President-elect of the US says his belief in equality is rooted in his ‘cultural Catholicism’
He carries a rosary in his pocket, one that belonged to his dead son, Beau. On election day last Tuesday, he went to mass, as he does every Sunday.
In his victory speech on Saturday night, he quoted from Ecclesiastes: “The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season – a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”
Continue reading...US attorney general’s intervention comes as Donald Trump refuses to concede and promotes unfounded claims of voter fraud
The US attorney general, William Barr, has authorized federal prosecutors to begin investigating “substantial allegations” of voter irregularities across the country in a stark break with longstanding practice and despite a lack of evidence of any major fraud having been committed.
Continue reading...The Silver state has not gone Republican in a presidential election since 2004 and Clark county is the bedrock of Democrats’ success
For a brief moment last Friday, it appeared that Nevada could carry Joe Biden over the electoral college finish line.
America was three days into its long wait to learn who would be its next president and all eyes were on the officials counting outstanding ballots in Clark county. Major news outlets interviewed anxious voters waiting in line with their photo IDs to “cure” their ballots, a process which allows them to resolve issues with their voting papers.
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Another adviser to Donald Trump has reportedly tested positive for coronavirus, amid an apparent outbreak among the president’s team.
According to Bloomberg News, David Bossie has now tested positive for the virus.
BREAKING: Trump outside adviser David Bossie tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, sources tell me.
Susan Collins has become one of the few Republican lawmakers to congratulate Joe Biden on his victory in the presidential election.
“First, I would offer my congratulations to President-elect Biden on his apparent victory – he loves this country, and I wish him every success. Presidential transitions are important, and the President-elect and the Vice-President-elect should be given every opportunity to ensure that they are ready to govern on January 20th,” Collins said in a new statement.
My statement on the 2020 Presidential election results: pic.twitter.com/8NY1WpaJpC
Continue reading...Britain risks isolation as the president-elect prioritises relations with the EU. The government must understand the signs of the new times
The Irish question has played havoc with the best-laid plans of hardline Brexiters. Since 2016, successive Conservative governments have struggled to square the circle of keeping the United Kingdom intact, while avoiding the reimposition of a hard border on the island of Ireland. The border issue has been the achilles heel of Brexit, the thorn in the side of true believers in a “clean break” with the EU. So the prospect of an Irish-American politician on his way to the White House, just as Boris Johnson attempts to finagle his way round the problem, is an 11th-hour plot twist to savour.
Joe Biden’s views on Brexit are well known. The president-elect judges it to be a damaging act of self-isolation; strategically unwise for Britain and unhelpful to American interests in Europe. But it is the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU on Ireland that concerns Mr Biden most. This autumn, he was forthright on the subject of the government’s controversial internal market bill, which was again debated on Monday in the House of Lords. The proposed legislation effectively reneges on a legally binding protocol signed with the EU, which would impose customs checks on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland. In doing so, it summons up the spectre of a hard border on the island of Ireland, undermining the Good Friday agreement. Mr Biden is adamant that the GFA must not “become a casualty of Brexit”. He is expected to convey that message, in forceful terms, when his first telephone conversation with Mr Johnson eventually takes place.
Continue reading...As the president refuses to concede defeat, there has been no shortage of people keen to tell him: ‘You’re fired’
“Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years!” This is how Donald Trump advised the failed Democratic candidate for president in 2017, but it seems he has been unable to heed the same advice.
Related: 'Make America rake again': Four Seasons Total Landscaping cashes in on Trump fiasco
Continue reading...The left is so used to losing that we have become sore winners. While the US has not been fixed overnight, there is reason to feel hope again
There are many things Joe Biden is not. He is not young. He is not an anti-establishment peacenik. He is not unbeholden to huge, anonymous donors. He is not free of accusations of using male privilege to be gropey with women. He is neither a radical, nor exciting. He is not a brilliant orator. He is not Bernie Sanders. And on it goes: the disappointments pile up thick and fast.
But he is not a loser – and he is not Donald Trump. So let us have a moment, however brief, of celebration.
Continue reading...Gardening firm, situated between crematorium and sex shop, played comic role in final throes of president’s campaign
As Donald Trump’s rise was accompanied by branded merchandise – steaks, ties, boxers and red Maga hats – so his descent may come to be known by the stickers, shirts and hoodies now being sold by an obscure Pennsylvanian landscaping company that wound up playing a comic and widely celebrated role in the final throes of the president’s re-election campaign.
Related: Keep on digging: Trump team holds press conference at suburban garden centre
Continue reading...Writing under the name Selena Montgomery, Abrams has penned eight romantic thrillers, often while also fighting for voters’ rights
Stacey Abrams is the former Georgia state house minority leader, whose fierce fight for Georgians’ right to vote has been credited for potentially handing the state to the Democrats for the first time in 28 years. But Abrams has another identity: the novelist Selena Montgomery, a romance and thriller writer who has sold more than 100,000 copies of her eight novels.
