Trump out of options after Supreme Court rejects legal bid to overturn election result

It was the most far-fetched and audacious legal challenge for a generation. If it had succeeded it would have been the legal equivalent of a wrecking ball on American democracy.

In effect, Texas and 17 other US states had asked the Supreme Court to overturn the results in the four battleground states that swung the election to Joe Biden.

To no-one’s surprise, the Supreme Court late last night swatted that to one side, dismissing the Texas application as without merit.

In one sentence of legal language, it blew apart the election challenge: "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections."

Combined with an earlier Court ruling dismissing a complaint by Republicans in Pennsylvania, it represents the end of the legal battle over the 2020 election - and the end of the road for President Trump.

Donald Trump Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP

The President issued an simple, eleven-word denunciation-by-tweet just before midnight. Remember, this is a Court with a 6-3 conservative majority and a third of the Justices have been appointed by him.

Joe Biden will now be confirmed as President-elect when delegates from the Electoral College meet next week.

Trump and his allies have now lost 57 of the 58 court cases they have pursued in challenging the election result.

Astonishingly, in an angry response to the latest Supreme Court decision, Texas Republicans appeared to suggest seceding from the US.

There will be one more small test for the state of American democracy later today. A pro-Trump rally is planned for central Washington and we will see if the latest Supreme Court decision ignites anything more than anger from these diehard loyalists.

But Donald Trump quickly moved from his deep-seated grievances about the election outcome and spoke of America’s scientific achievement in producing the coronovirus vaccine. He called it a US medical miracle, and didn’t even mention the role of the German company BioNTech, with its Turkish heritage.

The US medical regulator has now approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use in the US, the same vaccine that is now being deployed in the UK.

It’s desperately needed as America’s winter surge gathers pace. 3,000 Americans are dying every day from the virus, and there have now been nearly 16 million cases.

President Trump declared that the “vaccine will vanquish the virus and return life back to normal,” adding that the “virus may have begun in China but it is ending right here in America.”

So America this weekend is witnessing the end of the election drama, and the start of one of the great logistical challenges in modern US history - vaccinating tens of millions of vulnerable and elderly Americans in a race against time as the holidays approach and the toll soars.