporters in a state that he lost by 12,000 votes, adding that he actually won other states where in fact he lost too. “They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” he declared as he pressured Republican state officials to overturn the results. “We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do.”

At times, Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/criminal-cruel-and-traitorous-donald-trump-belongs-in-prison-says-his-niece-mary-trump-347718" hreflang="en">'Criminal, cruel and traitorous' Donald Trump belongs in prison, says his niece Mary Trump</a>

“This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.”

Unlike any of his modern predecessors, Trump has not called his victorious opponent, much less invited him to the White House for the traditional postelection visit. Trump has indicated that he may not attend Biden’s inauguration, which would make him the first sitting president since 1869 to refuse to participate in the most important ritual of the peaceful transfer of power.

He has been enabled by Republican leaders unwilling to stand up to him, even if many privately wish he would go away sooner rather than later. After being called “profiles in cowardice” by an ally of the president, 75 Republican state legislators from Pennsylvania on Friday disavowed their own election and called on Congress to reject the state’s electors for Biden. Only 27 of 249 Republican members of Congress surveyed by The Washington Post publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory. Trump condemned them Saturday as “RINOS,” meaning Republicans in name only.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-orders-a-near-total-withdrawal-of-us-troops-from-somalia-347606" hreflang="en">Trump orders a near total withdrawal of US troops from Somalia</a>

“He really has paid attention to the base,” said Christopher Ruddy, a friend of the president’s and chief executive of Newsmax, part of the conservative news media megaphone that has amplified Trump’s allegations. “They got him elected and, in his mind, got him elected the second time. And they’re strongly in favor of this recount effort and they want him to continue this. In his mind, he’s not just doing this for himself he’s doing it for his supporters and for the country. He’s on a mission, and he’s not going to be easily swayed.”

Trump’s Twitter feed is a fire hose of denial. “NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION,” he wrote at one point in recent days. “We won Michigan by a lot!” he wrote at another of a state he lost by more than 154,000 votes. He reposted a message seeking to delegitimize Biden: “If he is inaugurated under these circumstances, he cannot be considered ‘president’ but instead referred to as the #presidentialoccupant.”

And he has turned on his own party, angry that Republican leaders have refused to accept his baseless claims and overturn the will of the voters. Shortly before arriving in Georgia on Saturday, Trump called Gov. Brian Kemp to press him to convene a special legislative session to supplant the results there, then lashed out at the governor at the rally for rebuffing him. “Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. He also tweeted that Kemp and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, another Republican stalwart, “fight harder against us than do the Radical Left Dems.”

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tenants-sue-trump-over-scheme-that-drove-up-their-rents-347463" hreflang="en">Tenants sue Trump over scheme that drove up their rents</a>

But even as the president desperately demands that somebody, anybody, tell him that he is right, no one in a position of authority has done so other than blood relatives, paid lawyers and partisan soul mates. The election has been certified and accepted not just by Democrats but also by key Republican governors, secretaries of state, election officials, city clerks, judges and even Trump administration officials.

After his own cybersecurity czar endorsed the integrity of the election, Trump fired him. Now that Attorney General William Barr has said he saw no fraud that would overturn the results, he may be next.

Trump’s video was so out of touch with the facts that both Facebook and Twitter appended warning notices lest viewers actually believe what the president of the United States was telling them. Which explains why the only topic other than the election to draw Trump’s interest over the last week was the annual defense bill that he vowed to veto because Congress did not strip a legal protection for big technology companies as he has demanded.

By contrast, he expressed little interest in the coronavirus now ravaging the country or the resulting economic devastation. Rather than “rounding the corner,” as Trump insisted once again Saturday night, the pandemic this past week began killing a record high of nearly 3,000 people in the United States every day, almost the equivalent of another Sept. 11 attack every 24 hours.

Trump made no comment on that in his Twitter rants, nor about the latest jobs report documenting the economic toll. His only four tweets mentioning the virus were about defending his own handling of it, including reposted messages asserting that “The president was RIGHT.”

With six weeks until he leaves office, Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Barr or others, issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath.

“If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

Over the past week, President Donald Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.

Over the past week, President Donald Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong. Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News. Also read| 'We're winning this election': Trump at first post-poll rally The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant land defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile, or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court. And while he will leave office in 45 days, the last few weeks may only foreshadow what he will be like after he departs. Trump will almost certainly try to shape the national conversation from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his relentless campaign to discredit the election could undercut his successor, President-elect Joe Biden. Although many Republicans would like to move on, he appears intent on forcing them to remain in thrall to his need for vindication and vilification, even after his term expires. Also read| Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court On Saturday night, Trump took his unreality show to Georgia for his first major public appearance since the Nov. 3 election. A rally to support two Republican senators in a runoff next month offered a high-profile opportunity to vent his grievances and promote his false claims that he was somehow cheated of a second term by a vast conspiracy. “You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” he told supporters in a state that he lost by 12,000 votes, adding that he actually won other states where in fact he lost too. “They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” he declared as he pressured Republican state officials to overturn the results. “We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do.” At times, Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate. Also read| 'Criminal, cruel and traitorous' Donald Trump belongs in prison, says his niece Mary Trump “This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.” Unlike any of his modern predecessors, Trump has not called his victorious opponent, much less invited him to the White House for the traditional postelection visit. Trump has indicated that he may not attend Biden’s inauguration, which would make him the first sitting president since 1869 to refuse to participate in the most important ritual of the peaceful transfer of power. He has been enabled by Republican leaders unwilling to stand up to him, even if many privately wish he would go away sooner rather than later. After being called “profiles in cowardice” by an ally of the president, 75 Republican state legislators from Pennsylvania on Friday disavowed their own election and called on Congress to reject the state’s electors for Biden. Only 27 of 249 Republican members of Congress surveyed by The Washington Post publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory. Trump condemned them Saturday as “RINOS,” meaning Republicans in name only. Also read| Trump orders a near total withdrawal of US troops from Somalia “He really has paid attention to the base,” said Christopher Ruddy, a friend of the president’s and chief executive of Newsmax, part of the conservative news media megaphone that has amplified Trump’s allegations. “They got him elected and, in his mind, got him elected the second time. And they’re strongly in favor of this recount effort and they want him to continue this. In his mind, he’s not just doing this for himself he’s doing it for his supporters and for the country. He’s on a mission, and he’s not going to be easily swayed.” Trump’s Twitter feed is a fire hose of denial. “NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION,” he wrote at one point in recent days. “We won Michigan by a lot!” he wrote at another of a state he lost by more than 154,000 votes. He reposted a message seeking to delegitimize Biden: “If he is inaugurated under these circumstances, he cannot be considered ‘president’ but instead referred to as the #presidentialoccupant.” And he has turned on his own party, angry that Republican leaders have refused to accept his baseless claims and overturn the will of the voters. Shortly before arriving in Georgia on Saturday, Trump called Gov. Brian Kemp to press him to convene a special legislative session to supplant the results there, then lashed out at the governor at the rally for rebuffing him. “Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. He also tweeted that Kemp and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, another Republican stalwart, “fight harder against us than do the Radical Left Dems.” Also read| Tenants sue Trump over scheme that drove up their rents But even as the president desperately demands that somebody, anybody, tell him that he is right, no one in a position of authority has done so other than blood relatives, paid lawyers and partisan soul mates. The election has been certified and accepted not just by Democrats but also by key Republican governors, secretaries of state, election officials, city clerks, judges and even Trump administration officials. After his own cybersecurity czar endorsed the integrity of the election, Trump fired him. Now that Attorney General William Barr has said he saw no fraud that would overturn the results, he may be next. Trump’s video was so out of touch with the facts that both Facebook and Twitter appended warning notices lest viewers actually believe what the president of the United States was telling them. Which explains why the only topic other than the election to draw Trump’s interest over the last week was the annual defense bill that he vowed to veto because Congress did not strip a legal protection for big technology companies as he has demanded. By contrast, he expressed little interest in the coronavirus now ravaging the country or the resulting economic devastation. Rather than “rounding the corner,” as Trump insisted once again Saturday night, the pandemic this past week began killing a record high of nearly 3,000 people in the United States every day, almost the equivalent of another Sept. 11 attack every 24 hours. Trump made no comment on that in his Twitter rants, nor about the latest jobs report documenting the economic toll. His only four tweets mentioning the virus were about defending his own handling of it, including reposted messages asserting that “The president was RIGHT.” With six weeks until he leaves office, Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Barr or others, issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath. “If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

Donald Trump’s final days of rage and denial

The US Vice President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris </a>will soon be sworn in for her post along with the President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden?page=1">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;in January 2021 and Harris will be making history as the first African-American and South Asian woman to become the Vice President of the US.

Harris won't be the only one making history. Her husband, Doug&nbsp;Emhoff, will be leaving a mark in the history of the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/the-white-house">White House</a> as he will be known as the first 'Second Gentleman' of the US.

Have a look| <a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/new-residents-white-house-starts-preparing-for-joe-bidens-inauguration-347910">White House starts preparing for Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony</a>

In a recent interview with a local media house, Kamala Harris confirmed the rumours and admitted to her husband being&nbsp;officially referred to as the "Second Gentleman of the United States" in the near future.

"What should we be calling him? Is he the second gentleman? Is he the second dude?" was what the anchor asked her, to which Harris laughingly responded, "Well, I think the term has evolved into 'second gentleman." She continued the joke by adding, "I'll call him honey."

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/kamala-harris-just-shared-her-familys-favourite-thanksgiving-recipe-of-all-time-345327">Kamala Harris just shared her family's favourite Thanksgiving recipe of all time</a>

This is, however, not confirmed by the White House. Kamala Harris is the first woman Vice President of the US, making it the first time a husband will be needing a title for being the partner of the Vice President. Before Harris, all partners of the VPs have been female and have been referred to as the 'Second Lady' — a term which was coined by Jennie Tuttle Hobart, wife of Vice President Garret Hobart (1897–1899) during her time as he 'Second Lady'.

Kamala Harris' win has been marked as a historic against the outgoing Vice President Mike Pence, who was supported by the Second lady&nbsp;Karen Pence.

Doug Emhoff is an American lawyer will reportedly be quitting his position in a corporate firm and will be joining Harris in the White House. However, the reports have not been confirmed yet. Irrespective of the transition, Emhoff has always maintained he will be supporting his wife "forever".

The US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will soon be sworn in for her post along with the President-elect Joe Biden in January 2021 and Harris will be making history as the first African-American and South Asian woman to become the Vice President of the US.

The US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will soon be sworn in for her post along with the President-elect Joe Biden in January 2021 and Harris will be making history as the first African-American and South Asian woman to become the Vice President of the US. Harris won't be the only one making history. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, will be leaving a mark in the history of the White House as he will be known as the first 'Second Gentleman' of the US. Have a look| White House starts preparing for Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony In a recent interview with a local media house, Kamala Harris confirmed the rumours and admitted to her husband being officially referred to as the "Second Gentleman of the United States" in the near future. "What should we be calling him? Is he the second gentleman? Is he the second dude?" was what the anchor asked her, to which Harris laughingly responded, "Well, I think the term has evolved into 'second gentleman." She continued the joke by adding, "I'll call him honey." Also read| Kamala Harris just shared her family's favourite Thanksgiving recipe of all time This is, however, not confirmed by the White House. Kamala Harris is the first woman Vice President of the US, making it the first time a husband will be needing a title for being the partner of the Vice President. Before Harris, all partners of the VPs have been female and have been referred to as the 'Second Lady' — a term which was coined by Jennie Tuttle Hobart, wife of Vice President Garret Hobart (1897–1899) during her time as he 'Second Lady'. Kamala Harris' win has been marked as a historic against the outgoing Vice President Mike Pence, who was supported by the Second lady Karen Pence. Doug Emhoff is an American lawyer will reportedly be quitting his position in a corporate firm and will be joining Harris in the White House. However, the reports have not been confirmed yet. Irrespective of the transition, Emhoff has always maintained he will be supporting his wife "forever".

Kamala Harris' husband to become first 'Second Gentleman' of White House

Allies of President Donald Trump sought an emergency order Thursday from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden.

The move follows the Pennsylvania state supreme court's rejection Saturday of a suit challenging expanded mail-in voting in the key northeastern state.

In the motion filed Thursday the top US court is not asked to rule on the merits of the case at this point.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/strong-support-from-president-trump-saudi-arabia-says-final-agreement-with-qatar-within-reach-347759">'Strong support from President Trump': Saudi Arabia says final agreement with Qatar 'within reach'</a>

Rather, the plaintiffs ask the court for an injunction to halt any remaining steps in the election certification, which was actually done last week, so the plaintiffs can develop their arguments. They include Mike Kelly, a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

The court is expected to respond quickly in writing and is not obliged to explain whatever ruling it makes.

Trump is still refusing to concede defeat in the November 3 election, alleging without providing evidence that there was widespread fraud in both voting and vote counting and that the election was stolen from him.

The Trump campaign and Trump allies have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states that he lost, seeking to overturn the results. In some 20-odd cases, however, the courts have rejected these suits.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/with-us-senate-majority-in-the-pot-parties-bring-out-big-guns-for-georgia-elections-347720">With US Senate majority in the pot, parties bring out big guns for Georgia elections</a>

On Tuesday Attorney General Bill Barr, a close ally of the president, broke with Trump and said there was no evidence of significant fraud to invalidate Biden's win.

Trump appointed three conservatives to the nine-member court during his presidency and said right after the November election he was prepared to go all the way to that tribunal to defend what he called his re-election victory.

In the 2000 presidential election, the high court halted a recount in Florida while George W. Bush held a 537-vote lead over Al Gore, handing Bush the presidency.

This time is different: There is not just one but several states that Trump is disputing and the margins of victory for Biden there are much larger than Bush's was.

The Supreme Court is considered unlikely to risk its reputation by getting involved in the Pennsylvania suit, which would not change the overall outcome of the election anyway.

Allies of President Donald Trump sought an emergency order Thursday from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden.

Allies of President Donald Trump sought an emergency order Thursday from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden. The move follows the Pennsylvania state supreme court's rejection Saturday of a suit challenging expanded mail-in voting in the key northeastern state. In the motion filed Thursday the top US court is not asked to rule on the merits of the case at this point. Also read| 'Strong support from President Trump': Saudi Arabia says final agreement with Qatar 'within reach' Rather, the plaintiffs ask the court for an injunction to halt any remaining steps in the election certification, which was actually done last week, so the plaintiffs can develop their arguments. They include Mike Kelly, a Republican member of the House of Representatives. The court is expected to respond quickly in writing and is not obliged to explain whatever ruling it makes. Trump is still refusing to concede defeat in the November 3 election, alleging without providing evidence that there was widespread fraud in both voting and vote counting and that the election was stolen from him. The Trump campaign and Trump allies have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states that he lost, seeking to overturn the results. In some 20-odd cases, however, the courts have rejected these suits. Also read| With US Senate majority in the pot, parties bring out big guns for Georgia elections On Tuesday Attorney General Bill Barr, a close ally of the president, broke with Trump and said there was no evidence of significant fraud to invalidate Biden's win. Trump appointed three conservatives to the nine-member court during his presidency and said right after the November election he was prepared to go all the way to that tribunal to defend what he called his re-election victory. In the 2000 presidential election, the high court halted a recount in Florida while George W. Bush held a 537-vote lead over Al Gore, handing Bush the presidency. This time is different: There is not just one but several states that Trump is disputing and the margins of victory for Biden there are much larger than Bush's was. The Supreme Court is considered unlikely to risk its reputation by getting involved in the Pennsylvania suit, which would not change the overall outcome of the election anyway.

Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court

The outgoing US President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;has made several enemies over the years, and sadly his own niece, Mary Trump, is one out of the people who think the former reality star deserves a place in the US prison.

