The attorneys general of 17 red states have joined Texas in a lawsuit filed to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in four key battleground states.

The 17 states, all of which were won by Donald Trump in November’s election, are as follows:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Utah
• West Virginia

Hillary Clinton took to Twitter to slam elected Republicans who continue to “humour” Donald Trump and fail to stand up to him and his repeated claims of “widespread fraud” in elections. 

The former Democratic presidential nominee was weighing in after over a month of Mr Trump tweeting claims of election fraud every day, which so far remain unsubstantiated. According to the Financial Times, the Trump team has filed 50 lawsuits so far alleging various discrepancies in the election results, although most of their pleas have either been rejected or withdrawn. 

The Washington Post also reported last week that 88 per cent of all Republicans serving in Congress would not say who won the election. Although a few Republican officials have refused to agree with the president’s claims of “widespread fraud”. 

Dr Anthony Fauci revealed the brother of his daughter Alison’s boyfriend has died from complications relating to coronavirus.

When asked if Covid-19 had affected anyone in his life, America’s leading infectious disease expert answered: “Yes, but one in particular, my youngest daughter’s boyfriend’s brother is a 32-year-old young man, athletic, healthy, who got Covid-19 and had one of the unusual complications of cardiomyopathy with an arrhythmia and died.”

“So there you have a 32-year-old young man, otherwise healthy actually, quite athletic and strong, who died,” he added.

Mr Fauci said the death had devastated his family, particularly his daughter.

Vice president-elect Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, the first “Second Gentleman” of the United States, will take on a teaching role at a law school in DC, putting an end to speculation about a possible White House job.

I am delighted that Douglas Emhoff will be joining our faculty. Doug is one of the nation’s leading intellectual property and business litigators, and he has a strong commitment to social justice,” said William M Treanor, Dean of Georgetown Law as he announced Mr Emhoff’s appointment.

Mr Emhoff left his previous job to support the Biden-Harris campaign, fuelling speculation he would take on a formal White House role if the pair were victorious.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said the United States was “trending towards secession” after several states joined a legal bid to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.

Responding to a caller who asked if the Republicans could ever hope to win an election without “taking back blue cities”, Mr Limbaugh said: “I thought you were asking me something else when you said, ‘Can we win?’ I thought you meant, ‘Can we win the culture, can we dominate the culture.’ I actually think — and I’ve referenced this, I’ve alluded to this a couple of times because I’ve seen others allude to this — I actually think that we’re trending toward secession.”

He went on to say that there cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life and government, though he later clarified that he did not support secession.

The FBI has served subpoenas on the office of the Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, as part of an ongoing investigation over allegations of bribery and abuse of authority to benefit a wealthy donor.

Federal law enforcement officials visited the office of Mr Paxton on Wednesday, though it was not immediately clear how many subpoenas were issued, nor what information the agents sought, according to the Austin American Statesman.

The FBI began investigating the allegations in October after a rebellion by Mr Paxton’s top deputies, who accused him of breaking the law by using his office to help a wealthy donor, real estate investor Nate Paul.

Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsion urged the Supreme Court to reject the lawsuit filed by Texas disputing Joe Biden’s victory in the four battleground states, arguing the case has no legal or factual basis.  

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general, said in a filing to the Supreme Court justices that the lawsuit repeated baseless claims that “have already been considered, and rejected in this court and others”.  

Chris Carr, Georgia’s Republican attorney general, said the claims in the suit were “novel and far-reaching” and said Texas could not show it had been harmed by election results in other states.

Dana Nessel, Michigan’s Democratic attorney general, said the challenge was “without factual foundation or a valid legal basis” and listed the several cases that Trump and his supporters have lost in Michigan.

Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general, pointed out that Mr Trump had already obtained recounts in the state’s two most heavily Democratic counties, which showed no issue with the results and did not indicate fraud or give any reason to question the reliability of the results.

Brandon Bernard, who was convicted of murder in 1999,  has been executed in Indiana after last-minute clemency pleas were rejected by the US Supreme Court.

Bernard, 40, is the youngest offender to be executed by the federal government in nearly 70 years and the first since the 19th century to have been put to death during a presidential transition period.

Bernard told the family of the Iowa couple he killed he was sorry, before being executed by lethal injection on Thursday.

Four more executions are planned before the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and one had already been carried out towards the end of November.

If the remaining four take place, Mr Trump will have overseen the most executions by a US president in more than a century. It would bring to 13 the total of federal executions since July.

President-elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris  have been named 2020 Person of the Year by Time magazine.  

The pair were chosen ahead of three other nominees, including frontline health care workers and Dr Anthony Fauci, the Black Lives Matter racial justice movement, and Donald Trump – who Mr Biden defeated in November’s election.

The magazine revealed the cover picture of Mr Biden and Ms Harris with the subtitle: “Changing America’s story”.

The Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to invalidate president-elect Joe Biden’s victory has been backed by 106 Republican members of the House of Representatives, along with 17 Republican state attorneys general.

In a filing on Thursday, House Republicans alleged “the election of 2020 has been riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities,” having been usurped by governors, state courts, and election officials.

The Texas lawsuit has been described by Mr Trump as “the big one” that “everyone has been waiting for”.

However, legal experts question whether the case meets the requirements to be addressed by the Supreme Court.