Don Jr tests positive, as his father dodges media questions

As the US president continues to push falsehoods about the election, his legal team has so far failed to gain any traction in court without evidence of widespread fraud. 

And experts, including officials from the federal government, widely agree that such fraud does not exist

Still, Mr Trump and his Republican allies have pressed forward with several lawsuits aimed at blocking or delaying the certification of election results in key battleground states won by president-elect Joe Biden. 

Republicans are complaining that, among other things, their observers weren’t allowed to properly review the processing of ballots.

Here’s the Associated Press with an explainer on the key challenges currently underway, and what they could mean: 

Donald Trump has again shared this map from the New York Times, showing his higher vote total in 2020, than in 2016, when he won.

The US president appeared to say “there was no way the Dems could have won” this time around, apart from….you guessed it…there being a “rigged election” against him. 

Of course, both state and federal officials (including those he’s fired in recent days) have found no such evidence of any election related fraud. 

The US president, among multiple posts to Twitter on Thursday morning, complained about the media’s apparent lack of praise for the development of Covid-19 vaccines.

…and vaccines, some of which were not created with the support of the Trump administration. 

His complaints come as the United States surpassed 250,000 deaths from the virus on Wednesday, the world’s highest.

Mr Trump’s only comments on the pandemic, which has gripped the US in recent weeks, have been to complain about the announcement of vaccines after his election loss to Joe Biden, despite the mounting death toll. 

According to Donald Trump, attorneys representing the Republican party will hold a press conference later today, with the expectation that they will show a “very clear and viable path to victory" for him over Joe Biden. 

He adds that the “pieces are very nicely falling into place” - in apparent unawareness at his failure to reverse a democratically held election by shouting about "fraud” without evidence. 

Get your popcorn ready…

Georgia election officials are expected to release a report on Thursday that will reveal the outcome of a hand tally of ballots in the state’s presidential race.

Joe Biden is expected to retain a narrow lead over Donald Trump by around 12,800 votes, following the counting of almost 5 million ballots in a statewide audit that was required by a new state law.

If the margin is below 0.5 per cent, the losing candidate can request a recount within two businesses days, although it would unlikely change a margin above 10,000 votes. 

Amid a nationwide surge in coronavirus cases this week, some 742,000 Americans have filed for new jobless benefits, according to figures released on Thursday. 

Although it’s well below the peak of nearly 7 million claims in late March, when the coronavirus first surged across the US, the latest figures from the Labor Department are up on last week’s figure, of 711.000 claims. 

Two Michigan Republicans who initially blocked certification of election results for the county that includes Detroit now say they want to rescind their certification, citing pressure. 

Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two Republican canvassers in Wayne County, said in a statement issued late on Wednesday that they only voted to certify the results after “hours of sustained pressure" and after getting promises that their concerns about the election would be investigated.

Critics have pointed out that the area of Detroit is home to a large Black American community that leans Democrat. Neither has there been any evidence to support challenging the results in Wayne County. 

Donald Trump has announced that the lawyers handling his challenges to election results in key battleground states will hold a press briefing to outline their strategy.

The event, which is due to take place at the Republican National Committee at 12pm ET, follows his failure to concede the election Joe Biden, who became president elect more than a week ago. 

In one of a stream of tweets on Thursday morning, Mr Trump said his legal team will give an “important news conference today” and that they will explain their plans for a “very clear and viable path to victory”.

“Pieces are very nicely falling into place,” the president added, although - given the state of his lawsuit in Pennsylvania - some would argue that was not the case. 

Oliver O’Connell has the latest:

President-elect Joe Biden’s winning tally is approaching a record 80 million votes as Democratic bastions continue to count ballots and the 2020 election cracks turnout records.

The rising Biden tally and his popular vote lead — nearly 6 million votes — come as Trump has escalated his false insistence that he actually won the election, and his campaign and supporters intensify their uphill legal fight to stop or delay results from being certified, potentially nullify the votes of Americans.

“It's just a lot of noise going on, because Donald Trump is a bull who carries his own china shop with him,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Once the noise recedes, it's going to be clear that Biden won a very convincing victory.”

The United States land borders with Canada and Mexico are both expected to remain closed to non-essential travel until 21 December at the earliest, amid a rising number of US coronavirus cases, officials in Washington and Ottawa told Reuters on Wednesday.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement: “After reviewing the development of the spread of Covid-19 in both countries ... Mexico proposed to the United States extending for one more month the restrictions on non-essential land crossings over their shared border". 

Canada, meanwhile, said current restrictions would remain in place for at least another month, while the US records more cases and death from Covid-19 than any other country worldwide.