Mary Trump has been an outspoken critic of her uncle and has repeatedly accused him of being egoistic, corrupt, racist and much more. Donald Trump, as expected, has always denied her allegations and has also resorted to <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-says-mary-trumps-book-is-a-lie-calls-it-stupid-and-vicious-314609">name calling</a>.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-will-never-want-to-lose-again-like-badly-mary-trump-343149">Donald Trump will never want to lose again like badly: Mary Trump</a>

This time, as the outgoing President is busy fighting tooth and nail to save his defeat by alleging voter fraud by President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;in the recently-conducted <a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election">US elections</a>, Mary has openly criticised Trump for his pending legal cases and has claimed that her uncle deserves a place in the US prison.

Dismissing the theory of many, Mary said in an interview that Donald Trump needs to be tried and prosecuted by the US justice department, instead of telling the general public that putting the outgoing President on trial will bring a greater division in country's political environment. "It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on," she said.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trumps-sister-calls-him-cruel-in-audio-recorded-by-niece-says-report-322487">Trump's sister calls him 'cruel' in audio recorded by niece, says report</a>

"If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald,” she added. “(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is."

The comments were not answered by Donald Trump or his team on depth. His team has alleged Mary of spreading such statements simply to "sell her book". Mary Trump is the author of a tell-all book on the trump family, titled "Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man." Her book became a threat for the Trump family who walked an extra mile to make unsuccessful attempts to block the publishing and release of this book. However, the book was released in July 2020 — few months before Trump faced Biden in a race to the White House.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/as-donald-trump-bats-for-goya-nieces-tell-all-book-registers-record-sales-314123">As Donald Trump bats for Goya, niece's 'tell-all' book registers record sales</a>

"It's not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, it’s that he's been allowed to be," she said. "Every transgression that's gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. That's partially why we're going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can."

Her statements have come at a time when Donald Trump is facing one pending criminal investigation, corruption charges and tax invasion for his dealings related to the trump Organization, and many more such cases filed by different individuals and organisations.&nbsp;

"I think it would be a tragedy if Donald and everybody who’s enabled him and committed crimes with him is not held accountable," Mary Trump said. "It would make it impossible for this country to recover in the long term."

This is not the first time Mary has lashed out at Trump's personal behaviour and its effect on the country, After his defeat, she had claimed that while there are rumours of Trump returning back four years later, he would not do this to himself because he cannot take 'such a defeat'. "I think that was floated initially as a way to appease him and his ego, but he will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again," see had said.

The outgoing US President Donald Trump has made several enemies over the years, and sadly his own niece, Mary Trump, is one out of the people who think the former reality star deserves a place in the US prison.

The outgoing US President Donald Trump has made several enemies over the years, and sadly his own niece, Mary Trump, is one out of the people who think the former reality star deserves a place in the US prison. Mary Trump has been an outspoken critic of her uncle and has repeatedly accused him of being egoistic, corrupt, racist and much more. Donald Trump, as expected, has always denied her allegations and has also resorted to name calling. Also read| Donald Trump will never want to lose again like badly: Mary Trump This time, as the outgoing President is busy fighting tooth and nail to save his defeat by alleging voter fraud by President-elect Joe Biden in the recently-conducted US elections, Mary has openly criticised Trump for his pending legal cases and has claimed that her uncle deserves a place in the US prison. Dismissing the theory of many, Mary said in an interview that Donald Trump needs to be tried and prosecuted by the US justice department, instead of telling the general public that putting the outgoing President on trial will bring a greater division in country's political environment. "It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on," she said. Also read| Trump's sister calls him 'cruel' in audio recorded by niece, says report "If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald,” she added. “(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is." The comments were not answered by Donald Trump or his team on depth. His team has alleged Mary of spreading such statements simply to "sell her book". Mary Trump is the author of a tell-all book on the trump family, titled "Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man." Her book became a threat for the Trump family who walked an extra mile to make unsuccessful attempts to block the publishing and release of this book. However, the book was released in July 2020 — few months before Trump faced Biden in a race to the White House. Also read| As Donald Trump bats for Goya, niece's 'tell-all' book registers record sales "It's not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, it’s that he's been allowed to be," she said. "Every transgression that's gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. That's partially why we're going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can." Her statements have come at a time when Donald Trump is facing one pending criminal investigation, corruption charges and tax invasion for his dealings related to the trump Organization, and many more such cases filed by different individuals and organisations. "I think it would be a tragedy if Donald and everybody who’s enabled him and committed crimes with him is not held accountable," Mary Trump said. "It would make it impossible for this country to recover in the long term." This is not the first time Mary has lashed out at Trump's personal behaviour and its effect on the country, After his defeat, she had claimed that while there are rumours of Trump returning back four years later, he would not do this to himself because he cannot take 'such a defeat'. "I think that was floated initially as a way to appease him and his ego, but he will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again," see had said.

'Criminal, cruel and traitorous' Donald Trump belongs in prison, says his niece Mary Trump

The top US intelligence official has labelled China the biggest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War Two.The highest number of any individual government apart from India which has already made agreements for 1.6 billion doses while the EU has secured a further 1.585 billion. In a first, a Pakistan back UN resolution saw over half the members of the New York headquarter body not voting for.&nbsp; 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-intel-chief-says-china-has-created-biologically-enhanced-super-soldiers-347331">US intel chief says China has created biologically enhanced super soldiers</a> 
 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2018/09/19/69945-china%2520army-reuters.JPG?itok=m6ItHTv4" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/former-us-presidents-biden-agree-to-get-vaccinated-on-camera-to-spread-awareness-347341">Former US presidents, Biden agree to get vaccinated on camera to spread awareness</a> 
 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/12/04/172453-untitled-design-8.jpg?itok=cu1SoRz3" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/major-embarrassment-for-pakistan-at-un-over-100-countries-decline-to-extend-support-to-resolution-backed-by-it-347332">Major embarrassment for Pakistan at UN: Over 100 countries decline to extend support to resolution backed by it</a> 
 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/09/21/160932-united-nations.jpg?itok=C_XAfOe9" />

&nbsp;

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-this-loophole-allowed-a-hacker-to-remotely-hack-an-iphone-347324/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/how-many-covid-19-vaccine-doses-has-the-nations-secured-347333/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The top US intelligence official has labelled China the biggest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War Two.The highest number of any individual government apart from India which has already made agreements for 1.

The top US intelligence official has labelled China the biggest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War Two.The highest number of any individual government apart from India which has already made agreements for 1.6 billion doses while the EU has secured a further 1.585 billion. In a first, a Pakistan back UN resolution saw over half the members of the New York headquarter body not voting for. US intel chief says China has created biologically enhanced super soldiers Former US presidents, Biden agree to get vaccinated on camera to spread awareness Major embarrassment for Pakistan at UN: Over 100 countries decline to extend support to resolution backed by it

Morning news brief: Super soldiers of China, Covid vaccine and more

Donald Trump has floated the idea of running for president again in 2024 at a holiday reception at the White House on Tuesday evening.

Donald Trump floats the idea of 2024 WH run, says 'I'll see you in four years'

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/india-china-stand-off-violent-clash-at-galwan-valley-was-planned-by-chinese-government-top-us-panel-346823">Violent clash at Galwan valley was ‘planned’ by Chinese government: Top US panel</a> 
 
<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/12/02/172103-india-china-meeting.jpg?itok=VmPIsx7d" />

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/ex-us-election-cybersecurity-chief-should-be-taken-out-and-shot-says-trump-lawyer-346802">Ex-US Election cybersecurity chief should be taken out and shot, says Trump lawyer</a>

<img src="https://cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/styles/story_page/public/2020/12/02/172090-chris-krebs.jpg?itok=LBWMegw0" />

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/covid-19-survivors-understanding-long-term-effects-through-a-self-help-group-346814/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/endangered-amphibians-are-being-raised-in-labs-in-quito-346817/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-justin-trudeaus-difficult-relationship-with-india-346790/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/sputnik-v-arrives-in-india-for-phase-2-3-clinical-trials-346813/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/covid-19-survivors-understanding-long-term-effects-through-a-self-help-group-346814/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Violent clash at Galwan valley was ‘planned’ by Chinese government: Top US panel Ex-US Election cybersecurity chief should be taken out and shot, says Trump law

Violent clash at Galwan valley was ‘planned’ by Chinese government: Top US panel Ex-US Election cybersecurity chief should be taken out and shot, says Trump lawyer

Morning news brief: China planned Galwan, US election, Brexit and more

A lawyer part of current US President Donald Trump's campaign&nbsp;is facing widespread flak for his extreme comments directed at former head of a federal cyber-security agency. Chris Krebs (pictured above), the former head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) had dismissed claims of fraud in US Presidential Election 2020. Joe DiGenova, the lawyer associated with the Trump campaign, said that Krebs should be "taken out at dawn and shot".

Donald Trump is yet to concede in spite of Joe Biden having a clear lead in the electoral college. Trump has mounted a legal offensive to challenge the validity of US election results.

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-probes-pardon-bribery-scheme-no-govt-official-under-investigation-346798">US probes pardon bribery scheme; no govt official under investigation</a> 
 
DiGenova, the Trump campaign lawyer made the extreme comments on The Howie Carr show, a podcast on Youtube. After Digenova made the remarks about Krebs, the host did not challenge his assertions.

Chris Krebs was fired as the head of Cisa not long after he said that US Elections were "most secure".

Although Trump has mounted number of lawsuits against election results, he or his team have not been able to produce substantial evidence and have suffered defeats in various courts.

A lawyer part of current US President Donald Trump's campaign is facing widespread flak for his extreme comments directed at former head of a federal cyber-security agency.

A lawyer part of current US President Donald Trump's campaign is facing widespread flak for his extreme comments directed at former head of a federal cyber-security agency. Chris Krebs (pictured above), the former head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) had dismissed claims of fraud in US Presidential Election 2020. Joe DiGenova, the lawyer associated with the Trump campaign, said that Krebs should be "taken out at dawn and shot". Donald Trump is yet to concede in spite of Joe Biden having a clear lead in the electoral college. Trump has mounted a legal offensive to challenge the validity of US election results. Also Read | US probes pardon bribery scheme; no govt official under investigation DiGenova, the Trump campaign lawyer made the extreme comments on The Howie Carr show, a podcast on Youtube. After Digenova made the remarks about Krebs, the host did not challenge his assertions. Chris Krebs was fired as the head of Cisa not long after he said that US Elections were "most secure". Although Trump has mounted number of lawsuits against election results, he or his team have not been able to produce substantial evidence and have suffered defeats in various courts.

Ex-US Election cybersecurity chief should be taken out and shot, says Trump lawyer

Indian-American Neera Tanden has been nominated by Joe Biden to the Office of Management & Budget at the White House. She will be the first woman of colour to head the influential post. Molly Gambhir tells you more.

Gravitas: The Indian-American face in Biden's team

The fierce and preemptive Republican pushback against President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden this week to head the White House budget office underscored the difficulties the incoming administration will face in maneuvering its nominees through a polarized Senate.

In the 11 years since Biden served in the chamber, partisanship has intensified, and nominations — once an area dominated by courtesy, comity and a presumption of accommodation — have become just another brutal battlefield.

Republicans will not be eager to accede to Biden’s choices if they can find reason for opposition. And disparaging comments about Republicans on Twitter from Tanden, a longtime Democratic policy adviser and head of a liberal think tank, were enough for many Republicans to threaten the nomination well before it was made official Tuesday.

“Trumpism has infected the entire Republican caucus,” said James P. Manley, a former longtime top Senate Democratic aide, who urged the incoming administration to brace for intense opposition from Republicans led by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “I am not sure everyone has figured out yet what is going on here, but I hope they will soon, and prepare for what is coming.”

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-threatens-military-spending-veto-in-social-media-bias-battle-346871">Trump threatens military spending veto in social media bias battle</a>

Should Democrats win two Senate seats in runoff elections to be held Jan. 5 in Georgia, the party would control the agenda and make approval of Biden’s nominees much easier. But if Democrats fail, Republicans will have the power to decide the fate of Biden’s executive and judicial branch picks.

The reality of a Democratic White House and a Republican Senate will take some adjusting to on Capitol Hill after four years of Republicans working hand-in-hand with President Donald Trump on nominations.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-justice-department-probes-potential-bribery-case-346836/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>
</div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

&nbsp;

Republicans said they were stunned by the selection of Tanden, whom many knew mainly as a hostile social media presence, to head the Office of Management and Budget. Even though many Republicans have refused to recognize Biden as the winner of the election, they said they were surprised that his team had not checked in with them on how they might react to her nomination to an agency that lawmakers in both parties see as critical when it comes to advancing congressional priorities.

“That was just an unforced error,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Tuesday. He said that moving forward in future cases without weighing Republican sentiment was “a roll of the dice” that could cause unnecessary embarrassment to a nominee or to Biden’s White House.

Initially, Republicans — who had refused to hold hearings for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in 2016 — suggested that they might not even take up Tanden’s nomination were it sent to the Senate. But Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who is poised to be the top Republican on one of the two committees that would oversee hearings for Tanden, said he believed she should receive one even if he was skeptical about her chances of confirmation.

“That’s our responsibility,” said Portman, who oversaw the budget office under President George W. Bush. “But it doesn’t mean she’ll get the votes.”

The handling of the announcement of Tanden’s nomination left some in both parties wondering whether Biden’s team was misreading the environment on Capitol Hill, where voting against an administration’s nominees has become essentially the default position for senators in the party out of power in recent years.

But people close to the transition team said opposition to Tanden’s nomination from some Republicans was no surprise to the president-elect or his team, nor was it evidence that Biden, who served almost four decades in the Senate, was naïve about what it would take to win confirmation of his choices. One person familiar with the deliberations said they expected as much from Republicans already angling to run for president in four years.

Advisers said Biden was cleareyed about the need to use some of his political capital to fight for Tanden’s nomination, citing her years of policymaking experience and a compelling personal story as reasons to fight to get her confirmed.

They noted that the reaction from Republicans to Biden’s other nominees has been more muted, with some Republicans suggesting they would be willing to give the president-elect deference in terms of who he wants in his Cabinet. One person close to the nomination process said that Biden and his team had, in fact, been reaching out to Republican lawmakers in recent weeks.

Transition officials said the crisis situation in the nation makes quick confirmation imperative.

“The country is facing multiple crises, from a pandemic that is killing over 10,000 Americans a week to a recession that is continuing to push thousands out of the workforce,” said Andrew Bates, a transition spokesman. “The American people cannot afford partisan obstruction of qualified and experienced women who are nominees.”

Democrats scoffed at the criticisms surrounding Tanden’s selection, particularly over her Twitter feed — given that most Senate Republicans have diligently spent four years evading queries about the array of policy announcements, racist commentary and inflammatory attacks on their own colleagues from Trump on Twitter.

“After spending four years pretending that they didn’t see the latest insane tweet from President Trump, Senate Republicans seem to have found a newfound interest in the Twitter feeds of President-elect Biden’s Cabinet selection,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor. “A few critical tweets about substantive policy positions have caused Senate Republicans to label Ms. Tanden’s nomination ‘radioactive.’ Spare us the hyperbole.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he believed that Biden and his team should reach out to Capitol Hill about the looming nominations. He added that he had been in touch with some of the intended nominees about scheduling private, one-on-one meetings. (On Tuesday, Schumer’s office circulated photographs of him in a video conference with Biden’s choices for secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, and director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines.)

“That’s probably the most important first thing because there’s nothing like making your case for yourself,” Kaine said. “Four years ago, President Trump put some nominees up — if they said things in tweets or whatever that we didn’t like, we’d ask them tough questions about that, so she will expect the same.”

Democrats also said they were astounded by calls from Republicans for extensive disclosures of business dealings from Biden’s potential picks after the record compiled by Trump.

“This is just stunning, even by the double standards of Washington,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who labeled the Trump administration “the Babe Ruth of darkness.”

