UPDATE, 2015 GMT:

Latest in the four key states, with Joe Biden leading in each…

Georgia: Biden has an edge of 1,603 votes as the ballots are recounted.

Pennsylvania: Biden has extended his advantage to 13,709 votes with 5% of the ballots outstanding.

Arizona: Biden’s lead has shrunk slightly, to 40,594, with 93% of the ballots counted.

Nevada: Biden leads by 20,137 votes.

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UPDATE, 1705 GMT:

Nevada has now updated its count, with Biden almost doubling his lead to more than 21,000 votes.

UPDATE, 1630 GMT:

There will be a recount in Georgia, where Joe Biden leads Donald Trump by 1,587 votes.

Trump has rallied in Pennsylvania, slightly cutting Biden’s lead from 9,027 to 8,867.

Biden is sustaining his lead in Arizona. The advantage is 43,779 with 92% of the ballots counted.

Nevada has not updated its total, with Biden’s lead of almost 12,000 votes, since Thursday.

UPDATE, 1410 GMT:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in his first statement on his Presidential election, has signalled support for the Trump camp’s legal attempt to throw out ballots.

McConnell appeared to adopt Donald Trump’s rhetoric of “LEGAL VOTES” (those cast for Trump) v. “ILLEGAL VOTES” (mail-in ballots cast for Joe Biden).

[McConnell later refused questions from reporters, “I’m not going to answer any hypotheticals about where we go from here.”]

Ronna McDaniel, the Chair of the Republican National Committee, created “irregularities” in an election where there has not been a single instance of confirmed ballot fraud: “Less than 48 hours after polls closed in an actual Presidential election, [Democrats and media] want to ignore clear irregularities and rush to call states as won.”

McDaniel did not comment on Trump proclaiming early Wednesday that he had won the election, including states in which Joe Biden is now victorious.

And John Yoo, the author of the “torture memo” justifying the “enhanced interrogation” of detainees during the Bush Administration, tries to establish the legal pretext in a column for Fox.

He argues that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court — a ruling allowing the counting of ballots between Tuesday and Friday — “unconstitutionally interfered with the state legislature’s sole authority over the time, place, and manner of federal elections and over the selection of Presidential electors”.

UPDATE, 1400 GMT:

Joe Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania.

Biden has an advantage of 8,587 votes, with 5% of the ballots to be counted. Most of them are early and mail-in votes from Democratic areas.

UPDATE, 1300 GMT:

The US set a daily Coronavirus case record on Thursday with 121,888 infections. Deaths rose by 1,210, the highest daily rise in months.

The death toll is now 234,949, with 9,611,293 confirmed cases.

Joe Biden opened his press appearance yesterday with a reminder of “the severity of this pandemic” and “our hearts go out to each and every family has lost a loved one to this terrible disease”.

Donald Trump did not mention the virus during his White House statement.

UPDATE, 1215 GMT:

Joe Biden has extended his lead in Georgia to almost 1,200 votes, with less than 1% of ballots to be counted.

UPDATE, 0935 GMT:

Joe Biden has taken the lead in Georgia by 917 votes, with 1% of the ballots to be counted.

Meanwhile, Trump doubled down on his conspiracy theories and lies with three tweets at 2:30 a.m. He railed against Twitter flagging and hiding his tweets as he asserted:

Two of the three tweets were flagged by Twitter: Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.

UPDATE, 0725 GMT:

The latest shifts in returns in three key states…

Arizona: After an overnight comeback by Donald Trump, Joe Biden has reopened his lead to 47,052 votes. The next update will be at 9 a.m. local time (1600 GMT).

Georgia: Trump’s lead has further eroded to 1,277 votes.

Pennsylvania: Biden is now trailing by only 18,229 votes.

ORIGINAL ENTRY:

Closing on victory in the US Presidential election, Joe Biden asks Americans to “keep calm” as five key states complete their counts.

Hoping to cling to power, Donald Trump lies about a “rigged” vote and pushes conspiracy theories that his opponents are stealing the contest.

Biden, assured of 253 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win, maintained his lead in Arizona (11) and Nevada (6) on Thursday. He also closed on Trump in Pennsylvania (20) and Georgia (16). Trump is ahead in North Carolina (15), which does not resume it count until November 12.

