President lauds Operation Warp Speed success but says New York will have to wait for vaccine

French president Emmanuel Macron has welcomed the prospect of US president-elect Joe Biden rejoining the Paris climate accord, calling it a chance to “make our planet great again”.

Ooof. C’est sauvage.

Macron’s comments follow those of other world leaders including British prime minister Boris Johnson, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who have welcomed Biden’s victory as a boost to global cooperation in tackling climate change.

In contrast to four years of climate change policy inaction under Trump, who withdrew the US from the 2015 accord, Biden has pledged a $2 trillion plan to boost US investment in clean energy and combat global warming, while also rejoining the historic Paris agreement on the first day of his presidency.  

Namita Singh has more.

A little legal news for you now.

A libel lawsuit brought by the president against CNN has been dismissed by a federal judge, ending his legal battle over an op-ed published in 2019.

Trump’s team had alleged the network maliciously published the piece by Larry Noble on 13 June 2019 that claimed “the Trump campaign assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table.”

The opinion piece was written in the aftermath of Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia, the president’s team responding by accusing CNN of publishing it knowing its allegations were false and intending to smear him.

But US district judge Michael L Brown threw the matter out on the basis that the president’s lawyers had failed to provide evidence of its contentions.

Huh. Sounds familiar.

Danielle Zoellner has the full story.

In further news from the courts, E Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against the president is moving forward, commenced in response to Trump saying the New York writer was lying when she accused him of raping her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s.

ABC News reports that the start of the discovery process could potentially begin this year, despite various White House attempts to halt it.

“We look forward to finally moving ahead with discovery in the case, which has been on hold since Trump filed his motion for a stay last February,” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement.

A conference is now scheduled to discuss the suit in early December.

The Department of Justice, acting on a request from the White House, previously took  the rare step of trying to intervene and defend the president as a government employee rather than an private individual in the civil lawsuit, arguing the allegations questioned his fitness for office and thus related to his official duties in office.

Josh Marcus picks up the thread.

As Trump does literally nothing about the pandemic, stewing in the West Wing over his election defeat and dragging out his various bogus legal challenges for as long as possible to conceal his deep humiliation, the US had another alarming day on the Covid front on Thursday:

In the latest alarming development, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has ordered residents of the country’s third largest city to stay at home and not entertain visitors for 30 days - not even for Thanksgiving.

Harriet Alexander has this report.

Popular progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez held a town hall with her constituents in New York on Thursday and was asked about the status of coronavirus stimulus talks on Capitol Hill at a time when the American public and businesses desperately need additional relief funding.

"We thought it was going to happen and at the very last minute the rug was pulled out for us," she answered. 

“And now we are in a very dangerous moment where President Trump has no interest in helping the American people.

“His urgency prior to the election, I would say, was entirely predicated on his re-election. And now the election is over it seems he has no urgency to help everyone in this country.”

Bravo.

Danielle Zoellner has more.

Coronavirus survivors should throw away their masks and “celebrate”, says Rand Paul, despite rising case numbers and no proof existing that a prior infection can keep you safe from the virus.

But then when did “proof” ever matter to Trump-era Republicans?

As we’ve just seen, Paul made the comments as the US passed 163,405 cases in one day, having recorded above 100,000 every day for a week now.

“We have 11 million people in our country who have already had Covid. We should tell them to celebrate. We should tell them to throw away their masks, go to restaurants, and live again because these people are now immune,” Paul blathered wrongly and dangerously on Fox News.

What’s really going on here? Is he in the pocket of Big Corona or something?

Anyway, Mayank Aggarwal has this on another right-wing populist cheerily playing dice with people’s lives.

Let’s say it again.

US officials have said they have found no evidence votes in the presidential election were compromised in any way, rejecting baseless claims from Trump that the result was in doubt due to widespread voter fraud.  

A coalition of government and industry cybersecurity experts said the 3 November election was the most secure in US history, as they delivered the most direct blow yet to the Trump camp's efforts to undermine Biden’s victory.

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,“ the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement.

Kayleigh McEnany can raid Ryman’s and pose with as many empty binders and blank stacks of paper as she likes on Sean Hannity’s show but, make no mistake, this is over.

That hasn’t stopped conservative lawyer Jonathan Turley - who obligingly advised the House against Trump’s impeachment a year ago - making yet more false allegations about Dominion voting machines in Michigan on Fox and Friends this morning.

Sigh.

Liam James has the latest.

As promised, election officials in Georgia's 159 counties are undertaking a recount of ballots in last week’s presidential race.

A state law requires that at least one race be audited by hand to check that the machines that initially counted the ballots did so accurately, not because of any suspected issue with the result.

Secretary of state Brad Raffensperger chose to audit the presidential race under that law and said the tight margin - Biden leads Trump by 14,000 votes - means a full hand count is necessary.

Kate Brumback has this report.

The violent far-right group Trump told to “stand by” during the first presidential debate in September are expected to rally in Washington, DC, on Saturday as part of a constellation of groups and demonstrations heading to the capitol to protest the election result.

“People want to show up and have their voice heard,” the aforementioned Kayleigh McEnany told Fox last night. “I mean this president - look, he got more votes than any Republican nominee, or for president I should say, in the history of our country and indeed he got more Republican votes as any nominee in the history of our party back in 2016.”

But, crucially, not as many as Joe Biden.

The concurrent demonstrations in the capitol, including the Million MAGA March and various “Stop the Steal” events, are a physical manifestation of the outrage that’s spread in conservative circles online and are expected to attract a broad cross-section of Trump-supporting factions.

We can expect radical anti-government vigilante groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, followers of conspiracy-peddling outlet Infowars, alt-right activists, neo-Nazis, as well other supporters of the president.

What a sentence that last is.

Josh Marcus has more details.

Multiple news outlets are calling the desert state for the Democrat over a week on from the US presidential election.

Fox News and the AP did so on the night but the likes of NBC are now finally joining them, making Biden the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1996.

Before him, the state had not turned blue since Harry Truman in 1948.

Biden’s win is largely being credited to Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county and home to Phoenix, as well as an influx of young and Latino voters who have changed its demographics in recent years.