“The Trump administration has stonewalled on so many things — starting with the president’s taxes — and then they come in and the first thing they’re doing is saying, ‘Oh, my goodness, there’s no transparency in the Biden administration,’” he added.

Manley, the former Senate aide, urged Democrats to stand behind the new administration’s nominees or face an onslaught of obstruction from emboldened Republicans.

“If Republicans have objections to her policy views, they should give her a hearing and grill her,” he said. “But the idea that they are prepared to block her nomination because she was mean to them on Twitter is ridiculous, and no Democrat should fall for it.”

The fierce and preemptive Republican pushback against President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden this week to head the White House budget office underscored the difficulties the incoming administration will face in maneuvering its nominees through a polarized Senate.

The fierce and preemptive Republican pushback against President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of Neera Tanden this week to head the White House budget office underscored the difficulties the incoming administration will face in maneuvering its nominees through a polarized Senate. In the 11 years since Biden served in the chamber, partisanship has intensified, and nominations — once an area dominated by courtesy, comity and a presumption of accommodation — have become just another brutal battlefield. Republicans will not be eager to accede to Biden’s choices if they can find reason for opposition. And disparaging comments about Republicans on Twitter from Tanden, a longtime Democratic policy adviser and head of a liberal think tank, were enough for many Republicans to threaten the nomination well before it was made official Tuesday. “Trumpism has infected the entire Republican caucus,” said James P. Manley, a former longtime top Senate Democratic aide, who urged the incoming administration to brace for intense opposition from Republicans led by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “I am not sure everyone has figured out yet what is going on here, but I hope they will soon, and prepare for what is coming.” Also Read | Trump threatens military spending veto in social media bias battle Should Democrats win two Senate seats in runoff elections to be held Jan. 5 in Georgia, the party would control the agenda and make approval of Biden’s nominees much easier. But if Democrats fail, Republicans will have the power to decide the fate of Biden’s executive and judicial branch picks. The reality of a Democratic White House and a Republican Senate will take some adjusting to on Capitol Hill after four years of Republicans working hand-in-hand with President Donald Trump on nominations. × Republicans said they were stunned by the selection of Tanden, whom many knew mainly as a hostile social media presence, to head the Office of Management and Budget. Even though many Republicans have refused to recognize Biden as the winner of the election, they said they were surprised that his team had not checked in with them on how they might react to her nomination to an agency that lawmakers in both parties see as critical when it comes to advancing congressional priorities. “That was just an unforced error,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Tuesday. He said that moving forward in future cases without weighing Republican sentiment was “a roll of the dice” that could cause unnecessary embarrassment to a nominee or to Biden’s White House. Initially, Republicans — who had refused to hold hearings for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in 2016 — suggested that they might not even take up Tanden’s nomination were it sent to the Senate. But Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who is poised to be the top Republican on one of the two committees that would oversee hearings for Tanden, said he believed she should receive one even if he was skeptical about her chances of confirmation. “That’s our responsibility,” said Portman, who oversaw the budget office under President George W. Bush. “But it doesn’t mean she’ll get the votes.” The handling of the announcement of Tanden’s nomination left some in both parties wondering whether Biden’s team was misreading the environment on Capitol Hill, where voting against an administration’s nominees has become essentially the default position for senators in the party out of power in recent years. But people close to the transition team said opposition to Tanden’s nomination from some Republicans was no surprise to the president-elect or his team, nor was it evidence that Biden, who served almost four decades in the Senate, was naïve about what it would take to win confirmation of his choices. One person familiar with the deliberations said they expected as much from Republicans already angling to run for president in four years. Advisers said Biden was cleareyed about the need to use some of his political capital to fight for Tanden’s nomination, citing her years of policymaking experience and a compelling personal story as reasons to fight to get her confirmed. They noted that the reaction from Republicans to Biden’s other nominees has been more muted, with some Republicans suggesting they would be willing to give the president-elect deference in terms of who he wants in his Cabinet. One person close to the nomination process said that Biden and his team had, in fact, been reaching out to Republican lawmakers in recent weeks. Transition officials said the crisis situation in the nation makes quick confirmation imperative. “The country is facing multiple crises, from a pandemic that is killing over 10,000 Americans a week to a recession that is continuing to push thousands out of the workforce,” said Andrew Bates, a transition spokesman. “The American people cannot afford partisan obstruction of qualified and experienced women who are nominees.” Democrats scoffed at the criticisms surrounding Tanden’s selection, particularly over her Twitter feed — given that most Senate Republicans have diligently spent four years evading queries about the array of policy announcements, racist commentary and inflammatory attacks on their own colleagues from Trump on Twitter. “After spending four years pretending that they didn’t see the latest insane tweet from President Trump, Senate Republicans seem to have found a newfound interest in the Twitter feeds of President-elect Biden’s Cabinet selection,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor. “A few critical tweets about substantive policy positions have caused Senate Republicans to label Ms. Tanden’s nomination ‘radioactive.’ Spare us the hyperbole.” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he believed that Biden and his team should reach out to Capitol Hill about the looming nominations. He added that he had been in touch with some of the intended nominees about scheduling private, one-on-one meetings. (On Tuesday, Schumer’s office circulated photographs of him in a video conference with Biden’s choices for secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, and director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines.) “That’s probably the most important first thing because there’s nothing like making your case for yourself,” Kaine said. “Four years ago, President Trump put some nominees up — if they said things in tweets or whatever that we didn’t like, we’d ask them tough questions about that, so she will expect the same.” Democrats also said they were astounded by calls from Republicans for extensive disclosures of business dealings from Biden’s potential picks after the record compiled by Trump. “This is just stunning, even by the double standards of Washington,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who labeled the Trump administration “the Babe Ruth of darkness.” “The Trump administration has stonewalled on so many things — starting with the president’s taxes — and then they come in and the first thing they’re doing is saying, ‘Oh, my goodness, there’s no transparency in the Biden administration,’” he added. Manley, the former Senate aide, urged Democrats to stand behind the new administration’s nominees or face an onslaught of obstruction from emboldened Republicans. “If Republicans have objections to her policy views, they should give her a hearing and grill her,” he said. “But the idea that they are prepared to block her nomination because she was mean to them on Twitter is ridiculous, and no Democrat should fall for it.”

Republican resistance to Tanden illustrates trouble ahead for Biden

The US President-elect&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;has been vocal about bringing more diversity in his cabinet and team. Living up to his promise, he has announced an all-female senior White House communications team.

This is the first time a President has elected an all-female team. The decision has been made as a part of the recent appointments after Biden's historic win against the outgoing President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;in the recently held&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election">US elections</a>.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/brazilian-president-jair-bolsonaro-alleges-lot-of-fraud-in-us-election-2020-346316">Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020</a>

"I am proud to announce today the first senior White House communications team comprised entirely of women," Biden said in a statement. "These qualified, experienced communicators bring diverse perspectives to their work and a shared commitment to building this country back better."

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-president-elect-joe-biden-picks-all-women-senior-communication-team-346357/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>
</div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

For the role of the White House press secretary, Boden appointed Jen Psaki who has held an array of senior positions in the White House in the past, including — but not limited to —&nbsp;White House communications director under the Obama-Biden administration. The 41-year-old has also served as a spokesperson for the United States Department of State and is a contributor on CNN.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/joe-biden-to-nominate-indian-american-neera-tanden-as-budget-chief-report-346315" hreflang="en">Joe Biden to nominate Indian-American Neera Tanden as budget chief: Report&nbsp;</a>

To assist Psaki,&nbsp;Kate Bedingfield has also been appointed as White House communications director.&nbsp;Bedingfield has earlier served as Biden's deputy campaign manager and his&nbsp;communications director.

In addition to the two senior members,&nbsp;Ashley Etienne will be serving as communications director for <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;Symone Sanders will be acting&nbsp;as Harris's senior advisor and chief spokeswoman.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-loses-another-election-court-challenge-legal-defeats-pile-up-346148" hreflang="en">Trump loses another election court challenge; legal defeats pile up</a>

Pili Tobar was named deputy White House communications director and Karine Jean Pierre will be principal deputy press secretary. The incoming First Lady, Jill Biden, will have the support of&nbsp;Elizabeth Alexander as her communications director.

The women will start working in the office after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in for their positions on January 20.

The US President-elect Joe Biden has been vocal about bringing more diversity in his cabinet and team. Living up to his promise, he has announced an all-female senior White House communications team.

The US President-elect Joe Biden has been vocal about bringing more diversity in his cabinet and team. Living up to his promise, he has announced an all-female senior White House communications team. This is the first time a President has elected an all-female team. The decision has been made as a part of the recent appointments after Biden's historic win against the outgoing President Donald Trump in the recently held US elections. Also read| Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020 "I am proud to announce today the first senior White House communications team comprised entirely of women," Biden said in a statement. "These qualified, experienced communicators bring diverse perspectives to their work and a shared commitment to building this country back better." × For the role of the White House press secretary, Boden appointed Jen Psaki who has held an array of senior positions in the White House in the past, including — but not limited to — White House communications director under the Obama-Biden administration. The 41-year-old has also served as a spokesperson for the United States Department of State and is a contributor on CNN. Also read| Joe Biden to nominate Indian-American Neera Tanden as budget chief: Report To assist Psaki, Kate Bedingfield has also been appointed as White House communications director. Bedingfield has earlier served as Biden's deputy campaign manager and his communications director. In addition to the two senior members, Ashley Etienne will be serving as communications director for Kamala Harris and Symone Sanders will be acting as Harris's senior advisor and chief spokeswoman. Also read| Trump loses another election court challenge; legal defeats pile up Pili Tobar was named deputy White House communications director and Karine Jean Pierre will be principal deputy press secretary. The incoming First Lady, Jill Biden, will have the support of Elizabeth Alexander as her communications director. The women will start working in the office after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in for their positions on January 20.

Joe Biden appoints White House's first all-female communication team

The stage being built on the West Front of the Capitol can hold 1,600 spectators for a close-up view of President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;as he takes the oath of office. The reviewing stand under construction in front of the White House will be ready for the inaugural parade and thousands of cheering onlookers as the marchers pass by. And the National Mall is prepared to accommodate many more.

But the traditional pomp and circumstance of America’s quadrennial version of a coronation is colliding with the grim reality of a pandemic that is likely to still be raging on Jan. 20. For that reason, Biden’s team is signaling that he wants a very different kind of inauguration.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trumps-close-advisor-scott-atlas-resigns-from-covid-19-taskforce-346573">Donald Trump's close advisor, Scott Atlas, resigns from COVID-19 taskforce</a>

If he had won reelection, President Donald Trump was expected to shrug off the health threats in favor of huge crowds for his inauguration. But Biden has already indicated that his will not be business as usual. In a statement Monday, the newly appointed chief executive of Biden’s inaugural committee hinted at the looming balancing act between health and politics.
<img alt="The reviewing stand in Washington, between the White House and Lafayette Square, on Monday, Nov. 30, 2020. The pomp and circumstance of America’s quadrennial presidential inauguration is colliding with the grim reality of a pandemic that is likely to still be raging on January 20, 2021. (Doug Mills © 2020 The New York Times)" data-align="center" data-caption="The reviewing stand in Washington, between the White House and Lafayette Square, on Monday, Nov. 30, 2020. The pomp and circumstance of America’s quadrennial presidential inauguration is colliding with the grim reality of a pandemic that is likely to still be raging on January 20, 2021. (Doug Mills © 2020 The New York Times)" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="6316f866-76a9-49c8-beef-fc3e47e72508" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Joe%20Biden%20inauguration%20%282%29.jpg" />
“We will honor the American inaugural traditions and engage Americans across the country while keeping everybody healthy and safe,” said Tony Allen, the president of Delaware State University and the committee’s chief executive.

What could that look like?

Aides to the president-elect are being coy. But Biden’s approach to campaigning during the pandemic — which included drive-in rallies, socially distanced news conferences and a largely virtual national convention — provides a blueprint for how events might be reshaped for the COVID era.

On Capitol Hill, where the official inaugural ceremonies are arranged by a bipartisan congressional committee, lawmakers and aides have quietly been at work since long before the election trying to reimagine what a transfer of power during a pandemic might look like.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/joe-biden-appoints-white-houses-first-all-female-communication-team-346323">Joe Biden appoints White House's first all-female communication team</a>

The short answer is: quite a bit less crowded.

The organizers are determined that Biden take the oath of office and deliver an address to the nation outside the West Front of the Capitol, preserving an iconic tableau that has often set the tone for a new presidency. But to make it happen, they are likely to slash the number of officials flanking Biden. Those who do make the cut — Supreme Court justices, former presidents, top House and Senate leaders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff among them — will be required to socially distance and wear masks. Some may be asked to take coronavirus tests.

The most difficult challenge may be keeping away crowds. Congress typically distributes 200,000 tickets for seats near the platform. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who is overseeing the planning on Capitol Hill, has indicated that number could be cut drastically.
<img alt="The reviewing stand in Washington, between the White House and Lafayette Square, on Monday, Nov. 30, 2020. The pomp and circumstance of America’s quadrennial presidential inauguration is colliding with the grim reality of a pandemic that is likely to still be raging on January 20, 2021. (Doug Mills © 2020 The New York Times)" data-align="center" data-caption="The reviewing stand in Washington, between the White House and Lafayette Square, on Monday, Nov. 30, 2020. The pomp and circumstance of America’s quadrennial presidential inauguration is colliding with the grim reality of a pandemic that is likely to still be raging on January 20, 2021. (Doug Mills © 2020 The New York Times)" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="f6b58329-62d9-475d-804a-29e167a5bf1c" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Joe%20Biden%20inauguration.jpg" />
Inaugural planners are still debating whether they can salvage a luncheon in National Statuary Hall at the Capitol, where more than 200 dignitaries and guests have honored the new president since the 1950s. They may also alter or cancel a smaller signing ceremony in the ornate President’s Room off the Senate floor. A traditional military review on the East Front of the Capitol, on the other hand, may still go on in some form.

The planning has been overshadowed by congressional Republicans, including Blunt, who have not refuted the president’s baseless claims that he defeated Biden. Blunt turned heads during a television appearance over the weekend, when he refused to unequivocally congratulate Biden as the victor. But Paige Waltz, a spokesperson for the congressional inaugural committee, said Monday that while “the electoral process is still playing out,” Blunt’s team would begin coordinating with Biden’s.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/brazilian-president-jair-bolsonaro-alleges-lot-of-fraud-in-us-election-2020-346316">Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020</a>

One uncertainty for lawmakers: whether Trump will agree to attend his successor’s inauguration given his complaints about what he calls a rigged election. If he declines, he will be only the fourth president to deliver such a snub, after John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson.

But Democrats have signaled that they have seen no partisan interference in the planning process and expect a smooth inauguration.

“While the pandemic will make this inauguration look different than previous years, we are committed to creating a safe ceremony that reflects the significance of the occasion,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Blunt’s Democratic counterpart, said in a statement.

Given the worsening pandemic, it is unclear whether Biden might seek to proactively discourage Americans from traveling to the nation’s capital to witness the inauguration in person by gathering on the Mall in the shadow of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Those spaces are usually open to the public without restrictions during the ceremony.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/joe-biden-to-nominate-indian-american-neera-tanden-as-budget-chief-report-346315" hreflang="en">Joe Biden to nominate Indian-American Neera Tanden as budget chief: Report&nbsp;</a>

In December 2008, the committee organizing the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama issued a news release announcing that “for the first time, the entire length of the National Mall will be opened to the public so that more people than ever before will be able to witness the swearing-in of the president from a vantage point in sight of the Capitol.”

Biden’s committee has no plans to issue a statement like that.

One thing is definite: Biden’s inauguration will not be the kind of over-the-top celebration that Trump has often talked about wanting, with Army tanks and fighter jets. Instead, people close to Biden suggest that he will use the model of his campaign, which sought to preserve some of the excitement of big political events while devising them to minimize the spread of the virus.