Abrams wrote her first novel during her third year at Yale Law School, inspired after reading her ex-boyfriend’s PhD dissertation in chemical physics. She had wanted to write a spy novel: “For me, for other young black girls, I wanted to write books that showed them to be as adventurous and attractive as any white woman,” she wrote in her memoir Minority Leader. But after being told repeatedly by editors that women don’t read spy novels, and that men don’t read spy novels by women, she made her spies fall in love. Rules of Engagement, her debut, was published in 2001, and sees temperatures flare as covert operative Raleigh partners with the handsome Adam Grayson to infiltrate a terrorist group that has stolen deadly environmental technology.
Continue reading...In the final episode of Anywhere but Washington, Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone return to Florida, the crucial swing state that Donald Trump won last week. His victory there paved the way for his baseless attacks on the election process. From Palm Beach county, home to the president’s private club Mar-a-Lago, election night turns into election week, in a story of hope and joy but also division and lies
Trump’s brutal policies and spread of misinformation have divided the US. Uniting the country will be Biden’s biggest task
As the result was finally called, the end of his presidency confirmed, Donald Trump teed off on a crisp, autumnal Saturday afternoon at his private golf club in Virginia.
The president was in the midst of a four-day mission to spread baseless misinformation about election integrity in an attempt to subvert US democracy.
Continue reading...President may try to use his power to push for more conservative court appointments or environmental deregulations
Donald Trump may never concede that he legitimately lost the 2020 election and the US presidency.
That in itself will probably not matter too much, but he may use his final months in office before Joe Biden takes office in January, 2021 to push the divisive politics that have become his calling card. He may even boycott Biden’s inauguration ceremony.
Continue reading...Trump isn’t just losing her status as first daughter, she’s also losing her job as ‘advisor to the president’
Ivanka Trump isn’t just losing her status as first daughter with her father Donald Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden – she’s also losing her job.
In her father’s White House, Ivanka Trump works as “advisor to the president”, purportedly focusing on “the education and economic empowerment of women and their families as well as job creation and economic growth through workforce development, skills training and entrepreneurship”.
Continue reading...Two years ago, she lost to then-secretary of state Brian Kemp, but that loss spurred her to fight for Georgians’ right to vote
Two years ago, Stacey Abrams became a household name when she ran for governor of Georgia against Brian Kemp, then secretary of state. Though her votes came in short, she refused to concede – citing widespread voter suppression in a state where the election was run by the opponent himself.
In 2020, she is still not the governor. But in some ways, Abrams never lost.
Continue reading...Optimism abounds as leaders from Fiji to Papua New Guinea welcome the new US president-elect
Joe Biden’s presidential ascension had not even been settled when Fiji’s forthright prime minister was already urging greater US action on climate change from the incoming American leader.
“Congratulations Joe Biden,” Frank Bainimarama tweeted on Saturday afternoon. “Together, we have a planet to save from a climate emergency and a global economy to build back better from Covid-19.”
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s resolve not to accept the result of the presidential election appeared unshaken on Sunday, as he continued to promote conspiracy theories about the vote, with little outward sign that anyone in his inner circle was prepared to talk him into conceding.
Related: Who will tell Trump to go? Not Melania or Jared, reports say
Continue reading...Confusion reigns as accounts of attempts to talk president into conceding to Joe Biden are swiftly shot down
As Donald Trump spent Sunday morning visiting one of his golf clubs and doubling down on bogus election fraud claims, conflicting reports emerged about whether the president’s family and top advisers were advising him to admit defeat.
Related: Joe Biden gets to work as president-elect while Trump refuses to concede
Continue reading...The small Indian village of Thulasendrapuram burst into celebration after waking up to the news that Kamala Harris will become the first woman and the first person of south-Asian descent to become US vice-president. People set off firecrackers, played music and shared food in the village, where Harris's maternal grandfather was born. 'We take immense pride in her victory, and who she has become,' said one resident
Writing in the Guardian, Labour leader says strategy that won back votes in the US can work in UK
The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has urged his party to learn from Joe Biden’s “broad coalition” which won back voters who turned away from the Democrats four years ago, pointing to the president-elect’s emphasis on “family, community and security”.
Starmer, an enthusiastic supporter of Biden’s bid who shares a WhatsApp group with his staff called “Let’s Go Joe”, said the victory of the former vice-president and his running mate Kamala Harris would “fill the void in global leadership” and was a vote “for a better, more optimistic future”.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stay silent while Iran waits to see how US will compensate for Trump sanctions
Most world leaders rushed to congratulate Joe Biden on his election, but Russia and China, two likely losers from the defeat of Donald Trump, remained silent, perhaps waiting for the outgoing president to concede defeat.
The president of the Maldives, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, is thought to be the first to have congratulated Biden, tweeting his welcome within 24 minutes of the US networks declaring Biden victorious. By contrast, Vladimir Putin, accused of collusion in Trump’s 2016 victory, and Xi Jinping kept their counsel.
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