1st woman free-climbs El Capitan’s Golden Gate route in day
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — Rock climber Emily Harrington has become the first woman, and fourth person, to free-climb the Golden Gate route on Yosemite National Park’s 3,000-foot granite wall in a single day. While most of the country was focused on the results of the U.S. presidential election early...
Elation and anger: Catharsis in the streets around U.S. as election ends
As soon as the news buzzed on their phones, Americans gathered spontaneously on street corners and front lawns — honking their horns, banging pots and pans, starting impromptu dance parties — as an agonizingly vitriolic election and exhausting four-day wait for results came to an end Saturday morning. And for...
Biden built back Pennsylvania’s own ‘blue wall’ — one brick at a time
Former Vice President Joe Biden rebuilt the Pennsylvania section of the “blue wall” one brick at a time as he amassed a lead that led The Associated Press to declare him president-elect Saturday. Preliminary returns show how he held onto Philadelphia, flipped back Erie and Northampton counties and built larger...
Trump defied gravity; now falls back to earth, future TBD
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump, who defied political gravity with his extraordinary rise from reality star and businessman to the presidency, has fallen back to earth. In the end, his flurry of raucous rallies, an unprecedented turnout operation and sheer force of will could not overcome the reality of his enduring...
Pennsylvania has back-to-back record-high coronavirus cases
Pennsylvania on Saturday reported 4,035 new coronavirus cases — a whopping 651 case jump from the previous record set just the day before. The state also reported 40 new deaths. The total number of covid-19 deaths in Pennsylvania is 9,015. The new data bring the total cases to 227,985. Officials...
Explainer: Why The Associated Press called Pennsylvania for BidenVideo
Four years ago, President Donald Trump breached the Democrats’ “blue wall,” narrowly winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — a trio of Great Lakes states that had long served as a bulwark against Republican presidential candidates. On Saturday, Democrat Joe Biden captured it back — and also won the presidency —...
Trump isn’t conceding to President-elect BidenVideo
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is not conceding to President-elect Joe Biden, promising unspecified legal challenges seeking to overturn the outcome of the race for the White House. Trump said in a statement that, “We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why...
Kamala Harris becomes first Black woman, South Asian elected vice presidentVideo
Kamala Harris made history Saturday as the first Black woman elected as vice president of the United States, shattering barriers that have kept men — almost all of them white — entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for more than two centuries. The 56-year-old California senator, also the...
Biden wins White House, will become 46th president of U.S., vows new direction for divided country
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania catapulted its native son, Democrat Joe Biden, to victory and the White House on Saturday after a long, hard-fought and expensive campaign in which Democrats wrested the battleground state’s 20 electoral votes back from President Donald Trump after the Republican’s surprise victory in 2016. Biden also carried...
Officials: Clerk error in small Michigan county behind results favoring Biden
BELLAIRE, Mich. — A clerk’s error in a small Republican-leaning northern Michigan county earlier this week led to the reporting of unofficial voting results that favored Democrat Joe Biden, state officials said. Questions were raised after Antrim County, northeast of Traverse City, first reported a local landslide for Biden in...
Suspended animation: Count drags on as Biden nears victory
WASHINGTON — Four days after the election, the U.S. presidential race hovered in suspended animation Saturday as the long, exacting work of counting votes brought Democrat Joe Biden ever closer to a victory over President Donald Trump. The delay in producing a verdict can be attributed to high turnout, a...
Pa. proves pivotal, propelling Joe Biden to White House
The Keystone State proved to be the key for Joe Biden after all. The Associated Press called the race in Pennsylvania for Biden shortly after 11 a.m. Saturday, propelling the former vice president to the White House as the 46th president of the United States. Biden has received 3,345,906 votes...
Fact check: Trump’s errant assault on election integrity
WASHINGTON — The most direct attempt to undermine the integrity of the U.S. election with bad information came not from overseas sources or online liars but from a president standing behind the presidential seal at the White House and facing defeat. President Donald Trump spoke of “horror stories” in voting...
Presidential concession speech ‘critical’ to reconciliation, democracy
After hard fought games, win or lose, even if they feel the officials made bad calls, football coaches walk across fields, shake the other coach’s hand and say “good game.” Should it hold that President Trump loses his bid for reelection to Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Joe DiSarro, a professor...
Trump chief of staff Meadows diagnosed with covid-19
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows has been diagnosed with the coronavirus as the nation sets daily records for confirmed cases for the pandemic. Two senior administration officials confirmed Friday that Meadows had tested positive for the virus, which has killed more than 236,000 Americans so...
Criminal justice reformer wins LA district attorney’s race
LOS ANGELES — Advocates for criminal justice reform who have elected a wave of progressive prosecutors nationwide captured the crown jewel Friday as former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon defeated Los Angeles DA Jackie Lacey. The bitter race to run the nation’s largest prosecutor’s office was a referendum on...
Incendiary texts traced to outfit run by top Trump aide
BOSTON — A texting company run by one of President Donald Trump’s top campaign officials sent out thousands of targeted, anonymous text messages urging supporters to rally where votes were being counted in Philadelphia on Thursday, falsely claiming Democrats were trying to steal the presidential election. The messages directed Trump...
Increasingly normal: Guns seen outside vote-counting centers
The most turbulent and norm-breaking presidential election of a lifetime has led to an extraordinary spectacle in the United States over the past three days: armed protesters gathering nightly outside offices where local workers are counting the votes that will decide who wins the White House. Some carry shotguns. Some...
U.S. Supreme Court justice orders Pa. counties to separate, but keep counting, late-arriving mail ballots
PHILADELPHIA — In a move that could signal the U.S. Supreme Court is one step closer to intervening in a fight over Pennsylvania’s grace-period for late-arriving mail ballots, Justice Samuel Alito on Friday ordered all counties to keep separate any ballots that came in after Nov. 3 and instructed state...
State Attorney General Josh Shapiro fires back at Ted Cruz after his shot at Pa.’s vote counting
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro responded to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz after the Texas Republican criticized election vote counting in largely Democratic-run cities, including Philadelphia, while on Fox News “The Sean Hannity Show” Thursday night. “What we’re seeing tonight, what we’ve been seeing the last three days, is outrageous,” Cruz...
Protesters crying foul over vote counts stir safety concerns
Pro-Trump protesters — some of them openly carrying rifles and handguns — rallied outside vote-tabulation centers in a few cities around the country Friday, responding to groundless accusations from President Donald Trump that the Democrats were trying to steal the White House. Elections officials in several states where Democrat Joe...
Tennessee governor gives death row inmate temporary reprieve
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has granted a death row inmate a temporary reprieve from execution. Lee issued a short statement Friday afternoon saying he is granting a reprieve to Pervis Payne until April 9 “due to the challenges and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Payne is...
Demolition starts on big ship stranded 14 months off Georgia
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Using a heavy anchor chain like a saw, a towering crane Friday began cutting apart a cargo ship that’s been stranded on the Georgia coast since it overturned nearly 14 months ago. Demolition of the South Korean ship Golden Ray finally started after months of planning and...
Trump’s wild claims test limits of Republican loyalty
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s wild and unsupported claims of voter fraud have emerged as a high-stakes Republican loyalty test that illustrates the tug of war likely to define the future of the GOP whether he wins or loses the presidency. There is a pervasive sense among current and former...
Trump faces tough road in getting Supreme Court to intervene
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has repeatedly said there’s one place he wants to determine the outcome of the presidential election: the U.S. Supreme Court. But he may have a difficult time ever getting there. Over the last two days, Trump has leaned in to the idea that the high...