At the Democratic National Convention, Biden delivered his acceptance speech between recorded video segments highlighting the diversity of the nation. At rallies, the former vice president often spoke in front of people gathered in their cars, honking their horns. And when he declared victory in Wilmington, Delaware, his campaign launched fireworks.

Could there be a drive-in inaugural celebration? Might a parade of cars with Delaware license plates — Biden’s home state — be a safe way to ring in his presidency? The Biden inaugural committee is not saying.

Addisu Demissie, who helped design and run the Democratic National Convention this summer, said the trick would be to combine in-person elements from a traditional inauguration with virtual, Internet-based moments that bring in voices of people who cannot travel to attend the celebration.

“To me, that’s the core challenge,” Demissie said. “You have to include the traditional elements. But you can’t just take the model that existed four, eight or 12 years ago and put it on Zoom. You have to create some new traditions. The circumstances demand that.”

After spending months warning about the dangers of hosting large gatherings indoors — and criticizing Trump for doing so — Biden is unlikely to host fancy inaugural balls where hundreds of supporters are crammed into ballrooms.

That would be a sharp departure from the past three inaugurations. Obama hosted elaborate galas attended by A-list Hollywood celebrities for both of his inaugurations, including a late-night concert at the Lincoln Memorial that hundreds of thousands of people attended. Trump held three official balls.

A parade is also in question.

Newly inaugurated presidents have often participated in a slow drive along Pennsylvania Avenue and then watched local marching bands and other floats from the reviewing stand near Lafayette Park. The stand for January is ready, but hosting a parade would invite large crowds to gather along the route, something that Biden is likely to want to avoid.

A scaled-back celebration could also be cheaper to put on because of fewer security and travel costs, though Demissie said that producing video and broadcasting from remote locations for a more virtual inauguration would also be costly.

There were signs Monday that though Biden may not be trying to top his predecessor, who raised a record $107 million for his 2017 festivities, he would welcome donations from wealthy individuals and corporations.

Biden’s team indicated that it would accept donations of up to $500,000 from individuals and up to $1 million from corporations, according to an official involved in the planning. The cap is set by each president and has fluctuated over the years, as incoming executives have used the inauguration to set the tone for their presidencies. Obama, for instance, banned corporate gifts altogether in 2009 and capped individual gifts at $50,000 before easing restrictions in 2013. Trump, on the other hand, accepted $5 million from Sheldon Adelson, the conservative casino mogul.

Biden’s team has sent something of a mixed message. His inauguration will not accept donations from fossil fuel companies, defined as “companies whose primary business is the extraction, processing, distribution or sale of oil, gas or coal,” or their executives — a group that gave Trump about $10 million. Nor will Biden accept funds from registered lobbyists.

But that is a relatively small subset of Washington’s lucrative influence industry, and Biden’s team indicated that it would still accept some gifts from corporations and trade associations, which typically shower incoming presidents’ inaugurations with cash to promote goodwill with officials. It remained to be seen whether Biden would put together the kind of exclusive, VIP packages that typically woo big donors.

He also selected Katie Petrelius, the national finance director who oversaw an effort that raised record sums for his campaign, to serve in a similar role as the top fundraiser for his inauguration, according to a person familiar with the appointment.

The stage being built on the West Front of the Capitol can hold 1,600 spectators for a close-up view of President-elect Joe Biden as he takes the oath of office.

The stage being built on the West Front of the Capitol can hold 1,600 spectators for a close-up view of President-elect Joe Biden as he takes the oath of office. The reviewing stand under construction in front of the White House will be ready for the inaugural parade and thousands of cheering onlookers as the marchers pass by. And the National Mall is prepared to accommodate many more. But the traditional pomp and circumstance of America’s quadrennial version of a coronation is colliding with the grim reality of a pandemic that is likely to still be raging on Jan. 20. For that reason, Biden’s team is signaling that he wants a very different kind of inauguration. Also read| Donald Trump's close advisor, Scott Atlas, resigns from COVID-19 taskforce If he had won reelection, President Donald Trump was expected to shrug off the health threats in favor of huge crowds for his inauguration. But Biden has already indicated that his will not be business as usual. In a statement Monday, the newly appointed chief executive of Biden’s inaugural committee hinted at the looming balancing act between health and politics. “We will honor the American inaugural traditions and engage Americans across the country while keeping everybody healthy and safe,” said Tony Allen, the president of Delaware State University and the committee’s chief executive. What could that look like? Aides to the president-elect are being coy. But Biden’s approach to campaigning during the pandemic — which included drive-in rallies, socially distanced news conferences and a largely virtual national convention — provides a blueprint for how events might be reshaped for the COVID era. On Capitol Hill, where the official inaugural ceremonies are arranged by a bipartisan congressional committee, lawmakers and aides have quietly been at work since long before the election trying to reimagine what a transfer of power during a pandemic might look like. Also read| Joe Biden appoints White House's first all-female communication team The short answer is: quite a bit less crowded. The organizers are determined that Biden take the oath of office and deliver an address to the nation outside the West Front of the Capitol, preserving an iconic tableau that has often set the tone for a new presidency. But to make it happen, they are likely to slash the number of officials flanking Biden. Those who do make the cut — Supreme Court justices, former presidents, top House and Senate leaders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff among them — will be required to socially distance and wear masks. Some may be asked to take coronavirus tests. The most difficult challenge may be keeping away crowds. Congress typically distributes 200,000 tickets for seats near the platform. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who is overseeing the planning on Capitol Hill, has indicated that number could be cut drastically. Inaugural planners are still debating whether they can salvage a luncheon in National Statuary Hall at the Capitol, where more than 200 dignitaries and guests have honored the new president since the 1950s. They may also alter or cancel a smaller signing ceremony in the ornate President’s Room off the Senate floor. A traditional military review on the East Front of the Capitol, on the other hand, may still go on in some form. The planning has been overshadowed by congressional Republicans, including Blunt, who have not refuted the president’s baseless claims that he defeated Biden. Blunt turned heads during a television appearance over the weekend, when he refused to unequivocally congratulate Biden as the victor. But Paige Waltz, a spokesperson for the congressional inaugural committee, said Monday that while “the electoral process is still playing out,” Blunt’s team would begin coordinating with Biden’s. Also read| Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020 One uncertainty for lawmakers: whether Trump will agree to attend his successor’s inauguration given his complaints about what he calls a rigged election. If he declines, he will be only the fourth president to deliver such a snub, after John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson. But Democrats have signaled that they have seen no partisan interference in the planning process and expect a smooth inauguration. “While the pandemic will make this inauguration look different than previous years, we are committed to creating a safe ceremony that reflects the significance of the occasion,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Blunt’s Democratic counterpart, said in a statement. Given the worsening pandemic, it is unclear whether Biden might seek to proactively discourage Americans from traveling to the nation’s capital to witness the inauguration in person by gathering on the Mall in the shadow of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Those spaces are usually open to the public without restrictions during the ceremony. Also read| Joe Biden to nominate Indian-American Neera Tanden as budget chief: Report In December 2008, the committee organizing the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama issued a news release announcing that “for the first time, the entire length of the National Mall will be opened to the public so that more people than ever before will be able to witness the swearing-in of the president from a vantage point in sight of the Capitol.” Biden’s committee has no plans to issue a statement like that. One thing is definite: Biden’s inauguration will not be the kind of over-the-top celebration that Trump has often talked about wanting, with Army tanks and fighter jets. Instead, people close to Biden suggest that he will use the model of his campaign, which sought to preserve some of the excitement of big political events while devising them to minimize the spread of the virus. At the Democratic National Convention, Biden delivered his acceptance speech between recorded video segments highlighting the diversity of the nation. At rallies, the former vice president often spoke in front of people gathered in their cars, honking their horns. And when he declared victory in Wilmington, Delaware, his campaign launched fireworks. Could there be a drive-in inaugural celebration? Might a parade of cars with Delaware license plates — Biden’s home state — be a safe way to ring in his presidency? The Biden inaugural committee is not saying. Addisu Demissie, who helped design and run the Democratic National Convention this summer, said the trick would be to combine in-person elements from a traditional inauguration with virtual, Internet-based moments that bring in voices of people who cannot travel to attend the celebration. “To me, that’s the core challenge,” Demissie said. “You have to include the traditional elements. But you can’t just take the model that existed four, eight or 12 years ago and put it on Zoom. You have to create some new traditions. The circumstances demand that.” After spending months warning about the dangers of hosting large gatherings indoors — and criticizing Trump for doing so — Biden is unlikely to host fancy inaugural balls where hundreds of supporters are crammed into ballrooms. That would be a sharp departure from the past three inaugurations. Obama hosted elaborate galas attended by A-list Hollywood celebrities for both of his inaugurations, including a late-night concert at the Lincoln Memorial that hundreds of thousands of people attended. Trump held three official balls. A parade is also in question. Newly inaugurated presidents have often participated in a slow drive along Pennsylvania Avenue and then watched local marching bands and other floats from the reviewing stand near Lafayette Park. The stand for January is ready, but hosting a parade would invite large crowds to gather along the route, something that Biden is likely to want to avoid. A scaled-back celebration could also be cheaper to put on because of fewer security and travel costs, though Demissie said that producing video and broadcasting from remote locations for a more virtual inauguration would also be costly. There were signs Monday that though Biden may not be trying to top his predecessor, who raised a record $107 million for his 2017 festivities, he would welcome donations from wealthy individuals and corporations. Biden’s team indicated that it would accept donations of up to $500,000 from individuals and up to $1 million from corporations, according to an official involved in the planning. The cap is set by each president and has fluctuated over the years, as incoming executives have used the inauguration to set the tone for their presidencies. Obama, for instance, banned corporate gifts altogether in 2009 and capped individual gifts at $50,000 before easing restrictions in 2013. Trump, on the other hand, accepted $5 million from Sheldon Adelson, the conservative casino mogul. Biden’s team has sent something of a mixed message. His inauguration will not accept donations from fossil fuel companies, defined as “companies whose primary business is the extraction, processing, distribution or sale of oil, gas or coal,” or their executives — a group that gave Trump about $10 million. Nor will Biden accept funds from registered lobbyists. But that is a relatively small subset of Washington’s lucrative influence industry, and Biden’s team indicated that it would still accept some gifts from corporations and trade associations, which typically shower incoming presidents’ inaugurations with cash to promote goodwill with officials. It remained to be seen whether Biden would put together the kind of exclusive, VIP packages that typically woo big donors. He also selected Katie Petrelius, the national finance director who oversaw an effort that raised record sums for his campaign, to serve in a similar role as the top fundraiser for his inauguration, according to a person familiar with the appointment.

Joe Biden’s inauguration: Expect smaller crowds and more social distancing

Showing his true support and friendship towards the US outgoing president <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>, the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has alleged that there was "a lot of fraud"&nbsp;in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election">US elections</a>.&nbsp;

The accusation was made by Bolsonaro on Sunday while he was talking to the reporters after casting a ballot in municipal races.&nbsp;

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/dont-be-embarrassing-czech-president-asks-donald-trump-to-step-down-344233">'Don't be embarrassing': Czech President asks Donald Trump to step down</a>

"I have my sources of information that there really was a lot of fraud there," he said. "Nobody talks about that. If it was enough to define (victory) for one or the other, I don't know."

This statement by Bolsonaro has come after Donald Trump has refused to concede to the President-elect&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>'s historic win.&nbsp;The accusation made by Bolsonaro echoes Trump's campaign. The outgoing President has been alleging voter fraud from his opponent for the last few weeks now. Trump has been challenging the election result with various legal cases, the majority of which he lost. However, he has refused to give up and concede. "It's not like you're gonna change my mind. My mind will not change in six months," he recently said in an interview with a local national TV.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-still-refuses-to-budge-from-election-fraud-claims-346310">Donald Trump still refuses to budge from election fraud claims</a>

"This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud," he claimed, without providing any proof. "We won the election easily."

While many world leaders have come ahead and congratulated Biden, Bolsonaro said he will be waiting for a while before reaching out to the Democratic President-elect. "I am holding back a little more," he said.

Bolsonaro expressed his concern for the alleged US election voter fraud simply to support his argument against the electronic voting system that will be used in the 2022 Brazilian presidential elections. He has been urging leaders and people to go back to the paper ballot system for the 2022 elections, and now he has used Trump's allegations to further his own motives.

Donald Trump has not yet reacted to this rare support he has received from a world leader since the election results. He has been keeping off the grid since Biden's win was announced, and leaders flocked to congratulate him and his Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Trump's lawyers have been busy filing legal challenges against the election result in various states — leading to defeat in those too.

Showing his true support and friendship towards the US outgoing president Donald Trump, the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has alleged that there was "a lot of fraud" in the US elections.

Showing his true support and friendship towards the US outgoing president Donald Trump, the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has alleged that there was "a lot of fraud" in the US elections. The accusation was made by Bolsonaro on Sunday while he was talking to the reporters after casting a ballot in municipal races. Also read| 'Don't be embarrassing': Czech President asks Donald Trump to step down "I have my sources of information that there really was a lot of fraud there," he said. "Nobody talks about that. If it was enough to define (victory) for one or the other, I don't know." This statement by Bolsonaro has come after Donald Trump has refused to concede to the President-elect Joe Biden's historic win. The accusation made by Bolsonaro echoes Trump's campaign. The outgoing President has been alleging voter fraud from his opponent for the last few weeks now. Trump has been challenging the election result with various legal cases, the majority of which he lost. However, he has refused to give up and concede. "It's not like you're gonna change my mind. My mind will not change in six months," he recently said in an interview with a local national TV. Also read| Donald Trump still refuses to budge from election fraud claims "This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud," he claimed, without providing any proof. "We won the election easily." While many world leaders have come ahead and congratulated Biden, Bolsonaro said he will be waiting for a while before reaching out to the Democratic President-elect. "I am holding back a little more," he said. Bolsonaro expressed his concern for the alleged US election voter fraud simply to support his argument against the electronic voting system that will be used in the 2022 Brazilian presidential elections. He has been urging leaders and people to go back to the paper ballot system for the 2022 elections, and now he has used Trump's allegations to further his own motives. Donald Trump has not yet reacted to this rare support he has received from a world leader since the election results. He has been keeping off the grid since Biden's win was announced, and leaders flocked to congratulate him and his Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Trump's lawyers have been busy filing legal challenges against the election result in various states — leading to defeat in those too.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020

The US&nbsp;President-elect&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;has suffered a foot fracture and will probably have to wear a medical boot after he slipped while playing with one of his pet dogs, his team reported.

Biden and his love for his pets has been in the spotlight recently following the news of pet dogs returning to the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/the-white-house">White House</a>&nbsp;after the outgoing President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>'s four years of Presidency.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/brazilian-president-jair-bolsonaro-alleges-lot-of-fraud-in-us-election-2020-346316">Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020</a>

Upon slipping, the 78-year-old was taken to a doctor. His&nbsp;personal physician Kevin O'Connor had initially recommended an X-ray which had not revealed any&nbsp;obvious fracture. However, an additional CT scan was also recommended to the President-elect which showed "confirmed hairline (small) fractures... in the mid-foot".

His physician also added that Biden "will likely require a walking bot for several weeks". The statement sent fits of laughter among the Trump supporters who recalled the time when Trump had joked about Biden having to retire to a walking bot in future due to his 'old age'.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-president-elect-joe-biden-suffers-hairline-fracture-in-foot-346363/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>
</div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

However, the attitude of Trump supporters did not reflect in Trump's own behaviour, who took to Twitter to extend wishes to the President-elect.&nbsp;

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Get well soon! <a href="https://t.co/B0seiO84ld">https://t.co/B0seiO84ld</a>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1333217873758654464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 30, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

In a Twitter video of an American channel, Biden was spotted leaving his&nbsp;orthopedic's office in Delaware. Trump retweeted the tweet with the caption "Get well soon!".

