Don Jr tests positive, as his father dodges media questions

The New York Times has reported that Lara Trump, Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, is eyeing a possible Senate run in her home state of North Carolina in 2022.  

The Times story cites three allies of Ms Trump, who told the outlet that she has been considering a Senate run.  

If true, Ms Trump will run for an open seat. Senator Richard Burr, who currently holds it, plans to retire at the end of this term.  

The North Carolina race is expected to be tight; while Mr Trump did win the state this year, he did so by a smaller margin than in 2016, suggesting the state may be more favourable to Democratic challengers in the future.Graig Graziosi has more.

Graig Graziosi has more.

A top Georgia election official said Thursday that a hand tally of ballots cast in the presidential race has been completed, and that the results affirm Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead over Republican President Donald Trump.

The hand tally of about 5 million votes stemmed from an audit required by a new state law and wasn’t in response to any suspected problems with the state’s results or an official recount request. The state has until Friday to certify results that have been certified and submitted by the counties.

The counties were supposed to finish the hand count by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system, said Thursday evening that the audit was complete and the results would soon be posted on the secretary of state’s website.

Once the state certifies the election results, the losing campaign has two business days to request a recount if the margin remains within 0.5%. That recount would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the counties, Sterling said. AP

Sources close to the Hen House tell The Independent that Donald Trump is colluding with the Thanksgiving industrial complex to ensure the annual turkey parden will, in fact, go towards a conservative-leaning gobbler.

Donald Trump, in an extraordinary move, is inviting Michigan state Republican lawmakers to the White House on Friday as he apparently opens a new front in his battle to overturn election results there.

The outgoing president has lost several legal challenges in Michigan based on claims of voter fraud his team has yet to prove. Now he has invited the GOP majority leader of the Michigan State Senate and other members of his party to Washington, a source confirmed on Thursday.

The planned meeting comes as some Trump surrogates are pushing the idea that Republican-controlled state legislatures could override the election process by sending pro-Trump delegates to the Electoral College session to formally count the electoral votes.

John T Bennett reports.

Another 742,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the number of US workers filing jobless claims rose for the first time in over a month, amid a surge of new Covid-19 infections nationwide.  

The news comes as estimates indicate as many as 12 million people across the country could stand to lose unemployment benefits and other crucial aid lawmakers provided in the early months of the Covid-19 outbreak in the US.  

The rate of those seeking unemployment aid amid the pandemic has fallen steadily over the last five weeks after soaring to 6.9 million in March during the onset of the outbreak. Some businesses began to reopen in recent months, but with lockdown orders lifted in many states and the appetite for coronavirus restrictions having waned since the summer, infections appear to be spiking once again.

The Independent’s Chris Riotta has more.

Another day, another Rudy Giuliani conference — and though this one wasn’t sandwiched between a crematorium and an adult bookstore, it didn’t disappoint in terms of complete and utter farcical madness, writes The Independent’s Holly Baxter.

“Backgrounded by three American flags and sweating harder than a turkey at Thanksgiving, Rudy took the stage to announce the next twist in the bizarre defense of Donald J Trump: it was all a commie plot from Venezuela.”

After $3m dollars and a six hour fight, the Wisconsin Elections Commission agreed to recount ballots cast in Milwaukee and Dane counties at the request of Donald Trump.  

Mr Trump paid $3m for the recount of the state's most populous counties; one home to the city of Milwaukee, and the other home to Madison, both liberal strongholds.  

The elections commission - evenly split between Democrats and Republicans - fought for approximately six hours over whether their manual for local governments conducting recounts needed updates. Eventually, the group agreed not to reference the manual in its recount order, but not before an exasperated Democratic commissioner lamented how destructive the nation's partisanship had become.  

The Independent’s Graig Graziosi has more.

New York fraud investigations into Trump family widens

Two separate investigations into Donald Trump and his businesses have expanded to look at tax write-offs on consulting fees, according to the New York Times.

For Independent Voices, Max Burns writes unemployed Americans have more to worry about than the uncontrolled spread of a third nationwide Covid-19 outbreak: in states across the country, pandemic emergency unemployment extensions are due to expire before the end of the year. 

“Despite growing unrest among those on the brink of homelessness and bankruptcy, the outgoing Trump administration has shown no interest in protecting households from the economic shock.”

It is perhaps fitting that America’s most infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is stumping again for Donald Trump, writes The  Independent’s Richard Hall.

“In the week since his election loss, the president appears to have all but abandoned the job of governing to focus on spreading false and debunked stories about voter fraud to explain his defeat. ”