Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Kamala Harris accepted her place in history on Saturday night with a speech honoring the women who she said “paved the way for this moment tonight”, when the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants would stand before the nation as the vice-president-elect of the United States.
Here are some details on the reaction to Biden’s win in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and other Pacific nations, from Ben Doherty, the Guardian’s Pacific editor:
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.
There are a number of troubling statistics out today on the current state of Covid-19 in the US, the most urgent crisis Biden will inherit. Reuters has published an analysis of where things stand in the worsening pandemic in America, as the country nears 10m cases, becoming the first nation in the world to surpass that figure. Some specifics from the news agency’s report:
The former prosecutor and senator is the first woman to fill her upcoming White House role. What does her life so far tell us about how she will govern?
Kamala Harris has spent her life crashing through glass ceilings and accumulating “firsts”. She was the first female district attorney of San Francisco, the first female attorney general of California, the first Indian American in the US Senate, the first Indian American candidate of a major party to run for vice-president. Soon she will become the first female vice-president. If Joe Biden only serves one term, as expected, there is a chance that in 2024 she could become the first black female president.
The problem with phrases like “first black female president” is that they confine the California senator to the sort of boxes she has always tried to avoid. “When I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created,” she told the Washington Post last year. “I am who I am … You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it.” She does not agonise over her identity – she simply calls herself a “proud American”.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have offered a message of unity as the pair spoke following their election victory. Harris, who will be the first woman to be vice-president, paid tribute to her mother. For Biden, his speech was an opportunity to offer an olive branch to his political rivals after nearly four years of division under Donald Trump
President-elect Joe Biden promised to 'restore the soul of America' as he declared victory in front of a crowd of supporters on Saturday night in his home town of Wilmington. 'I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify, who doesn't see red states or blue states but who only sees the United States.'
Addressing Trump supporters, Biden said he understood their disappointment because he had lost before. But now, 'let’s give each other a chance', he said. Biden and Kamala Harris hardly mentioned Donald Trump directly in their speeches – instead, they focused on the challenges ahead, including tackling the coronavirus pandemic
Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and first South Asian American woman to become vice-president-elect, began her victory speech by quoting the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who said, 'Democracy is not a state, it is an act.'
A century after women won the right to vote, Harris, wearing suffragette white, spoke about her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris. 'When she came here from India, at the age of 19, she maybe didn’t quite imagine this moment. But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible,' she said.
Joe Biden was declared the president-elect after the AP announced he had won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, putting him over the threshold of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House and beat Donald Trump
Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator of Vermont who put up a strong challenge to Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries before helping him campaign, has offered congratulations to the president-elect and his running mate, Kamala Harris. Sanders called this election the most important in modern American history
Georgia’s Secretary of State has tweeted that that county of Fulton had “discovered an issue involving reporting from their work” on Friday.
Brad Raffensperger said officials will rescan the “work”, which I assume he means ballots, although the tweet is fairly vague.
Fulton has discovered an issue involving reporting from their work on Fri. Officials are at State Farm Arena to rescan that work. I have a monitor & investigators onsite. Also sent Dep. SOS as well to oversee the process to make sure to secure the vote and protect all legal votes
The Guardian’s Libby Brooks reports from Glasgow:
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris following the US Presidential election.
Americans across the country took to the streets to celebrate the end of Trump’s presidency while triumph likely to be welcomed by international allies
Joe Biden has been elected the 46th US president, signalling a return to political norms in America after four years of raucous populism and administrative turmoil under Donald Trump.
Kamala Harris shared a video of her calling to congratulate Joe Biden after the US presidential election was called for the Democratic candidate. 'We did it Joe,' Harris says, while apparently out on a walk with her husband. 'You're going to be the next president of the United States.'
Kamala Harris has become vice-president-elect of the US, the first time in history that a woman, and a woman of color, has been elected to such a position in the White House.
The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani reports from Northampton county:
Allegany county, home to Pennsylvania’s second biggest city of Pittsburgh, has paused all counting until tomorrow morning due to a legal challenge over 29,000 ballots.
We are also getting some more numbers from Nevada’s rural counties, and Joe Biden’s lead has shrunk slightly to about 11,500 votes.
Joe Biden expressed confidence in his victory in the presidential election, he stressed he was not ‘declaring’ victory but said it was ‘clear’ he would hit the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
On the election results, Biden emphasised all votes should be counted and he characterised his potential win as non-partisan, calling once again for unity in the US
President appears to praise threats from his own supporters
Biden campaign says bus was nearly forced off road
Trucks with Trump signs and flags surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway on Friday and attempted to slow the vehicle down and run it off the road, the Biden campaign said on Saturday.
Several video clips posted on social media by both Biden and Trump supporters showed the trucks surrounding the bus. The trucks then tried to slow the bus down and run it off the road before staff called 911, according to the Biden campaign.
Trump predicted he would “over-perform” on election day, as polls show him trailing nationally and in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, is having a field day over the comments of the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows this morning. In a rare moment of transparency, Meadows admitted to a Sunday political talk show that the Trump administration had no intention of containing coronavirus, saying: “We’re not going to control the pandemic”.
Cuomo said that thinking was tantamount to giving in to the virus. “They surrendered without firing a shot. It was the great American surrender,” he said on Sunday, as reported by the Daily News.
After the Senate voted to move forward with the final vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell spoke on the Senate floor, celebrating the lasting influence of the vote for posterity.
“By tomorrow night, we’ll have a new member of the United States Supreme Court,” he told the chamber.
McConnell, just after the Senate votes to limit debate on Amy Coney Barrett: "A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come."
Also, McConnell's right hand, which was deeply bruised earlier this week and prompted several Qs about his health, appears much better. Most of the bruising is gone https://t.co/WPFJcqsog2
Joe Biden said at a town hall event Thursday night that he would announce before election day whether he favors expanding the supreme court.
Biden has repeatedly declined to lay out a stance on the issue amid an ongoing Republican sprint to install a third justice nominated by Donald Trump before the election, in what critics have called a naked power grab.
In a new interactive elections timeline, Alvin Chang has explained how various 2020 US election scenarios, including the case of Trump losing but refusing to concede, could play out.
Americans are used to a certain routine with presidential elections – but this year might be different, Alvin writes. If you’re not current on such concepts as the safe harbor deadline and wonder how states select electors, read about it here:
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has continued to grill supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on a range of issues, including climate change and racial discrimination in the US. Harris pressed Barrett on whether she believed coronavirus was infectious, smoking caused cancer and climate change was happening. Barrett avoided answering directly to a number of issues during the questioning, including one from Democratic senator Cory Booker on whether it was wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants coming to the US
Supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was questioned by Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris over the Affordable Care Act, known popularly as Obamacare, during day two of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. Barrett made the claim that she was not aware of Donald Trump’s campaign promise to appoint justices who would dismantle Obamacare. Harris also tackled Barrett’s views on abortion, making a carefully laid-out case that despite Barrett’s equivocation and insistence that she is unbiased on the issue of reproductive rights, she is far from it. Republicans want to have Barrett confirmed before election day