Image source, reuters

We reported earlier that Trump had launched legal action to stop vote counting in several battleground states where his narrow lead is shrinking rapidly.

In Pennsylvania, a federal judge has refused the Trump campaign's request to have the counting stopped.

Judge Paul Diamond also addressed complaints by the Trump campaign that their observers had not been given equal access to the venue. He said both Republicans and Democrats were now allowed to send 60 representatives each to monitor the count.

"I don't understand entirely why this couldn't have been agreed to, absent judicial intervention," Diamond added.

State officials said Republicans had not been barred from observing the count, but that one Republican representative had earlier been for refusing to stick to social distancing rules.

Suzanne Kianpour
BBC News, Atlanta

American presidential politics often comes down to Florida. But this year, the focus is further north, in Georgia - notably my hometown of Atlanta. Trump’s lead there is narrowing. The race is tight.

I visited a voting centre in the city. People had worked through the night counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Fulton County - the state’s populous, traditionally Democratic region.

It was surreal being back in the building in which I had made childhood memories coming to basketball games and concerts. Now I was here as a reporter covering democracy in action.

The counting is still ongoing and fewer people are on the job - but this afternoon, a round of applause broke out in their honour.

But outside the arena, Trump supporters lined up to protest what they claim is “cheating” fraud at the polls.

Image source, Suzanne Kianpour

I spoke with one Trump supporter, Tom, who moved here years ago from Norway but just became a citizen. He was excited to vote, but concerned that it wouldn't count.

Then a Biden supporter Lori - and her dog Jasper - joined our conversation, and assured Tom that as a poll worker in a nearby county, there was no malpractice.

While the two had very different views, they had a cordial conversation. When I asked if the nation needed healing, they both agreed - although Tom was pessimistic that any president could make this happen.

In a series of tweets, Joe Biden has called for every vote to be counted - a rebuttal to Donald Trump's attempts to halt the counting of ballots in key states through legal action.

In his latest tweet, Biden says they have "assembled the largest election protection effort in history to fight back".

As votes continue to be counted, Trump's lead over Biden is rapidly shrinking in a number of battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The Nevada Republican Party has sent a criminal referral of what it says are "at least 3,062 instances of voter fraud" to US Attorney General William Barr.

The alleged fraud involved people who appeared to have voted after they had moved away from state, the party says in a tweet.

Counting is continuing in Nevada which currently shows Joe Biden slightly ahead of Donald Trump by just over 11,400 votes, with 89% of ballots counted.

Earlier, President Trump told reporters that there was "tremendous litigation going on" to stop the vote-counting in several key states. He accused Democrats, without evidence, of "trying to steal an election".

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Getty Images

Here's another throwback: the election of 1876.

Lawmakers had another election mess on their hands that year, with a contest between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford Hayes.

Tilden was one vote short of a win in the electoral college. Four states had electoral disputes - and if Hayes won those, he'd win it all.

Lawmakers appointed a bipartisan commission to decide the winner.

And so came the Compromise of 1877: Hayes won by a margin of one electoral vote after he negotiated with southern Democrats. He promised to have a Democrat in his cabinet and not to intervene in the South.

In return, Democrats would give him the election and give civil rights to their black citizens. (Only one of those two things happened, and hint: it wasn't the latter.)

And so, the election was resolved just two days before Inauguration Day.

Image source, Getty Images

The Trump campaign is on the lookout for a public face to lead its legal battles in key states - and says it wants a "James Baker-like" figure.

Baker was the former secretary of state who led the legal and political team during the Florida recount battle of 2000 that secured the presidency for George W Bush.

One name that's been floated for the role is Jay Sekulow, Trump's personal attorney who also represented him during his impeachment trial in the Senate.

But what does Baker himself make of this? Well, he says there are "huge differences" between 2000 and 2020.

"For one thing, our whole argument was that the votes have been counted and they've been counted and they've been counted, and it's time to end the process. That's not exactly the message that I heard on election night," Baker says.

"We never said don't count the votes. That's a very hard decision to defend in a democracy."

The most senior election official in Wisconsin says the Trump campaign has not asked for a recount there, contrary to some reports.

The state was earlier projected for Joe Biden by a slender margin. The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in some battleground states and it was reported by some outlets that they had asked for a recount in Wisconsin.

But Meagan Wolfe told reporters that was not the case. She said she was unaware of "any official communications about a recount".

"They really can't make a request until after we have the certified canvasses from the counties," she said, adding: "Now wouldn't be an appropriate time for them to file."

Image source, Reuters

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

On Thursday night, the US president addressed the nation on the state of the 2020 race. Before he finished, all three US commercial networks had cut away.

Given the momentous occasion, it was an unprecedented move. It was also a reflection that the allegations the president was making – about fraud and malfeasance in the ballot-counting – were presented without evidence and could raise unfounded concerns about the security and reliability of the ongoing vote tabulations.

It was broadcast equivalent of the warning flags Twitter and Facebook have been regularly applying to the president’s social media post, themselves remarkable moves.

The president has regularly clashed with the media in the past, and has ramped up his attacks over the course of the campaign. In tumultuous days after the US election, those conflicts are coming to a head.

If you are just joining us, here is a roundup of where we are in this nail-biting election.

Republican President Donald Trump has again made unfounded claims of electoral fraud as his lead in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania continues to shrink during the counting of postal votes.

His Democratic rival Joe Biden has appealed for calm and again expressed confidence he would be declared the winner.

Counting is continuing in the five key states of Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina where a winner has yet to emerge.

A win in just Pennsylvania or two of the other four remaining states should be enough to confirm Mr Biden president-elect. Mr Trump needs to win Pennsylvania and three of the remaining four states.