Arizona: Biden’s advantage fell to almost 37,000 with 90% of ballots cast, as Trump gained in counts of absentee votes. Most of the remaining in-state votes to be tallied are from Phoenix’s Maricopa County, with Democrats hoping that early and mail-in ballots will offset any further Trump advances.

Nevada: Biden’s lead grew to 11,438, with about 190,000 ballots to be counted. Most of the remaining vote is from Democratic-leaning Las Vegas and Clark County.

Pennsylvania: As early and mail-in ballots were tallied from heavily-Democratic areas such as Philadelphia, Biden narrowed Trump’s lead — which had been more than 600,000 with 76% of the vote counted — to 22,576 with 95% tallied.

The remaining votes are also from Democratic-leaning precincts, including Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County. The count of 35,000 ballots there was held up on Thursday by one of the lawsuits filed by Trump lawyers in the key states.

Georgia: The closest of the races, with Biden cutting Trump’s lead to 1,805 with more than 98% of the vote counted. Many of the remaining 16,000 votes are in Democratic-leaning areas, as well as provisional and military ballots.

Biden: “Democracy is Sometimes Messy”

Biden spoke on Thursday afternoon after he and Vice Presidential running mate Kamala Harris were briefed by experts on the Coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 234,911 Americans with 9,606,645 confirmed cases.

He began with a reminder of “the severity of this pandemic”: “Our hearts go out to each and every family has lost a loved one to this terrible disease.”

Then he addressed the state of the election, with implicit pushback of Trump’s falsehoods and attempt to cut short the count.

In America, the vote is sacred. It’s how people of this nation express their will, and it is the will of the voters, no one, not anything else, that chooses the President of the United States of America….

Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well, but that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of governance, and that’s been the envy of the world.

While not claiming victory, Biden repeated, “We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners. So I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm.”

Trump: “Our Numbers Whittled Away in Secret”

In contrast, Trump opened, in his Thursday evening appearance at the White House, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”

Trump rambled, from his supposed victories to the allegation that “fake polls” tried to keep Republicans home on Election Day. He proclaimed a “corrupt system” with falsehoods about the treatment of Trump poll watchers and that his lawyers had already “won a big case”.

Trump then put out his unfounded conspiracy theories about the swing states being stolen from him.

We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret and they wouldn’t allow legally permissible observers….

They want to find out how many votes they need, and then they seem to be able to find them. They wait and wait, and then they find them….

We’ll not allow the corruption to steal such an important election, or any election for that manner. And we can’t allow silence, anybody to silence our voters and manufacture results.

He pressed his unfounded allegations about postal voting, ignoring or ignorant of the Democratic tactic of encouraging their supporters to cast votes early, “It’s amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided.”

Most US networks cut away from Trump as he continued with the conspiracy theories.

GOP Split and Silent; Trump’s Supporters Protest

Most leading Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell, remained silent about Trump’s allegations and tactics.

There was mild criticism from one-time Trump ally Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and Presidential candidate: “Show us the evidence. We heard nothing today about any evidence. This kind of thing, all it does is inflame without informing, and we cannot permit inflammation without information.”

But Sen. Ted Cruz, who has been recycling conspiracy theories on Twitter, and Sen. Lindsey Graham lined up alongside Trump.

Cruz lied, “Whenever they shut the doors and turn out the light, they always find more Democratic votes.” He and Fox polemicist Sean Hannity, a close Trump friend, falsely claimed that Trump observers were not allowed to watch counts.

Graham said, “I trust Arizona. I don’t trust Philadelphia.”

Trump supporters continued to protest outside election centers in Arizona and Georgia.

In Phoenix’s Maricopa County, counting was briefly halted on Thursday when the demonstrators — some armed and including members of white supremacist movements — tried to get into the building. Later, the group enthusiastically welcomed the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Former Trump campaign manager and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon called for violence against Government officials on his radio program, including the beheading of the Government’s top Coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone — time to stop playing games.”

YouTube removed the video and barred upload of material for a week, although Bannon’s channel is still live. Twitter permanently suspended the white nationalist’s account.