Biden has two dogs. Champ has been living with the incoming President's family since 2008, and Major was fostered and then adopted by the Biden clan in 2018 — making him the first rescue dog in the White House.

The US President-elect Joe Biden has suffered a foot fracture and will probably have to wear a medical boot after he slipped while playing with one of his pet dogs, his team reported.

The US President-elect Joe Biden has suffered a foot fracture and will probably have to wear a medical boot after he slipped while playing with one of his pet dogs, his team reported. Biden and his love for his pets has been in the spotlight recently following the news of pet dogs returning to the White House after the outgoing President Donald Trump's four years of Presidency. Also read| Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020 Upon slipping, the 78-year-old was taken to a doctor. His personal physician Kevin O'Connor had initially recommended an X-ray which had not revealed any obvious fracture. However, an additional CT scan was also recommended to the President-elect which showed "confirmed hairline (small) fractures... in the mid-foot". His physician also added that Biden "will likely require a walking bot for several weeks". The statement sent fits of laughter among the Trump supporters who recalled the time when Trump had joked about Biden having to retire to a walking bot in future due to his 'old age'. × However, the attitude of Trump supporters did not reflect in Trump's own behaviour, who took to Twitter to extend wishes to the President-elect. Get well soon! https://t.co/B0seiO84ld — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2020 × In a Twitter video of an American channel, Biden was spotted leaving his orthopedic's office in Delaware. Trump retweeted the tweet with the caption "Get well soon!". Biden has two dogs. Champ has been living with the incoming President's family since 2008, and Major was fostered and then adopted by the Biden clan in 2018 — making him the first rescue dog in the White House.

Joe Biden fractures foot after slipping; Donald Trump extends wishes

In the tense days after the presidential election, a team of Facebook employees presented the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, with an alarming finding: Election-related misinformation was going viral on the site.

President Donald Trump was already casting the election as rigged, and stories from right-wing media outlets with false and misleading claims about discarded ballots, miscounted votes and skewed tallies were among the most popular news stories on the platform.

In response, the employees proposed an emergency change to the site’s news feed algorithm, which helps determine what more than 2 billion people see every day. It involved emphasizing the importance of what Facebook calls “news ecosystem quality” scores, or NEQ, a secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/uk-to-curb-google-and-facebooks-dominance-with-tougher-rules-345681">UK to curb Google and Facebook's dominance with tougher rules</a>

Typically, NEQ scores play a minor role in determining what appears on users’ feeds. But several days after the election, Zuckerberg agreed to increase the weight that Facebook’s algorithm gave to NEQ scores to make sure authoritative news appeared more prominently, said three people with knowledge of the decision, who were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

The change was part of the “break glass” plans Facebook had spent months developing for the aftermath of a contested election. It resulted in a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said.

It was a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like. Some employees argued the change should become permanent, even if it was unclear how that might affect the amount of time people spent on Facebook. In an employee meeting the week after the election, workers asked whether the “nicer news feed” could stay, said two people who attended.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/in-a-first-facebook-offers-estimate-of-hate-speech-prevalence-on-its-platform-344315">In a first, Facebook offers estimate of hate speech prevalence on its platform</a>

Guy Rosen, a Facebook executive who oversees the integrity division that is in charge of cleaning up the platform, said on a call with reporters last week that the changes were always meant to be temporary. “There has never been a plan to make these permanent,” he said. John Hegeman, who oversees the news feed, said in an interview that while Facebook might roll back these experiments, it would study and learn from them.

The news feed debate illustrates a central tension that some inside Facebook are feeling acutely these days: that the company’s aspirations of improving the world are often at odds with its desire for dominance.

In the past several months, as Facebook has come under more scrutiny for its role in amplifying false and divisive information, its employees have clashed over the company’s future. On one side are idealists, including many rank-and-file workers and some executives, who want to do more to limit misinformation and polarizing content. On the other side are pragmatists who fear those measures could hurt Facebook’s growth, or provoke a political backlash that leads to painful regulation.

Also see:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/how-social-media-companies-will-handle-post-us-election-scenarios-337122" hreflang="en">How social media companies will handle post-US election scenarios</a>

“There are tensions in virtually every product decision we make and we’ve developed a companywide framework called ‘Better Decisions’ to ensure we make our decisions accurately, and that our goals are directly connected to delivering the best possible experiences for people,” said Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson.

These battles have taken a toll on morale. In an employee survey this month, Facebook workers reported feeling less pride in the company compared to previous years. About half felt that Facebook was having a positive impact on the world, down from roughly three-quarters earlier this year, according to a copy of the survey, known as Pulse, which was reviewed by The New York Times. Employees’ “intent to stay” also dropped, as did confidence in leadership.

BuzzFeed News previously reported on the survey results.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/facebook-takes-down-group-stop-the-steal-alleging-voter-fraud-by-democrats-342138" hreflang="en">Facebook takes down group 'Stop The Steal' alleging voter fraud by Democrats</a>

Even as Election Day and its aftermath have passed with few incidents, some disillusioned employees have quit, saying they could no longer stomach working for a company whose products they considered harmful. Others have stayed, reasoning they can make more of a difference on the inside. Still others have made the moral calculation that even with its flaws, Facebook is, on balance, doing more good than harm.

“Facebook salaries are among the highest in tech right now, and when you’re walking home with a giant paycheck every two weeks, you have to tell yourself that it’s for a good cause,” said Gregor Hochmuth, a former engineer with Instagram, which Facebook owns, who left in 2014. “Otherwise, your job is truly no different from other industries that wreck the planet and pay their employees exorbitantly to help them forget.”

With most employees working remotely during the pandemic, much of the soul-searching has taken place on Facebook’s internal Workplace network.

In May, during the heat of the Black Lives Matter protests, Zuckerberg angered many employees when he declined to remove a post by Trump that said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Lawmakers and civil rights groups said the post threatened violence against protesters and called for it to be taken down. But Zuckerberg said the post did not violate Facebook’s rules.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/instagram-to-let-users-live-stream-for-up-to-four-hours-338583" hreflang="en">Instagram to let users live stream for up to four hours</a>

To signal their dissatisfaction, several employees formed a new Workplace group called “Take Action.” People in the group, which swelled to more than 1,500 members, pointedly changed their profile photos to an image of a raised “Black Lives Matter” fist.

The group became a home for internal dissent and dark humor about Facebook’s foibles. On several occasions, employees reacted to negative news stories about the company by posting a meme from a British comedy sketch in which two Nazis have a moral epiphany and ask themselves, “Are we the baddies?”

In June, employees staged a virtual walkout to protest Zuckerberg’s decisions regarding Trump’s posts.

In September, Facebook updated its employee policies to discourage workers from holding contentious political debates in open Workplace forums, saying they should confine the conversations to specifically designated spaces. It also required employees to use their real faces or the first initial of their names as their profile photo, a change interpreted by some workers as a crackdown.

Several employees said they were frustrated that to tackle thorny issues like misinformation, they often had to demonstrate that their proposed solutions wouldn’t anger powerful partisans or come at the expense of Facebook’s growth.

The trade-offs came into focus this month, when Facebook engineers and data scientists posted the results of a series of experiments called “P(Bad for the World).”

The company had surveyed users about whether certain posts they had seen were “good for the world” or “bad for the world.” They found that high-reach posts — posts seen by many users — were more likely to be considered “bad for the world,” a finding that some employees said alarmed them.

So the team trained a machine-learning algorithm to predict posts that users would consider “bad for the world” and demote them in news feeds. In early tests, the new algorithm successfully reduced the visibility of objectionable content. But it also lowered the number of times users opened Facebook, an internal metric known as “sessions” that executives monitor closely.

“The results were good except that it led to a decrease in sessions, which motivated us to try a different approach,” according to a summary of the results, which was posted to Facebook’s internal network and reviewed by The Times.

The team then ran a second experiment, tweaking the algorithm so that a larger set of “bad for the world” content would be demoted less strongly. While that left more objectionable posts in users’ feeds, it did not reduce their sessions or time spent.

That change was ultimately approved. But other features employees developed before the election never were.

One, called “correct the record,” would have retroactively notified users that they had shared false news and directed them to an independent fact-check. Facebook employees proposed expanding the product, which is currently used to notify people who have shared COVID-19 misinformation, to apply to other types of misinformation.

But that was vetoed by policy executives who feared it would disproportionately show notifications to people who shared false news from right-wing websites, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

Another product, an algorithm to classify and demote “hate bait” — posts that don’t strictly violate Facebook’s hate speech rules, but that provoke a flood of hateful comments — was limited to being used only on groups, rather than pages, after the policy team determined that it would primarily affect right-wing publishers if it were applied more broadly, said two people with knowledge of the conversations.

Rosen, the Facebook integrity executive, disputed those characterizations in an interview, which was held on the condition that he not be quoted directly.

He said that the “correct the record” tool wasn’t as effective as hoped, and that the company had decided to focus on other ways of curbing misinformation. He also said applying the “hate bait” detector to Facebook pages could unfairly punish publishers for hateful comments left by their followers, or make it possible for bad actors to hurt a page’s reach by spamming it with toxic comments. Neither project was shelved because of political concerns or because it reduced Facebook usage, he said.

“No News Feed product change is ever solely made because of its impact on time spent,” said Osborne, the Facebook spokesperson. He added that the people talking to The Times had no decision-making authority.

Facebook's moves to clean up its platform will be made easier, in some ways, by the end of the Trump administration. For years, Trump and other leading conservatives accused the company of anti-conservative bias each time it took steps to limit misinformation.

But even with an incoming Biden administration, Facebook will need to balance employees’ desire for social responsibility with its business goals.

“The question is, what have they learned from this election that should inform their policies in the future?" said Vanita Gupta, chief executive of the civil rights group Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “My worry is that they’ll revert all of these changes despite the fact that the conditions that brought them forward are still with us.”

In the tense days after the presidential election, a team of Facebook employees presented the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, with an alarming finding: Election-related misinformation was going viral on the site.

In the tense days after the presidential election, a team of Facebook employees presented the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, with an alarming finding: Election-related misinformation was going viral on the site. President Donald Trump was already casting the election as rigged, and stories from right-wing media outlets with false and misleading claims about discarded ballots, miscounted votes and skewed tallies were among the most popular news stories on the platform. In response, the employees proposed an emergency change to the site’s news feed algorithm, which helps determine what more than 2 billion people see every day. It involved emphasizing the importance of what Facebook calls “news ecosystem quality” scores, or NEQ, a secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism. Also read| UK to curb Google and Facebook's dominance with tougher rules Typically, NEQ scores play a minor role in determining what appears on users’ feeds. But several days after the election, Zuckerberg agreed to increase the weight that Facebook’s algorithm gave to NEQ scores to make sure authoritative news appeared more prominently, said three people with knowledge of the decision, who were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. The change was part of the “break glass” plans Facebook had spent months developing for the aftermath of a contested election. It resulted in a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said. It was a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like. Some employees argued the change should become permanent, even if it was unclear how that might affect the amount of time people spent on Facebook. In an employee meeting the week after the election, workers asked whether the “nicer news feed” could stay, said two people who attended. Also read| In a first, Facebook offers estimate of hate speech prevalence on its platform Guy Rosen, a Facebook executive who oversees the integrity division that is in charge of cleaning up the platform, said on a call with reporters last week that the changes were always meant to be temporary. “There has never been a plan to make these permanent,” he said. John Hegeman, who oversees the news feed, said in an interview that while Facebook might roll back these experiments, it would study and learn from them. The news feed debate illustrates a central tension that some inside Facebook are feeling acutely these days: that the company’s aspirations of improving the world are often at odds with its desire for dominance. In the past several months, as Facebook has come under more scrutiny for its role in amplifying false and divisive information, its employees have clashed over the company’s future. On one side are idealists, including many rank-and-file workers and some executives, who want to do more to limit misinformation and polarizing content. On the other side are pragmatists who fear those measures could hurt Facebook’s growth, or provoke a political backlash that leads to painful regulation. Also see: How social media companies will handle post-US election scenarios “There are tensions in virtually every product decision we make and we’ve developed a companywide framework called ‘Better Decisions’ to ensure we make our decisions accurately, and that our goals are directly connected to delivering the best possible experiences for people,” said Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesperson. These battles have taken a toll on morale. In an employee survey this month, Facebook workers reported feeling less pride in the company compared to previous years. About half felt that Facebook was having a positive impact on the world, down from roughly three-quarters earlier this year, according to a copy of the survey, known as Pulse, which was reviewed by The New York Times. Employees’ “intent to stay” also dropped, as did confidence in leadership. BuzzFeed News previously reported on the survey results. Also read: Facebook takes down group 'Stop The Steal' alleging voter fraud by Democrats Even as Election Day and its aftermath have passed with few incidents, some disillusioned employees have quit, saying they could no longer stomach working for a company whose products they considered harmful. Others have stayed, reasoning they can make more of a difference on the inside. Still others have made the moral calculation that even with its flaws, Facebook is, on balance, doing more good than harm. “Facebook salaries are among the highest in tech right now, and when you’re walking home with a giant paycheck every two weeks, you have to tell yourself that it’s for a good cause,” said Gregor Hochmuth, a former engineer with Instagram, which Facebook owns, who left in 2014. “Otherwise, your job is truly no different from other industries that wreck the planet and pay their employees exorbitantly to help them forget.” With most employees working remotely during the pandemic, much of the soul-searching has taken place on Facebook’s internal Workplace network. In May, during the heat of the Black Lives Matter protests, Zuckerberg angered many employees when he declined to remove a post by Trump that said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Lawmakers and civil rights groups said the post threatened violence against protesters and called for it to be taken down. But Zuckerberg said the post did not violate Facebook’s rules. Also read: Instagram to let users live stream for up to four hours To signal their dissatisfaction, several employees formed a new Workplace group called “Take Action.” People in the group, which swelled to more than 1,500 members, pointedly changed their profile photos to an image of a raised “Black Lives Matter” fist. The group became a home for internal dissent and dark humor about Facebook’s foibles. On several occasions, employees reacted to negative news stories about the company by posting a meme from a British comedy sketch in which two Nazis have a moral epiphany and ask themselves, “Are we the baddies?” In June, employees staged a virtual walkout to protest Zuckerberg’s decisions regarding Trump’s posts. In September, Facebook updated its employee policies to discourage workers from holding contentious political debates in open Workplace forums, saying they should confine the conversations to specifically designated spaces. It also required employees to use their real faces or the first initial of their names as their profile photo, a change interpreted by some workers as a crackdown. Several employees said they were frustrated that to tackle thorny issues like misinformation, they often had to demonstrate that their proposed solutions wouldn’t anger powerful partisans or come at the expense of Facebook’s growth. The trade-offs came into focus this month, when Facebook engineers and data scientists posted the results of a series of experiments called “P(Bad for the World).” The company had surveyed users about whether certain posts they had seen were “good for the world” or “bad for the world.” They found that high-reach posts — posts seen by many users — were more likely to be considered “bad for the world,” a finding that some employees said alarmed them. So the team trained a machine-learning algorithm to predict posts that users would consider “bad for the world” and demote them in news feeds. In early tests, the new algorithm successfully reduced the visibility of objectionable content. But it also lowered the number of times users opened Facebook, an internal metric known as “sessions” that executives monitor closely. “The results were good except that it led to a decrease in sessions, which motivated us to try a different approach,” according to a summary of the results, which was posted to Facebook’s internal network and reviewed by The Times. The team then ran a second experiment, tweaking the algorithm so that a larger set of “bad for the world” content would be demoted less strongly. While that left more objectionable posts in users’ feeds, it did not reduce their sessions or time spent. That change was ultimately approved. But other features employees developed before the election never were. One, called “correct the record,” would have retroactively notified users that they had shared false news and directed them to an independent fact-check. Facebook employees proposed expanding the product, which is currently used to notify people who have shared COVID-19 misinformation, to apply to other types of misinformation. But that was vetoed by policy executives who feared it would disproportionately show notifications to people who shared false news from right-wing websites, according to two people familiar with the conversations. Another product, an algorithm to classify and demote “hate bait” — posts that don’t strictly violate Facebook’s hate speech rules, but that provoke a flood of hateful comments — was limited to being used only on groups, rather than pages, after the policy team determined that it would primarily affect right-wing publishers if it were applied more broadly, said two people with knowledge of the conversations. Rosen, the Facebook integrity executive, disputed those characterizations in an interview, which was held on the condition that he not be quoted directly. He said that the “correct the record” tool wasn’t as effective as hoped, and that the company had decided to focus on other ways of curbing misinformation. He also said applying the “hate bait” detector to Facebook pages could unfairly punish publishers for hateful comments left by their followers, or make it possible for bad actors to hurt a page’s reach by spamming it with toxic comments. Neither project was shelved because of political concerns or because it reduced Facebook usage, he said. “No News Feed product change is ever solely made because of its impact on time spent,” said Osborne, the Facebook spokesperson. He added that the people talking to The Times had no decision-making authority. Facebook's moves to clean up its platform will be made easier, in some ways, by the end of the Trump administration. For years, Trump and other leading conservatives accused the company of anti-conservative bias each time it took steps to limit misinformation. But even with an incoming Biden administration, Facebook will need to balance employees’ desire for social responsibility with its business goals. “The question is, what have they learned from this election that should inform their policies in the future?" said Vanita Gupta, chief executive of the civil rights group Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “My worry is that they’ll revert all of these changes despite the fact that the conditions that brought them forward are still with us.”

