Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Donald Trump has taken his campaign to deny the results of the US presidential election global, telling world leaders at the G20 summit that he looks forward to “working with you again for a long time”.
The gathering of leaders of major world economies is being held online this year, because of the pandemic, but could have been an occasion for Trump to bid his peers goodbye and pledge American support to the battle against Covid-19.
President’s desperate efforts include pleas to Republican state lawmakers as states certify election results
Desperate efforts by Donald Trump and his Republican allies to overturn the result of the American election are facing an ever narrowing range of options as court cases and recounts have repeatedly failed to make any dent in the convincing victory of Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Now that states are certifying their election results, it appears the president’s last-ditch efforts will entail desperate pleas to Republican state lawmakers in hopes they will ignore their state laws and somehow skew the election to favor his reelection in the all-important electoral college.
Lying, paranoia and conspiracy are defining features of a totalitarian society. What hope is there for a brand new era, in the aftermath of an administration that has relied on all three?
“I WON THE ELECTION!” Donald Trump tweeted in the early hours of 16 November 2020, 10 days after he lost the election. At the same time, Atlantic magazine announced an interview with Barack Obama, in which he warns that the US is “entering into an epistemological crisis” – a crisis of knowing. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false,” Obama explains, “by definition our democracy doesn’t work.” I saw the two assertions juxtaposed on Twitter as I was finishing writing this essay, and together they demonstrate its proposition: that American democracy is facing not merely a crisis in trust, but in knowledge itself, largely because language has become increasingly untethered from reality, as we find ourselves in a swirling maelstrom of lies, disinformation, paranoia and conspiracy theories.
The problem is exemplified by Trump’s utterance, which bears only the most tenuous relation to reality: Trump participated in an election, giving his declaration some contextual force, but he had not won the election, rendering the claim farcical to those who reject it. The capital letters make it even funnier, a failed tyrant trying to exert mastery through typography. But it stops being funny when we acknowledge that millions of people accept this lie as a decree. Their sheer volume creates a crisis in knowing, because truth-claims largely depend on consensual agreement. This is why the debates about the US’s alarming political situation have orbited so magnetically around language itself. For months, American political and historical commentators have disputed whether the Trump administration can be properly called “fascist”, whether in refusing to concede he is trying to effect a “coup”. Are these the right words to use to describe reality? Not knowing reflects a crisis of knowledge, which derives in part from a crisis in authority.
I’m not obsessed with Doug, but he could probably be my pub quiz subject
There is much to say about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s historic win, but I’d like to focus on a man called Doug. Doug Emhoff is a lawyer and – more relevantly to your interests and mine – Harris’s husband, and unless you are part of the #DougHive, Doug’s devoted (and, one suspects, mainly female) fans, it’s likely you don’t know much about him.
This in itself is astonishing, given that women are generally discussedthrough the prism of their personal lives. I didn’t realise until last month that the young adults with whom Harris is occasionally photographed are not, as I’d assumed, her children, but rather Doug’s children and her stepchildren. Having children, or not, once defined a woman’s public image, as Theresa May could tell you, but I don’t recall a single discussion of Harris’s parental status during this campaign. Before we all celebrate this too ecstatically, Harris remains an anomaly; just try to find a single article about Amy Coney Barrett that doesn’t mention how many kids she has, and then imply that this has some bearing on her fitness for the supreme court. That Harris has largely swerved this is mainly down to her, but also down to Doug. (I know newspaper style dictates I should refer to him as Emhoff, but, really, he is such a Doug.)
Two weeks after his defeat, Trump has gone from always present to effectively missing, behavior that many say is unprecedented and dangerous
There was one thing that even Donald Trump’s harshest critics were never able to accuse him of: invisibility.
The outgoing US president held endless campaign rallies, verbally sparred with reporters on the way to his helicopter and spent so long on the phone to Fox News shows that even pliable hosts had to gently but firmly hang up. He was the master of saturating every news cycle with his voice and image.
That’s all from me for the night. Here’s where the news stands as we head into the weekend.
Trump’s futile last stands to cling to claims of winning are getting even more futile
After Georgia officials certified the state’s recount on Friday, confirming Joe Biden as the winner of the state, Michigan also stuck to its election results, making it impossible for Donald Trump to win the presidency.
Donald Trump was on Friday making a futile but dangerous last stand, without precedent in modern American history, to overturn the result of the presidential election so he can remain in power.
Even as Joe Biden’s victory in the state of Georgia was confirmed, the president met withRepublican leaders from Michigan at the White Housein an increasingly desperate bid to subvert democracy after a series of courtroom defeats over allegations of voter fraud.
Donald Trump reiterated on Friday the false claim that he won the election and accused pharmaceutical companies of strategically delaying their announcements about a coronavirus vaccine because of his support for reducing medicine costs and in order to hurt his re-election efforts. 'We had big pharma against us,' Trump said at a news conference during which he accused Pfizer of waiting over a month to announce details about its coronavirus vaccine test results.
