USA

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota’s pardon board will consider freeing a Black man who was imprisoned for life as a teenager in the 2002 slaying of an 11-year-old girl hit by a stray bullet while doing homework at her dining room table.

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal court on Tuesday will consider whether to invalidate a program that shields from deportation immigrants brought to the United States as children, potentially creating complications for the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

The challenge to be heard in Houston concerns President Barack Obama’s original memorandum creating Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which currently covers about 650,000 people.

ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans eager to cement GOP control of the U.S. Senate have branded Georgia’s Democratic candidates as puppets who would ensure a leftist takeover of the federal government if Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler aren’t reelected.

Democrats believe they have a helpful counter to the exaggerated attacks on Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock: President-elect Joe Biden.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration for the first time on Monday formally blamed Iran for the presumed death of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, publicly identifying two Iranian intelligence officers believed responsible for his abduction and imposing sanctions against them.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. government agencies and private companies rushed Monday to secure their computer networks following the disclosure of a sophisticated and long-running cyber-espionage intrusion suspected of being carried out by Russian hackers.

The full extent of the damage is not yet clear. But the potential threat was significant enough that the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity unit directed all federal agencies to remove compromised network management software and thousands of companies were expected to do the same.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Washington negotiators continued to reach for a long-delayed agreement on COVID-19 relief on Monday, but rank-and-file Democrats appeared increasingly resigned to having to drop, for now, a scaled-back demand for fiscal relief for states and local governments whose budgets have been thrown out of balance by the pandemic.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr, one of President Donald Trump’s staunchest allies, is departing amid lingering tension over the president’s baseless claims of election fraud and the investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son.

Barr went Monday to the White House, where Trump said the attorney general submitted his letter of resignation. “As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family,” Trump tweeted.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time, a groundswell of leading Republicans said Monday that Democrat Joe Biden is the winner of the presidential election, essentially abandoning President Donald Trump’s assault on the outcome after the Electoral College certified the vote.

With states affirming the results, the Republicans faced a pivotal choice - to declare Biden the president-elect, as the tally showed, or keep standing silently by as Trump wages a potentially damaging campaign to overturn the election.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For weeks, President Donald Trump has put America’s democratic institutions under unprecedented strain as he fights to hold power despite losing his bid for reelection. But the institutions so far are holding firm.

On Monday, the Electoral College did its part, formally confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. Electors in all 50 states cast ballots that reflected the will of their voters, despite pressure from Trump to subvert the results.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Electoral College decisively confirmed Joe Biden on Monday as the nation’s next president, ratifying his November victory in an authoritative state-by-state repudiation of President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede he had lost.

The presidential electors gave Biden a solid majority of 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, the same margin that Trump bragged was a landslide when he won the White House four years ago.