Image source, Reuters

We've reported that the Trump campaign is challenging vote counts in several states.

Trump has also asked to join a challenge to the state's three-day postal voting deadline extension - a case that has already been ongoing for six weeks.

But Pennsylvania Democrats and top election official Kathy Boockvar have asked the US Supreme Court to deny the president's request to be added to the case.

Boockvar says that allowing Trump to join "would significantly prejudice the existing parties", and that he hasn't provided any justification for why he should be added.

Trump supporters in Michigan are demanding that officials "stop the count" - while fellow Republicans in Arizona chant the conflicting slogan "count the votes".

So... what's going on?

We've taken a look at these two protests, and why they're not as contradictory as you might think.

As President Trump's lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia dwindles and his hopes of catching up to rival Joe Biden in Nevada are diminishing, some of his biggest backers are turning on Republicans for failing to support him more vocally.

Two notable supporters blaming the party include his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr, who took aim at Republican bigwigs:

If the sentiments conveyed by Trump's sons is indicative of how other supporters feel, expect the rift between Trump voters and the traditional Republican party to reshape politics, regardless of who wins the White House.

We reported earlier that Trump's lead was shrinking in Pennsylvania - well, the same thing is happening in another battleground state, Georgia.

It's now neck-and-neck - and Trump is now leading in the state by fewer than 3,500 votes.

Trump has 49.4% of the vote in the state so far and a lead of just 3,486 votes, while Biden has 49.3%.

Trump had almost 10,000 more votes than Biden just two hours ago - a sign of just how rapidly the president's lead is shrinking.

US election 2020: Who has lead in states still counting?

Image source, Getty Images

We've just heard from Donald Trump after a two-day absence amid a contentious battle for the presidency.

Here is the main claim:

• The president repeated, without evidence, that according to a count of "legal votes" he would be this election's presumptive winner. There is no reasonable basis for this claim. The votes still being counted are not illegal votes, as Trump suggests, but legitimate mail-in ballots. They are being counted last because that is standard procedure in certain states.

And some useful context:

• The president had for months discouraged his supporters from using postal ballots, suggesting erroneously that they are more susceptible to fraud. The rate of voting fraud overall in the US is less than 0.0009%, according to a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, external.
• As a result, mail-in ballots have proven much more likely to come from supporters of Joe Biden, who actively encouraged voting this way throughout his campaign, mostly as a result of the coronavirus crisis.

Here's the BBC's Anthony Zurcher with an instant analysis.

The Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, has said there is "no defence" of the comments President Trump made at his White House briefing. In a post on Twitter he said the remarks were "undermining our democratic process".

At the briefing, Trump accused Democrats - without evidence - of trying to "rig" the election.

Illinois Republican representative Adam Kinzinger also took to Twitter, saying: "If you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court. Stop spreading debunked misinformation."

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

Image source, Getty Images

Donald Trump took to the White House press room on Thursday night in an attempt to project strength, but his comments belied the weakness of his current electoral position.

He focused on states he had won. And he talked about the leads he'd had in key swing states on Tuesday night, claiming without evidence that they were being taken away from him now by fraud.

It was an acknowledgement, however, that those leads are vanishing - and could be gone soon.

He lashed out at pollsters, ballot-counters and Democrats and promised a flurry of lawsuits, although he presented no evidence of electoral misconduct.

He claimed ballots were being counted without observers (even though they are) and attributed the late surge by Biden in mail balloting to fraud (it isn’t).

Already Republican officeholders are distancing themselves from Trump’s remarks, perhaps wary of tying themselves too closely to a man who could be on the precipice of defeat.

Ron Christie, who worked in President George W Bush’s administration, told the BBC's Katty Kay that he was disappointed with Trump’s statement.

He said it was not up to the president to decide whether any votes were legal or illegal, and urged him to “stay on the sidelines” and let the votes be counted.

“Yet again, a missed opportunity for the president to be presidential in this razor-thin vote,” he added.

Christie, who was working for the Bush campaign in Florida during the infamous recount in the 2000 presidential election, said the two candidates back then had stayed quiet to avoid ratcheting up tensions among supporters.

Tara McKelvey
BBC News, Washington

For much of the afternoon, the West Wing was quiet - spookily quiet. A US Marine, dressed in immaculate white gloves and a black mask, stood guard in front of the entrance to the West Wing, the way they do when the president is in the Oval Office. The president had not spoken publicly. He had not held any public events in an unusually long time (at least for him).

Then the silence was broken: White House officials announced the president would speak. Now here in the West Wing, the lights are on in the national security advisor’s office and in other rooms in the West Wing, too, as staffers prepared for his speech.

The venue that Trump chose was the White House's James S Brady Press Briefing Room - a place full of symbolism. His predecessors used to speak there. But for the early part of Trump’s term, he has made no appearances in the briefing room. As one of his aides told me, they considered it beneath him to speak there.

But now in the last days of his first term, he was eager to get his message across - and the briefing room seemed as good as any place. He is not a man who likes to stay in the background, and now he has once again appeared on centre stage.

The question is: how long will the spotlight stay on him?

Trump ends his briefing by saying that both he and Biden can call the states "but ultimately I feel that judges will have to rule".

The president has launched legal challenges in several key battleground states, attempting to halt counting in places where his lead over Biden is rapidly shrinking.

Although Trump tweeted ahead of the briefing that he would be holding a news conference, he left the podium without taking any questions from reporters.

Trump says he is "on track to do OK in Arizona". He adds: "Our goal is to protect the integrity of the election we will not allow the corruption to steal such an important election."

Arizona has not been called and the latest tally - based on 88% of ballots counted - shows Biden leading there.

• Who has lead in states still counting?