Authorities conducting fraud investigations into Donald Trump and his businesses are reportedly looking at consulting fees that may have gone to his daughter Ivanka Trump, prompting her to accuse them of “harassment”.
The New York Times said there were twin New York investigations, one criminal and one civil.
Despite overall defeat, Trump boosted his support in the Iowa heartland and some say sounded the death knell for the ‘country club Republican’ party there
Just a few months ago, Neil Shaffer thought Iowa was lost to Donald Trump.
“I was worried. We were in the midst of Covid and the economy wasn’t doing so good and Trump wasn’t handling the Covid interviews very well, and I was thinking this is gonna be a bloodbath,” said the farmer and chair of a county Republican party in the north-east of the state.
US president-elect Joe Biden says Donald Trump will go down in history as one of the ‘most irresponsible presidents in American history’, labelling his challenges to the election results ‘incredibly damaging’. Biden said he was not concerned that Trump’s refusal to concede the election would prevent a transfer of power, but added it ‘sends a horrible message about who we are as a country’.
President Donald Trump's election legal team holds a press conference to spout a number of conspiracy theories and baseless claims of voter fraud that they falsely claim changed the results of the 2020 election. Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lawyers repeatedly accuse the media of disregarding their claims and argue a debunked conspiracy theory that Venezuela could have hacked election results through machines used by local authorities
Rising Biden tally and his popular vote lead overshadowed by Trump escalating his false insistence that he actually won
Joe Biden is approaching a record 80m votes, with ballots still being counted and having already recorded the highest number of votes for a US presidential election winner, as Donald Trump persisted on Thursday in denying the result and trying to overturn it.
When you serve in the executive branch, you are required to take an oath of office on your first day. Your oath is not to the president of the United States but to the Constitution and the American people. When Emily accepted this leadership role, she also accepted the responsibility to make the tough choices. This is one of those times.
Make no mistake, I absolutely want the Trump campaign to expose fraud, if it is there. As a father, small business owner and lifelong Republican, I do not want a Joe Biden presidency. I simply do not agree with Joe Biden on how to move America forward. But, as an American, I know elections have consequences and my support of our Constitution outweighs my distress at who will be in the Oval Office.
New claims for unemployment benefits in the US rose to 742,000 last week. It is the first increase since early October, as a surge in coronavirus cases keeps a tight check on the US economic recovery.
More than 21 million Americans are currently claiming some form of unemployment insurance.
Even with news of two promising vaccines, the consumer spending that powers the nation’s economic growth could shrivel amid extended business closures.
While the holiday season traditionally brings enormous sales volume for retailers, restaurants, and movie theaters, many are facing a challenging season. Travel is at a near-standstill, consumers’ wallets are already tightly squeezed, and extended pandemic unemployment assistance is set to expire by the end of December.
The economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic continues. The U.S. Department of Labor just reported that another 742,000 unemployed Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits just last week. Meanwhile, there’s still no badly needed Covid-19 economic stimulus package.
Red flag: 4.4 million Americans are receiving "Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation," up from 1.4 million in August.
That's the program for people who have been unemployed for months and exhausted their regular UI.
The Georgia secretary of state tells the Guardian he’s received death threats for pushing back against the president’s claims
Of all the Republicans to push back on Donald Trump’s baseless claims about voter fraud, Brad Raffensperger, the mild-mannered top election official in Georgia, did not seem like a likely candidate.
From ‘peace’ deals to gutting aid, the US president has had a major impact on the region
Donald Trump has cast himself as an isolationist president focused on Americans. However, in one major foreign policy issue, Israel and Palestine, the US leader has possibly made more of an impact than any of his predecessors.
The US coronavirus death toll has now surpassed 250,029, representing a higher death toll than any other country in the world.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, x number Americans have now died of coronavirus, more than eight months after the start of the pandemic.
Walmart, McDonald’s and Uber are among the companies that have the most employees on food stamps and Medicaid, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO looked into the matter at the behest of Bernie Sanders. “These giant corporations pay starvation wages – wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps,” Sanders said, pointing to several fast food and other companies whose workers have to rely on benefits because they do not make enough money to survive.
These giant corporations pay starvation wages—wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps to survive:
Walmart McDonald’s Dollar Tree Uber Burger King FedEx Wendy's
This is what a rigged economy is about. We need a $15 living wage and Medicare for All. https://t.co/GFzfK9ERae
Senior House Democrat says Trump ‘views truth as his enemy’
Campaign seeks recounts and investigations in key states
Donald Trump was condemned by opponents on Wednesday for firing the senior official who disputed his baseless claims of election fraud, as the president pressed on with his increasingly desperate battle to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
President’s daughter asked her ‘why would you tell me to read a book about poor people?’
Ivanka Trump shared her father’s craving for money and praise – and his apparent disdain for poor people – from a young age, according to a former schoolfriend who has written a tell-all essay.
Donald Trump’s daughter was obsessed with status and used to blame classmates for her infractions of school rules while projecting a refined persona, Lysandra Ohrstrom, who was a maid of honour at her wedding, claimed in Vanity Fair.