Roiled by election, Facebook struggles to balance civility and growth

Donald Trump had told his voters that if he loses, he'll be so angry that he'll never speak to them again. So, what will Trump do after leaving the White House? Reports say he may go back to the voters, and run for office again!

Gravitas: What will Trump do after leaving office?

What was expected by pollsters to be a comfortable win for the Democrat Biden-Harris ticket has turned into a nail-biter. Vice-president Joe Biden’s lead in the days and months leading up to election day was near 10 per cent throughout. His campaign was aimed at healing America’s soul, allegedly fractured by Donald Trump’s presidency.&nbsp;

But in the election results out so far, it is apparent that Trump continues to enjoy considerable support throughout America. Biden, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, does indeed lead in the popular vote, but the slog-overs are in the Electoral Votes.&nbsp;

The House of Representatives, or Congress, continues to be in a Democrat majority, while the Senate remains with the Republicans. This is as it was in the Trump presidency’s latter days. This bipartisan situation makes passing legislation an onerous process for either side.

The Republican Trump-Pence ticket looks within striking distance of its second term in power. However, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, there are unprecedented numbers of postal ballots.&nbsp;

Trump could win if key ‘battleground’ states still in play fall to them. At this point, they include Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.&nbsp;

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/us-presidential-elections-what-matters-for-india-340748">US Presidential elections: What matters for India?</a> 
 
The controversy on when the postal ballots, post-marked November 3rd &nbsp;latest, should be counted till, is still rife. Democrats say, it should go on till the last vote is counted. The Republicans suspect there may be frauds perpetrated if this is allowed over large stretches of time. &nbsp;

The postal ballots, run into millions in this election. The ultimate result will be determined after the slow and careful count is finally over. Here again, the pollster’s wisdom had it that these were mostly Democrat votes, particularly amongst the early voters much before election day on November 3. But in the counting, of those ballots that came in on election day post-marked November 3rd, this is not always borne out. So last-minute surprises could happen, as the counts are continually pulling both ways.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/spooked-by-coronavirus-italian-hairdresser-hangs-up-his-scissors-after-68-years-340874/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>
</div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

&nbsp;

Joe Biden has counselled patience and shown confidence in the ultimate outcome, expecting it to be in his favour. Trump has claimed he has already won and accused the Democrats of trying to ‘steal’ the election via fraudulent postal ballots, including dead-man Democrat votes, fudged signatures, and biased decision-making in Democrat-heavy states. He has called for a recount in Wisconsin if the Courts agree.

Trump has, in fact, already initiated several lawsuits over the mail-in ballots, verification of data incorporated, including signatures, the time they came in, versus the cut-off deadline, and so on. Then there is the correct process of counting itself, supervised by representatives of both parties. There is even an independent arbitrator in most locations.&nbsp;

However, some legal observers regard the proposed litigation as unlikely to be effective. They call them Hail Mary lawsuits based on Game Theory. They could, if accepted by the courts, further delay the final outcome, result in recounts and modified rules of counting the mail-in votes, result in Democrat counter-suits, that would complicate the terms of engagement.&nbsp;

This may be important however, because America is a federation, with each state allowed to make its own processes and rules on the postal voting. And all of it may not be even-handed.&nbsp;

What is clear, away from the actual voting, is the almost equal division of perception about what matters, and how America should be run. There is little focus on America’s place in the world. Instead the gaze is turned inwards on America’s fractured sense of unity and huge economic disparities between the haves and have-nots.&nbsp;

The polarisation between the Left-leaning Democrats and the Right-of-centre Republicans seems to have hardened. White America is anxious about the impact of growing numbers of blacks, Hispanics, impoverished and sometimes illegal immigrants, other minorities including real and potential&nbsp; 
Islamic terrorists. They are scared of being swamped as demographic shifts are taking place quite rapidly. White supremacists are stirring up passions. Shootings and murders are on the rise. Immigration from all but a few European countries has been tightened.&nbsp;

With recent rioting in different parts of the country, there is consternation about the increasing assertiveness of groups backed and financed by shadowy near-Communist style organisations. Are foreign governments involved?&nbsp;

International relations, including the contentious relationship with an imperialist China, is nevertheless perceived as less of a burning issue for most Americans. At the best of times, Americans are mostly not very interested in the rest of the world, except for traditional ties to London and Paris. Visiting Europe is a rite-of-passage for many to appreciate the old world from where most white Americans came generations ago.&nbsp;

President Trump in 2020 gets high marks for his handling of the domestic economy and is criticised for downplaying the pandemic. Vice President Joe Biden, if he wins, is expected to come to the rescue of the poor with more giveaways and higher taxes on the better off.&nbsp;

There is hope in the hearts of black voters for a Democrat victory, though not all black or Hispanic voters have voted Democrat by any means.

But in the end, the postal ballots, and the controversies they have led to, including incorrect ballot papers sent out, are reminiscent of the problems with the ‘pregnant chads’ during the first bid to the presidency of Republican George W Bush. That happened in Florida which Trump has won this time. That dispute in 2000 with Democrat Al Gore went to the Supreme Court. And it took 36 days to finally give the state to Bush after it stopped the counting. It resulted in making Bush president.

This time, it is possible that one or the other could reach the required 270 electoral votes before the last vote is counted, but will that be accepted by the other side?

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do&nbsp;not represent the views of&nbsp;WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse&nbsp;the views of the writer)

What was expected by pollsters to be a comfortable win for the Democrat Biden-Harris ticket has turned into a nail-biter. Vice-president Joe Biden’s lead in the days and months leading up to election day was near 10 per cent throughout.

What was expected by pollsters to be a comfortable win for the Democrat Biden-Harris ticket has turned into a nail-biter. Vice-president Joe Biden’s lead in the days and months leading up to election day was near 10 per cent throughout. His campaign was aimed at healing America’s soul, allegedly fractured by Donald Trump’s presidency. But in the election results out so far, it is apparent that Trump continues to enjoy considerable support throughout America. Biden, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, does indeed lead in the popular vote, but the slog-overs are in the Electoral Votes. The House of Representatives, or Congress, continues to be in a Democrat majority, while the Senate remains with the Republicans. This is as it was in the Trump presidency’s latter days. This bipartisan situation makes passing legislation an onerous process for either side. The Republican Trump-Pence ticket looks within striking distance of its second term in power. However, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, there are unprecedented numbers of postal ballots. Trump could win if key ‘battleground’ states still in play fall to them. At this point, they include Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Also Read | US Presidential elections: What matters for India? The controversy on when the postal ballots, post-marked November 3rd latest, should be counted till, is still rife. Democrats say, it should go on till the last vote is counted. The Republicans suspect there may be frauds perpetrated if this is allowed over large stretches of time. The postal ballots, run into millions in this election. The ultimate result will be determined after the slow and careful count is finally over. Here again, the pollster’s wisdom had it that these were mostly Democrat votes, particularly amongst the early voters much before election day on November 3. But in the counting, of those ballots that came in on election day post-marked November 3rd, this is not always borne out. So last-minute surprises could happen, as the counts are continually pulling both ways. × Joe Biden has counselled patience and shown confidence in the ultimate outcome, expecting it to be in his favour. Trump has claimed he has already won and accused the Democrats of trying to ‘steal’ the election via fraudulent postal ballots, including dead-man Democrat votes, fudged signatures, and biased decision-making in Democrat-heavy states. He has called for a recount in Wisconsin if the Courts agree. Trump has, in fact, already initiated several lawsuits over the mail-in ballots, verification of data incorporated, including signatures, the time they came in, versus the cut-off deadline, and so on. Then there is the correct process of counting itself, supervised by representatives of both parties. There is even an independent arbitrator in most locations. However, some legal observers regard the proposed litigation as unlikely to be effective. They call them Hail Mary lawsuits based on Game Theory. They could, if accepted by the courts, further delay the final outcome, result in recounts and modified rules of counting the mail-in votes, result in Democrat counter-suits, that would complicate the terms of engagement. This may be important however, because America is a federation, with each state allowed to make its own processes and rules on the postal voting. And all of it may not be even-handed. What is clear, away from the actual voting, is the almost equal division of perception about what matters, and how America should be run. There is little focus on America’s place in the world. Instead the gaze is turned inwards on America’s fractured sense of unity and huge economic disparities between the haves and have-nots. The polarisation between the Left-leaning Democrats and the Right-of-centre Republicans seems to have hardened. White America is anxious about the impact of growing numbers of blacks, Hispanics, impoverished and sometimes illegal immigrants, other minorities including real and potential Islamic terrorists. They are scared of being swamped as demographic shifts are taking place quite rapidly. White supremacists are stirring up passions. Shootings and murders are on the rise. Immigration from all but a few European countries has been tightened. With recent rioting in different parts of the country, there is consternation about the increasing assertiveness of groups backed and financed by shadowy near-Communist style organisations. Are foreign governments involved? International relations, including the contentious relationship with an imperialist China, is nevertheless perceived as less of a burning issue for most Americans. At the best of times, Americans are mostly not very interested in the rest of the world, except for traditional ties to London and Paris. Visiting Europe is a rite-of-passage for many to appreciate the old world from where most white Americans came generations ago. President Trump in 2020 gets high marks for his handling of the domestic economy and is criticised for downplaying the pandemic. Vice President Joe Biden, if he wins, is expected to come to the rescue of the poor with more giveaways and higher taxes on the better off. There is hope in the hearts of black voters for a Democrat victory, though not all black or Hispanic voters have voted Democrat by any means. But in the end, the postal ballots, and the controversies they have led to, including incorrect ballot papers sent out, are reminiscent of the problems with the ‘pregnant chads’ during the first bid to the presidency of Republican George W Bush. That happened in Florida which Trump has won this time. That dispute in 2000 with Democrat Al Gore went to the Supreme Court. And it took 36 days to finally give the state to Bush after it stopped the counting. It resulted in making Bush president. This time, it is possible that one or the other could reach the required 270 electoral votes before the last vote is counted, but will that be accepted by the other side? (Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer)

The Hail-Mary Keep-Counting US Presidential Election

As the drama surrounding US elections ebbs and flows and as the democratic ‘blue wave’ has not materialized, pundits and sober commentators are rightly pointing out that there will be governance dysfunction in the United States. This would, as the pundits assert, lead to a legislative hiatus and pause where the only major room for manoeuvre for Joseph Biden, if and when he becomes president, will be in foreign policy. Given this, should the world heave a sigh of relief? Will American power ‘remake’ the world again? And can Biden grow America’s influence?

Fundamentally, the wellsprings of American leadership of the world were predicated on a combination of its military might (hard power), its adherence to and export of capitalism (political economy) and values that it espoused and embedded, albeit sporadically in its foreign policy (human rights).&nbsp;

Admittedly, this is a neat troika where there have been departures from the ‘norm’s and variations on this theme but, in the main, these are what constituted the grist and mill of American foreign policy, earning the country influence, wide and deep latitude in the process.&nbsp;

Complementing this rubric of foreign policy was an international system and structure that, until the closing decade of the 20th century was more or less stable.

But as the 20th century gave way to the 21st, there were world disorders, the sources of which could be traced to both within and without America. It was perhaps in the domain of economics, or more accurately political economy, where the post-war bargain of ‘embedded liberalism’ gave way to unabashed globalism, that the impact was most severe.&nbsp;

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/we-hope-lesson-has-been-learnt-says-iran-on-nuclear-deal-with-usa-341410">We hope 'lesson' has been learnt, says Iran on nuclear deal with USA</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
 
Unadulterated globalism which some associate with market fundamentalism, and where there was a trade-off between efficiency and equity, in favour of the former, bred inequalities and inequities not only within and in the United States but also outside of it.&nbsp;

It was these conditions plus the effects of a proselytizing foreign policy, which under the neocons meant wars, that Trump was born. But Trump was a figure that represented or reflected angst with the existing order of political economy.

This angst called Trumpism called for a changing of the economic order and the political consensus that underpinned it. The implications and consequences were felt in the domains of foreign policy as America under Trump sought to disrupt and remake international relations in the image of Trumpism.&nbsp;

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/the-people-versus-donald-trump-341373">The people versus Donald Trump</a> 
 
In the meanwhile, the world was also changing – especially in its political makeup. The ‘democratic waves’ that reached an apogee in the 1970s dissipated into a ‘democratic recession’. Complemented by a quasi American retreat from international relations, the tone of international politics became more adversarial. &nbsp;

There was also the rise of China which while did not seek to upend world order and not export its model but certainly was and is seeking to widen its arc of influence.

There was and is more to these developments and trends but the ones delineated here constitute the major ones. So, amidst this change and churn, can America lead again? And what would leading mean?

No easy answers lend themselves here. But for America to lead again, the country first needs balance and equipoise within followed by a consensus of what constitutes its interests and ideals. If the focus would be on a narrow range or narrowly defined interests, then the obvious consequence would be a quasi retreat from international politics.&nbsp;

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-election-2020-russia-warns-against-civil-unrest-global-leaders-react-to-drama-341389/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>
</div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

This would be the best outcome if, to repeat, interests are defined narrowly. But, if it is ideals, then obviously America needs to re-engage with the world albeit in a different idiom than it did in the past, primarily because the world out there is a different one.&nbsp;

But, this whole hog re-engagement would carry domestic prices and with Trumpism still a potent force in the United States(made more salient with the prospect of Trump himself foraying into the media), it will not only have diminishing returns but also probably lead to more polarization. How then should America craft its foreign policy under Biden?

By synthesizing ideals with interests is the answer. Or, in other words, create a foreign policy paradigm that integrates realism with idealism which may be called realist idealism.&nbsp;

This could constitute the golden mean that the Biden presidency should aim for. Among its core components should be a review and revision of political economy that must occupy the middle ground, so to speak.&nbsp;

Any gyration to either extreme would not only be a disaster in the making but also be as ephemeral as anything- a prospect that would lead to both world disorders and the possible end of an era.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do&nbsp;not represent the views of&nbsp;WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse&nbsp;the views of the writer)

As the drama surrounding US elections ebbs and flows and as the democratic ‘blue wave’ has not materialized, pundits and sober commentators are rightly pointing out that there will be governance dysfunction in the United States.

