After a painful legal defeat in Pennsylvania Federal Court, US President Donald Trump is facing increasing pressure from his fellow Republicans to halt his efforts to overturn the presidential election result and get him to admit defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
Since Biden was declared winning two weeks ago, Trump has filed a flurry of lawsuits and lobbied massively to prevent states from certifying election results.
On Saturday, Federal Judge Matthew Bran - a Republican nominated by former President Barack Obama - rejected a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign aimed at excluding millions of votes cast by mail in Pennsylvania, describing the case as "baseless legal arguments and accusations based on speculation." .
Commenting on the ruling, Trump's campaign said the ruling by a federal judge in Pennsylvania aids the campaign in its strategy to quickly reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
In order for Trump to have any hope of staying in the White House, Trump needs to cancel the 81,000 votes submitted by Biden in Pennsylvania, and the state is scheduled to begin ratification procedures on Monday.
Trump's lawyers have pledged to challenge the outcome immediately, but lawyers arguing against him in court say he has no time to do so.
"This should be a nail in the coffin for any other attempt by President Trump to use the federal courts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 elections," said Christine Clark, President of the Bar Committee for Civil Rights.
Pressure on Trump
Some of Trump's fellow Republicans in Congress began to close him off. Republican Senator Pat Tommy said the ruling eliminated any chance for a judicial victory in Pennsylvania, and called on Trump to concede election defeat.
Earlier, Liz Cheney, a member of the House Republican leadership team, called on Trump to respect "the sanctity of our election process" if he did not get success in court.
Conversely, Biden has spent the past few weeks preparing to take over, although the Trump administration has refused to provide the necessary funding and security clearances.
Critics say Trump's refusal to acknowledge his defeat has serious implications for national security and efforts to tackle the Corona virus, which has killed nearly 255,000 Americans.
In order to stay in office, Trump will need - somehow - to reverse election results in at least 3 large states, which has not happened in US history.
A recount in Georgia confirmed Biden had won there, officials approved the result on Friday, and the Trump campaign said late on Saturday it would seek a recount again.
In Wisconsin, election officials have criticized Trump campaign volunteers for slowing down a partial recount, which is unlikely to change the reality of Biden's victory.
With recounts and judicial appeals failing to achieve his goals, Trump is now pressing the Republican-led state legislatures to dismiss the results and declare him the winner.
"We hope that the courts and legislative bodies ... have the courage to do what needs to be done to preserve the integrity of our elections and the United States of America itself," Trump wrote on Twitter after the Pennsylvania ruling.
The Battle of Michigan
On Friday, two of the top Republicans in the Michigan legislature were summoned to the White House, and after the meeting they said they had not seen evidence that would prompt them to intervene.
Biden is ahead of Trump in Michigan by 154,000 votes, and the state's Board of Auditors - which includes two Democrats and two Republicans - is due to meet on Monday to approve the results.
The President of the Republican National Committee, Rona McDaniel, and the head of the party in Michigan, Laura Cox, called on this council to "postpone for a period of 14 days, to allow a full audit and investigations into these loopholes and irregularities."
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said that audits can only take place after approval, because officials do not have the legal right to see required documents beforehand.
She wrote in a tweet on Saturday on Twitter that there is "no evidence" to question the election result, adding, "In short: 5.5 million citizens voted in Michigan," stressing that "the results of their vote are clear and no evidence has emerged to undermine this."
Election officials across the country say there is no evidence of major vote fraud, and the Trump administration itself has described the election as "the most secure in American history."
But Trump's accusations continued to fuel the anger of his hard-line Republican base, with half of Republicans believing the election was stolen from Trump, according to a Reuters Ipsos poll, and his supporters have staged rallies across the country to protest the results.
Trump supporters demonstrate in Georgia
On the other hand, Trump supporters continue to demonstrate in Georgia, demanding an end to what they described as election stealing.
Some demonstrators threatened the Republican Party that they would boycott the run-off elections for the two Senate seats from the state, claiming that the party had begun to withdraw its support for Trump.
Protesters chanted against both Brian Kemp, the mayor of Georgia, and Senator Mitt Romney, the Republicans, calling them traitors.
And the state of Georgia officially certified that Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the electoral college votes in the state, after a manual recount.
33 lawsuits
In the same context, Mark Elias, the lawyer for the campaign of President-elect Joe Biden, said that President Donald Trump's campaign lost 33 lawsuits.
On his Democracy Docket digital platform, which tracks election lawsuits, Elias said that the Trump campaign had filed 42 lawsuits after the election, of which 16 are still in courtrooms.
According to the same source, these cases were filed in 6 states, which are Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia, in addition to Arizona and Nevada.
President-elect Joe Biden won in all of these states, causing him to receive a total of 306 electoral college votes, while Trump received 232 votes, and he remains adamant about questioning the integrity of the election.
The popular vote
In terms of the popular vote, CNN reported that President-elect Joe Biden expanded the margin of victory over President Donald Trump by 6 million votes, approaching the 80 million vote mark, which is a precedent in the country's history.
The network added that Trump received about 74 million votes, with ballot papers still being counted in a number of states.
Biden has so far tempered his criticism of Trump's actions, although he spoke of "very damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy works," and added that "it is difficult to understand how this man thinks."
While Trump refuses to acknowledge the result, the electoral college will vote on electing the president on the 14th of next month.