Donald Trump’s campaign asked to join a Texas lawsuit challenging the president’s election defeat at the US Supreme Court.
The move came as 17 other states filed in support of a case that has been called a publicity stunt.
While presenting no evidence of fraud, the campaign cited the fact that Mr Trump won 12 million more votes than in 2016 with a high percentage of non-white voters in his brief, along with the fact that he won both Florida and Ohio.
The motion filed by the Texas attorney general is a publicity stunt
“These things just don’t normally happen, and a large percentage of the American people know that something is deeply amiss,” according to the filing on Wednesday.
Mr Trump must get permission from the Supreme Court to be allowed to intervene in the case.
Seventeen other states, led by Missouri, filed a brief on Wednesday in support of the Texas suit, brought by the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton. Texas is seeking to prevent electors from Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania from participating in the Electoral College on December 14. The Supreme Court on Tuesday evening gave the states until 3pm on Thursday to file responses.
Mr Paxton will be among about a dozen Republican attorneys general who are to join Mr Trump for lunch on Thursday, according to White House spokesman Judd Deere. He added that Mr Trump plans to discuss “issues important to their citizens and the country, and ways to continue to advance the shared federal-state partnership.”
A White House official said that the meeting had been scheduled weeks ago.
The suit by Mr Paxton – who has been accused of bribery by some of his own aides – repeats allegations about mail-in voting that have already been roundly rejected in dozens of courts across the nation, and legal experts say it has no chance of being heard by the Supreme Court. Top officials in the states he seeks to sue questioned the purpose of the suit on Tuesday.
“The motion filed by the Texas attorney general is a publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. “The erosion of confidence in our democratic system isn’t attributable to the good people of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia or Pennsylvania but rather to partisan officials, like Mr Paxton, who place loyalty to a person over loyalty to their country.”
The Texas suit was filed on the same day as the December 8 “safe harbor” date for states to certify their slates of electors to send to the Electoral College. The passing of that deadline means time is almost certainly up on Mr Trump’s increasingly desperate effort to overturn his re-election defeat, in which he’s sought to pressure state legislatures to override voters and appoint alternative electors who would back him instead of president-elect Joe Biden.
Mr Trump has described this suit as “the big one.” He also noted Wednesday that his campaign wasn’t part of a separate case, brought by a Pennsylvania congressman, that the Supreme Court rebuffed on Tuesday – the first time the high court has weighed in on Republican litigation to try to overturn the election outcome.
In a one-sentence order, the court said Tuesday that it would not grant a request from plaintiffs including Representative Mike Kelly to void Pennsylvania’s election results.
Who has been sanctioned?
Daniella Weiss and Nachala
Described as 'the grandmother of the settler movement', she has encouraged the expansion of settlements for decades. The 79 year old leads radical settler movement Nachala, whose aim is for Israel to annex Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where it helps settlers built outposts.
Harel Libi & Libi Construction and Infrastructure
Libi has been involved in threatening and perpetuating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinians. His firm has provided logistical and financial support for the establishment of illegal outposts.
Zohar Sabah
Runs a settler outpost named Zohar’s Farm and has previously faced charges of violence against Palestinians. He was indicted by Israel’s State Attorney’s Office in September for allegedly participating in a violent attack against Palestinians and activists in the West Bank village of Muarrajat.
Coco’s Farm and Neria’s Farm
These are illegal outposts in the West Bank, which are at the vanguard of the settler movement. According to the UK, they are associated with people who have been involved in enabling, inciting, promoting or providing support for activities that amount to “serious abuse”.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
BAD%20BOYS%3A%20RIDE%20OR%20DIE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Adil%20El%20Arbi%20and%20Bilall%20Fallah%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EWill%20Smith%2C%20Martin%20Lawrence%2C%20Joe%20Pantoliano%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Sweet%20Tooth
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECreator%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EJim%20Mickle%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EChristian%20Convery%2C%20Nonso%20Anozie%2C%20Adeel%20Akhtar%2C%20Stefania%20LaVie%20Owen%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