As the drama surrounding US elections ebbs and flows and as the democratic ‘blue wave’ has not materialized, pundits and sober commentators are rightly pointing out that there will be governance dysfunction in the United States. This would, as the pundits assert, lead to a legislative hiatus and pause where the only major room for manoeuvre for Joseph Biden, if and when he becomes president, will be in foreign policy. Given this, should the world heave a sigh of relief? Will American power ‘remake’ the world again? And can Biden grow America’s influence? Fundamentally, the wellsprings of American leadership of the world were predicated on a combination of its military might (hard power), its adherence to and export of capitalism (political economy) and values that it espoused and embedded, albeit sporadically in its foreign policy (human rights). Admittedly, this is a neat troika where there have been departures from the ‘norm’s and variations on this theme but, in the main, these are what constituted the grist and mill of American foreign policy, earning the country influence, wide and deep latitude in the process. Complementing this rubric of foreign policy was an international system and structure that, until the closing decade of the 20th century was more or less stable. But as the 20th century gave way to the 21st, there were world disorders, the sources of which could be traced to both within and without America. It was perhaps in the domain of economics, or more accurately political economy, where the post-war bargain of ‘embedded liberalism’ gave way to unabashed globalism, that the impact was most severe. Also Read | We hope 'lesson' has been learnt, says Iran on nuclear deal with USA Unadulterated globalism which some associate with market fundamentalism, and where there was a trade-off between efficiency and equity, in favour of the former, bred inequalities and inequities not only within and in the United States but also outside of it. It was these conditions plus the effects of a proselytizing foreign policy, which under the neocons meant wars, that Trump was born. But Trump was a figure that represented or reflected angst with the existing order of political economy. This angst called Trumpism called for a changing of the economic order and the political consensus that underpinned it. The implications and consequences were felt in the domains of foreign policy as America under Trump sought to disrupt and remake international relations in the image of Trumpism. Also Read | The people versus Donald Trump In the meanwhile, the world was also changing – especially in its political makeup. The ‘democratic waves’ that reached an apogee in the 1970s dissipated into a ‘democratic recession’. Complemented by a quasi American retreat from international relations, the tone of international politics became more adversarial. There was also the rise of China which while did not seek to upend world order and not export its model but certainly was and is seeking to widen its arc of influence. There was and is more to these developments and trends but the ones delineated here constitute the major ones. So, amidst this change and churn, can America lead again? And what would leading mean? No easy answers lend themselves here. But for America to lead again, the country first needs balance and equipoise within followed by a consensus of what constitutes its interests and ideals. If the focus would be on a narrow range or narrowly defined interests, then the obvious consequence would be a quasi retreat from international politics. × This would be the best outcome if, to repeat, interests are defined narrowly. But, if it is ideals, then obviously America needs to re-engage with the world albeit in a different idiom than it did in the past, primarily because the world out there is a different one. But, this whole hog re-engagement would carry domestic prices and with Trumpism still a potent force in the United States(made more salient with the prospect of Trump himself foraying into the media), it will not only have diminishing returns but also probably lead to more polarization. How then should America craft its foreign policy under Biden? By synthesizing ideals with interests is the answer. Or, in other words, create a foreign policy paradigm that integrates realism with idealism which may be called realist idealism. This could constitute the golden mean that the Biden presidency should aim for. Among its core components should be a review and revision of political economy that must occupy the middle ground, so to speak. Any gyration to either extreme would not only be a disaster in the making but also be as ephemeral as anything- a prospect that would lead to both world disorders and the possible end of an era. (Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer)

In a changing world, what should a Biden foreign policy look like?

By all official counts, Democratic Party candidate - Joe Biden is the new President-elect of the United States of America. After a gruelling morning on 4 November, where President Trump took substantial early leads in most swing states, Biden gradually narrowed the gap in the next few days. Even though the Biden- Harris teamwork has begun, this race is far from over. Trump has refused to concede &amp; his legal team has threatened battles in almost all swing states.

In the last couple of decades, this was perhaps the most closely watched American elections internationally. More than the issues, there was a feeling that the future of the American narrative, balance between right-wing and liberal Left and US's foreign policy was at stake. The fact this was held in a pandemic that threw up unique ways of campaigning, voting and counting added to the thrill.&nbsp;&nbsp;Certain key aspects stand out with implications for domestic US policy and its role in the world:

First, about the content of the vote – There was no 'blue wave' as was predicted by some pollsters. Given the polarization in American society and the nature of the electoral system, any appetite for radical change was an extreme prediction. The Democrats managed to secure the Presidency but their showing in the legislative races was far from satisfactory. They lost seats in the House of Representatives (lower house, where they had a majority) &amp; were not able to get enough seats in the Senate (the upper house) to flip from Republican control. Runoff races in Georgia in January 2021 might give them two more seats to get 50:50, in which case the Vice President-elect Harris can cast a tie-breaker in case of a deadlock.

Explanations for these trends have abounded – was it an anti-Trump vote more than an anti-Republican vote? Did the Democrats overestimate their appeal and now need to introspect. The indications are somewhere in the middle – Trump managed to get 70 million popular votes,&nbsp;more than in 2016 but the Democrats were also able to enthuse their traditional supporters with the message of &nbsp;'getting Trump out' and vote in larger numbers.&nbsp;

The voter turnaround in this election was the highest since 1900. For the Presidency, credit has to be given to Biden, who was not even the DNC’s (Democratic National Convention) first choice and was largely selected to build consensus amongst its diverging moderate and progressive sections. Biden built a grassroots campaign, chose a symbolic running mate, star campaigners like Obama and was able to build a narrative around the mismanagement of COVID.&nbsp;

In the end, the election was not as close as it was initially purported to be – Biden has 4 million-plus popular votes’ lead that might increase as the counting continues in many states. He also managed to flip five states – Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennslyvania and Republican states of Arizona and Georgia.&nbsp;

The legislative results, however, have unleashed infighting between the 'moderate' and progressive' wings with the former blaming the latter’s extreme ‘rhetoric’ for Democrat defeats even in states that Biden was able to carry along. The charge is that demands such as 'Medicare for all', 'Defund the police' etc created a condition that many Americans voted for Republican candidates in these races while rejecting Trump for Presidency. This can be true in some cases but does not seem like a general trend.&nbsp;

Some poll trends have shown that there was a nation-wide pro-Democrat swing (though moderate) since 2016 in the election for a President – but a pro-Republican swing since 2018 in elections for the House. The Democrats in the legislature have been held as responsible as the Republicans for the deadlock on passing a stimulus, non compromising attitudes on judicial nominees, etc. Plus the Democrat strategy of putting accomplished candidates, mainly 'women', was aped by the Republicans in these elections with better than expected results.&nbsp;

So what we have in the US now is a recipe for uncertainty. A Biden Presidency, a Republican-controlled Senate (unless Democrats can win Georgia races), a House with a reduced majority for the Democrats and a Supreme Court with a 6-3 majority for conservative judges. Trump's constant allegations about voter fraud and illegal electoral processes are going to cast a shadow on Biden's presidency that will make it hard for him to carry 70 million people on his COVID agenda, for instance.&nbsp;

The Senate Republicans, whose approval Biden requires for passing key legislation, will make it difficult to undertake crucial reforms, including on taxation, reform of the electoral process, etc. A reduced House Democratic majority will make it difficult for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get the moderate &amp; progressive sections to co-exist. The result will be a legislative deadlock on many issues unless Biden, a long time, a seasoned politician, can build bi-partisan consensus at least on the immediate requirements. &nbsp;

What happens in the US has consequences globally and even more so because Trump broke from years of diplomatic consensus to bestow personal favors/displeasure on international actors. As Biden emerged the likely winner, there was relief in certain quarters – traditional US allies and Iran against which Trump had taken a hard stance; acceptance in others such as Middle East allies and silence from Brazil, Russia and China.&nbsp;

But despite the fears that Biden will undo many aspects of the Trump foreign policy – the truth is that his first few months will be spent in combating US's domestic challenges – containing COVID surge, an ailing economy &amp; polarised race relations. The first few executive orders could focus on reversing Trump measures aimed to reinforce the US's commitment to multilateralism – re-entering the Paris climate accord, the WHO and lifting the travel ban on Muslim nations.&nbsp;

With a bipartisan consensus on the need for a 'hard stance' towards China, Biden will continue the Trumpian stance towards China though his approach is likely to be different. China’s economic ‘espionage’, theft of intellectual property, human rights abuses, interference in Taiwan will be the main issues of contention. Biden is likely to re-cultivate US relations with its traditional allies, including in Europe and Asia. In the Middle East, a calibrated return to the Iran deal of 2015 will be on the books as also a return to a mediator stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but these are not high priority goals. &nbsp;

But all of this is still some days away. In the meantime, the US and world will have to grapple with Trump’s legal challenges, a voter base emboldened to use nonconstitutional means to challenge elections results &amp; Trump’s last few unilateral foreign policy moves on Iran, arms treaties and Israel.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do&nbsp;not represent the views of&nbsp;WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse&nbsp;the views of the writer)

By all official counts, Democratic Party candidate - Joe Biden is the new President-elect of the United States of America. After a gruelling morning on 4 November, where President Trump took substantial early leads in most swing states, Biden gradually narrowed the gap in the next few days.

By all official counts, Democratic Party candidate - Joe Biden is the new President-elect of the United States of America. After a gruelling morning on 4 November, where President Trump took substantial early leads in most swing states, Biden gradually narrowed the gap in the next few days. Even though the Biden- Harris teamwork has begun, this race is far from over. Trump has refused to concede & his legal team has threatened battles in almost all swing states. In the last couple of decades, this was perhaps the most closely watched American elections internationally. More than the issues, there was a feeling that the future of the American narrative, balance between right-wing and liberal Left and US's foreign policy was at stake. The fact this was held in a pandemic that threw up unique ways of campaigning, voting and counting added to the thrill. Certain key aspects stand out with implications for domestic US policy and its role in the world: First, about the content of the vote – There was no 'blue wave' as was predicted by some pollsters. Given the polarization in American society and the nature of the electoral system, any appetite for radical change was an extreme prediction. The Democrats managed to secure the Presidency but their showing in the legislative races was far from satisfactory. They lost seats in the House of Representatives (lower house, where they had a majority) & were not able to get enough seats in the Senate (the upper house) to flip from Republican control. Runoff races in Georgia in January 2021 might give them two more seats to get 50:50, in which case the Vice President-elect Harris can cast a tie-breaker in case of a deadlock. Explanations for these trends have abounded – was it an anti-Trump vote more than an anti-Republican vote? Did the Democrats overestimate their appeal and now need to introspect. The indications are somewhere in the middle – Trump managed to get 70 million popular votes, more than in 2016 but the Democrats were also able to enthuse their traditional supporters with the message of 'getting Trump out' and vote in larger numbers. The voter turnaround in this election was the highest since 1900. For the Presidency, credit has to be given to Biden, who was not even the DNC’s (Democratic National Convention) first choice and was largely selected to build consensus amongst its diverging moderate and progressive sections. Biden built a grassroots campaign, chose a symbolic running mate, star campaigners like Obama and was able to build a narrative around the mismanagement of COVID. In the end, the election was not as close as it was initially purported to be – Biden has 4 million-plus popular votes’ lead that might increase as the counting continues in many states. He also managed to flip five states – Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennslyvania and Republican states of Arizona and Georgia. The legislative results, however, have unleashed infighting between the 'moderate' and progressive' wings with the former blaming the latter’s extreme ‘rhetoric’ for Democrat defeats even in states that Biden was able to carry along. The charge is that demands such as 'Medicare for all', 'Defund the police' etc created a condition that many Americans voted for Republican candidates in these races while rejecting Trump for Presidency. This can be true in some cases but does not seem like a general trend. Some poll trends have shown that there was a nation-wide pro-Democrat swing (though moderate) since 2016 in the election for a President – but a pro-Republican swing since 2018 in elections for the House. The Democrats in the legislature have been held as responsible as the Republicans for the deadlock on passing a stimulus, non compromising attitudes on judicial nominees, etc. Plus the Democrat strategy of putting accomplished candidates, mainly 'women', was aped by the Republicans in these elections with better than expected results. So what we have in the US now is a recipe for uncertainty. A Biden Presidency, a Republican-controlled Senate (unless Democrats can win Georgia races), a House with a reduced majority for the Democrats and a Supreme Court with a 6-3 majority for conservative judges. Trump's constant allegations about voter fraud and illegal electoral processes are going to cast a shadow on Biden's presidency that will make it hard for him to carry 70 million people on his COVID agenda, for instance. The Senate Republicans, whose approval Biden requires for passing key legislation, will make it difficult to undertake crucial reforms, including on taxation, reform of the electoral process, etc. A reduced House Democratic majority will make it difficult for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get the moderate & progressive sections to co-exist. The result will be a legislative deadlock on many issues unless Biden, a long time, a seasoned politician, can build bi-partisan consensus at least on the immediate requirements. What happens in the US has consequences globally and even more so because Trump broke from years of diplomatic consensus to bestow personal favors/displeasure on international actors. As Biden emerged the likely winner, there was relief in certain quarters – traditional US allies and Iran against which Trump had taken a hard stance; acceptance in others such as Middle East allies and silence from Brazil, Russia and China. But despite the fears that Biden will undo many aspects of the Trump foreign policy – the truth is that his first few months will be spent in combating US's domestic challenges – containing COVID surge, an ailing economy & polarised race relations. The first few executive orders could focus on reversing Trump measures aimed to reinforce the US's commitment to multilateralism – re-entering the Paris climate accord, the WHO and lifting the travel ban on Muslim nations. With a bipartisan consensus on the need for a 'hard stance' towards China, Biden will continue the Trumpian stance towards China though his approach is likely to be different. China’s economic ‘espionage’, theft of intellectual property, human rights abuses, interference in Taiwan will be the main issues of contention. Biden is likely to re-cultivate US relations with its traditional allies, including in Europe and Asia. In the Middle East, a calibrated return to the Iran deal of 2015 will be on the books as also a return to a mediator stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but these are not high priority goals. But all of this is still some days away. In the meantime, the US and world will have to grapple with Trump’s legal challenges, a voter base emboldened to use nonconstitutional means to challenge elections results & Trump’s last few unilateral foreign policy moves on Iran, arms treaties and Israel. (Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer)

US Presidential Elections: Reflections of an outside observer

Outgoing US president Donald Trump has pardons his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation into Russian meddling during 2016 US Elections.

Donald Trump grants full pardon to Michael Flynn

Joe Biden has expressed optimism about America’s future in 2021. With COVID-19 cases surging nationwide, Biden has acknowledged the severity of the pandemic.

Joe Biden addresses on thanksgiving-eve

US President-elect Joe Biden pleaded with Americans on Wednesday to take steps to remain safe over the Thanksgiving holiday as COVID-19 cases soar.

Biden gave a presidential-style speech acknowledging people`s fatigue with restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic, but urged them to exercise caution as caseloads surge.

"I know the country has grown weary of the fight. We need to remember - we`re at war with the virus, not with one another," Biden said as he urged Americans to forgo the type of big family gatherings normally associated with Thursday`s holiday, wear protective masks and maintain social distancing.

He said he would take immediate steps to address the coronavirus pandemic when he takes office on Jan. 20. During the campaign, Biden accused Trump, a Republican, of panicking and surrendering in the face of a public health crisis.

Biden said the United States faced "a long hard winter" but that it was during the most difficult circumstances that "the soul of our nation has been forged."

He said he hoped the recent positive news on vaccine development - the first shots potentially could be made available to some Americans within weeks - would serve as an incentive for people to take simple steps to get the virus under control.

"We have to try to slow the growth of the virus. We owe that to the doctors, the nurses, and the other front-line health care workers who have risked so much and heroically battled this virus for so long," Biden said in his Thanksgiving message to the nation ahead of a long weekend that traditionally features large family gatherings and a burst of cross country travel.

"More testing will find people with cases and get them away from other people, slowing the number of infections. More protective gear for businesses and schools will do the same - reducing the number of cases. Clear guidance will get more businesses and more schools open," he said.

Biden struck an upbeat tone despite the looming crisis of a "dark winter" that medical experts have warned about. "There is real hope, tangible hope. So hang on. Don`t let yourself surrender to the fatigue," Biden urged Americans as daily cases and deaths shattered records.

"I know we can and we will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war. You will get your lives back. Life is going to return to normal. That will happen. This will not last forever," he said.

Biden noted that in his own family, a big Thanksgiving is off the table because of the pandemic.

More than 261,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, with the daily toll on Tuesday surpassing 2,000 for the first time since May, as infections and hospitalizations surge nationally. The United States leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

US President-elect Joe Biden pleaded with Americans on Wednesday to take steps to remain safe over the Thanksgiving holiday as COVID-19 cases soar. Biden gave a presidential-style speech acknowledging people`s fatigue with restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic, but urged them to exercise caution as caseloads surge.

US President-elect Joe Biden pleaded with Americans on Wednesday to take steps to remain safe over the Thanksgiving holiday as COVID-19 cases soar. Biden gave a presidential-style speech acknowledging people`s fatigue with restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic, but urged them to exercise caution as caseloads surge. "I know the country has grown weary of the fight. We need to remember - we`re at war with the virus, not with one another," Biden said as he urged Americans to forgo the type of big family gatherings normally associated with Thursday`s holiday, wear protective masks and maintain social distancing. He said he would take immediate steps to address the coronavirus pandemic when he takes office on Jan. 20. During the campaign, Biden accused Trump, a Republican, of panicking and surrendering in the face of a public health crisis. Biden said the United States faced "a long hard winter" but that it was during the most difficult circumstances that "the soul of our nation has been forged." He said he hoped the recent positive news on vaccine development - the first shots potentially could be made available to some Americans within weeks - would serve as an incentive for people to take simple steps to get the virus under control. "We have to try to slow the growth of the virus. We owe that to the doctors, the nurses, and the other front-line health care workers who have risked so much and heroically battled this virus for so long," Biden said in his Thanksgiving message to the nation ahead of a long weekend that traditionally features large family gatherings and a burst of cross country travel. "More testing will find people with cases and get them away from other people, slowing the number of infections. More protective gear for businesses and schools will do the same - reducing the number of cases. Clear guidance will get more businesses and more schools open," he said. Biden struck an upbeat tone despite the looming crisis of a "dark winter" that medical experts have warned about. "There is real hope, tangible hope. So hang on. Don`t let yourself surrender to the fatigue," Biden urged Americans as daily cases and deaths shattered records. "I know we can and we will beat this virus. America is not going to lose this war. You will get your lives back. Life is going to return to normal. That will happen. This will not last forever," he said. Biden noted that in his own family, a big Thanksgiving is off the table because of the pandemic. More than 261,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, with the daily toll on Tuesday surpassing 2,000 for the first time since May, as infections and hospitalizations surge nationally. The United States leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Biden urges safe Thanksgiving amid coronavirus pandemic

President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The pardon, which was expected, came in the final weeks of Trump's presidency, two years of which was spent fighting the allegations that Trump had overseen and sought to cover up a dangerous scheme of cooperation with Russia.&nbsp;

It was the first of several possible pardons that analysts think Trump could extend to political aides and allies before he steps down on January 20.

A retired Army general, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about interactions he had with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks leading up to Trump's inauguration in January 2017. He has since sought to withdraw the plea, arguing that prosecutors violated his rights and duped him into a plea agreement.&nbsp;

Flynn's sentencing has been deferred several times.

Flynn was supposed to help cooperate with the government as part of his plea deal. But he later switched lawyers and tactics, arguing that prosecutors in the case had tricked him into lying about his December 2016 conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

"It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!" Trump wrote on Twitter, a day before the US Thanksgiving holiday.

The Republican president had earlier pardoned Army personnel accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff and hardliner against illegal immigration.

Flynn served as Trump's first national security advisor but the president fired him after only 24 days for lying to Vice President Mike Pence as controversy broke over the former general's contacts with Kislyak.

The president has spent the days since the November 3 election seeking to overturn the results and refusing to concede to Biden. On Monday, he allowed his administration to take part in a transition to a Biden White House, but he has continued to challenge the election's legitimacy.

Two former White House officials said more pardons were likely.

Flynn joined the Trump 2016 election campaign and at the Republican National Convention that year led supporters in chants of "Lock her up," in reference to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Flynn was one of several former Trump aides to plead guilty or be convicted at trial in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 US election to boost Trump’s candidacy.

Russia had, however, denied meddling.

Other former Trump aides were also convicted of federal crimes following the Russia inquiry. Trump's longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone was sentenced on February 20 to three years and four months in prison for obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lying to lawmakers investigating the Russian election interference. Trump commuted his sentence.

Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, was sentenced last year to 3-1/2 years in prison after being convicted of unlawful lobbying and witness tampering. Manafort was released from prison in May and is serving the rest of his sentence at home.

Thursday's announcement helped Flynn avoid a potential prison sentence being weighed in a Washington federal court.

It also appeared to bring to a close the last case arising from special counsel Robert Mueller's sprawling 2017-2019 investigation of the Trump campaign, which saw six campaign associates plead guilty or be convicted at trial.&nbsp;

(with inputs from agencies)

President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The pardon, which was expected, came in the final weeks of Trump's presidency, two years of which was spent fighting the allegations that Trump had overseen and sought to cover up a dangerous scheme of cooperation with Russia. It was the first of several possible pardons that analysts think Trump could extend to political aides and allies before he steps down on January 20. A retired Army general, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about interactions he had with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks leading up to Trump's inauguration in January 2017. He has since sought to withdraw the plea, arguing that prosecutors violated his rights and duped him into a plea agreement. Flynn's sentencing has been deferred several times. Flynn was supposed to help cooperate with the government as part of his plea deal. But he later switched lawyers and tactics, arguing that prosecutors in the case had tricked him into lying about his December 2016 conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. "It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!" Trump wrote on Twitter, a day before the US Thanksgiving holiday. The Republican president had earlier pardoned Army personnel accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff and hardliner against illegal immigration. Flynn served as Trump's first national security advisor but the president fired him after only 24 days for lying to Vice President Mike Pence as controversy broke over the former general's contacts with Kislyak. The president has spent the days since the November 3 election seeking to overturn the results and refusing to concede to Biden. On Monday, he allowed his administration to take part in a transition to a Biden White House, but he has continued to challenge the election's legitimacy. Two former White House officials said more pardons were likely. Flynn joined the Trump 2016 election campaign and at the Republican National Convention that year led supporters in chants of "Lock her up," in reference to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Flynn was one of several former Trump aides to plead guilty or be convicted at trial in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 US election to boost Trump’s candidacy. Russia had, however, denied meddling. Other former Trump aides were also convicted of federal crimes following the Russia inquiry. Trump's longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone was sentenced on February 20 to three years and four months in prison for obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lying to lawmakers investigating the Russian election interference. Trump commuted his sentence. Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, was sentenced last year to 3-1/2 years in prison after being convicted of unlawful lobbying and witness tampering. Manafort was released from prison in May and is serving the rest of his sentence at home. Thursday's announcement helped Flynn avoid a potential prison sentence being weighed in a Washington federal court. It also appeared to bring to a close the last case arising from special counsel Robert Mueller's sprawling 2017-2019 investigation of the Trump campaign, which saw six campaign associates plead guilty or be convicted at trial. (with inputs from agencies)

Trump pardons former NSA Flynn, who pleaded guilty in Russia probe

As Trump's legal efforts to prevent states confirming President-elect Joe Biden's win are falling apart, he is now citing online polls to deny US elections results.

Trump tweeted an online viewer poll, conducted by a media outlet touting that 98.9 per cent of viewers don’t think he should concede the election.

According to the results of the ‘poll’ in which Trump claimed 192,774 people voted, 98.9% or 190,593 were not in favour of conceding to Biden while 1.1% or 2,181 voted in favour.

“Should President Trump concede to Biden? Poll results: No: 190,593 (98.9%), Yes: 2,181 (1.1%) Total Votes: 192,774. @gregkellyusa @newsnewsmax. For the good of our Country, we must prevail!” Trump tweeted.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Should President Trump concede to Biden? Poll Results: No: 190,593 (98.9%) Yes: 2,181 (1.1%) Total Votes: 192,774. <a href="https://twitter.com/gregkellyusa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@gregkellyusa</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/newsmax?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@newsmax</a> For the good of our Country we must prevail!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1331404288149643264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

Meanwhile, US President-elect Joe Biden has said the United States would be "ready to lead" again on the global stage, turning the page on Republican President Donald Trump's "America First" policies as he pledged to work together with the nation's allies.

Introducing his foreign policy and national security team, the Democratic former vice president Tuesday signalled he intended after taking office on January 20 to steer the United States away from the unilateralist nationalism pursued by Trump.

(With inputs from agencies)

As Trump's legal efforts to prevent states confirming President-elect Joe Biden's win are falling apart, he is now citing online polls to deny US elections results.

As Trump's legal efforts to prevent states confirming President-elect Joe Biden's win are falling apart, he is now citing online polls to deny US elections results. Trump tweeted an online viewer poll, conducted by a media outlet touting that 98.9 per cent of viewers don’t think he should concede the election. According to the results of the ‘poll’ in which Trump claimed 192,774 people voted, 98.9% or 190,593 were not in favour of conceding to Biden while 1.1% or 2,181 voted in favour. “Should President Trump concede to Biden? Poll results: No: 190,593 (98.9%), Yes: 2,181 (1.1%) Total Votes: 192,774. @gregkellyusa @newsnewsmax. For the good of our Country, we must prevail!” Trump tweeted. Should President Trump concede to Biden? Poll Results: No: 190,593 (98.9%) Yes: 2,181 (1.1%) Total Votes: 192,774. @gregkellyusa @newsmax For the good of our Country we must prevail! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2020 × Meanwhile, US President-elect Joe Biden has said the United States would be "ready to lead" again on the global stage, turning the page on Republican President Donald Trump's "America First" policies as he pledged to work together with the nation's allies. Introducing his foreign policy and national security team, the Democratic former vice president Tuesday signalled he intended after taking office on January 20 to steer the United States away from the unilateralist nationalism pursued by Trump. (With inputs from agencies)

Trump boasts of 'online poll results' with 98.9% of viewers saying he shouldn’t concede

It is often said that all good things come to an end, and that is proving out to be particularly true for the outgoing US President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;who has to, soon, pass on the reigns of the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/the-white-house">White House </a>to the President-elect&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;after Biden-<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/kamala-harris">Harris</a>' historic win in the recently-conducted <a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election">US elections</a>.

Now, the Biden-Harris Transition Executive Director Yohannes Abraham has formally announced the start of the transition process. "The GSA Administrator has ascertained the President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the apparent winners of the election, providing the incoming Administration with the resources and support necessary to carry out a smooth and peaceful transfer of power," he said in an official statement.

<img alt="Transition of Presidency" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="15bf68aa-15e9-494d-a736-6b29c01f4afa" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Transition%20of%20Presidency.jpg" />

He also added that the decision is important to make sure the new administrator can start working on containing the wide spread of the novel coronavirus, which has taken millions of lives in the US, and continues to spread massively — which has been often blamed on the outgoing President's reluctance towards a lockdown.

Abraham announced this statement as the "final decision" to start acting on formally beginning "the transition process with federal judges".

He also informed that meetings with federal officials to discuss a quick and effective pandemic response, in addition to nation's security issues, will be held soon. The meetings will also focus on understanding the "Trump administration's efforts to hollow out government agencies".

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/do-what-needs-to-be-done-trump-clears-the-way-for-bidens-transition-344983">‘Do what needs to be done’: Trump clears the way for Biden's transition</a>

The statement came at the same time as Trump dropping a hint of him finally admitting his defeat as he tweeted, "...in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same."

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
...fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1331013908971261953?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 23, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

However, this tweet is not being acknowledged as his formal admittance and people are still waiting for his official concession speech — <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trumps-concession-speech-on-jimmy-fallons-show-goes-viral-344330">although Jimmy Fallon has already prepared one for the outgoing President.</a>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-general-services-administration-allows-biden-transition-funds-to-begin-344996">Watch|</a>

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-general-services-administration-allows-biden-transition-funds-to-begin-344996/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>
</div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

&nbsp;

It is often said that all good things come to an end, and that is proving out to be particularly true for the outgoing US President Donald Trump who has to, soon, pass on the reigns of the White House to the President-elect Joe Biden after Biden-Harris' historic win in the recently-conducted US elections.

It is often said that all good things come to an end, and that is proving out to be particularly true for the outgoing US President Donald Trump who has to, soon, pass on the reigns of the White House to the President-elect Joe Biden after Biden-Harris' historic win in the recently-conducted US elections. Now, the Biden-Harris Transition Executive Director Yohannes Abraham has formally announced the start of the transition process. "The GSA Administrator has ascertained the President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the apparent winners of the election, providing the incoming Administration with the resources and support necessary to carry out a smooth and peaceful transfer of power," he said in an official statement. He also added that the decision is important to make sure the new administrator can start working on containing the wide spread of the novel coronavirus, which has taken millions of lives in the US, and continues to spread massively — which has been often blamed on the outgoing President's reluctance towards a lockdown. Abraham announced this statement as the "final decision" to start acting on formally beginning "the transition process with federal judges". He also informed that meetings with federal officials to discuss a quick and effective pandemic response, in addition to nation's security issues, will be held soon. The meetings will also focus on understanding the "Trump administration's efforts to hollow out government agencies". Also read| ‘Do what needs to be done’: Trump clears the way for Biden's transition The statement came at the same time as Trump dropping a hint of him finally admitting his defeat as he tweeted, "...in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same." ...fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2020 × However, this tweet is not being acknowledged as his formal admittance and people are still waiting for his official concession speech — although Jimmy Fallon has already prepared one for the outgoing President. Watch| ×

Transition Executive announces start of process for Joe Biden

us-election-0

Us Election, News on Us Election, stories on Us Election, articles on Us Election, Us Election stories at Wion, Us Election news, Us Election latest news

us election-0

US Election 2020: Donald Trump pins his last hope on Texas lawsuit

Morning news brief: Covid vaccine, US polls and more

Venezuela's Maduro says he hopes for better dialogue with U.S. under Biden

Morning news brief: UK begins vaccination, aliens on earth and more

Morning news brief: Serum seeks approval for Covid vaccine and more

How Joe Biden’s digital team tamed the MAGA internet

Donald Trump’s final days of rage and denial

Kamala Harris' husband to become first 'Second Gentleman' of White House

Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court

'Criminal, cruel and traitorous' Donald Trump belongs in prison, says his niece Mary Trump

Morning news brief: Super soldiers of China, Covid vaccine and more

Donald Trump floats the idea of 2024 WH run, says 'I'll see you in four years'

Morning news brief: China planned Galwan, US election, Brexit and more

Morning news brief: China planned Galwan, US election, Brexit and more

Ex-US Election cybersecurity chief should be taken out and shot, says Trump lawyer

Gravitas: The Indian-American face in Biden's team

Republican resistance to Tanden illustrates trouble ahead for Biden

Joe Biden appoints White House's first all-female communication team

Joe Biden’s inauguration: Expect smaller crowds and more social distancing

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alleges 'lot of fraud' in US election 2020

Joe Biden fractures foot after slipping; Donald Trump extends wishes

Roiled by election, Facebook struggles to balance civility and growth

Gravitas: What will Trump do after leaving office?

The Hail-Mary Keep-Counting US Presidential Election