Raphael Warnock has made history this week after being projected to become the first-ever black senator in the state of Georgia.

Warnock has been predicted to win the Georgia runoff this year by multiple news outlets, such as CNN, the Associated Press, and Fox News, among others.

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The pastor, who has spent the past 15 years leading the same church in Atlanta where civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr once preached, has been projected to defeat the Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler in the runoffs.

This will also make him the first Georgia Democrat elected to the Senate in 20 years.

Meanwhile, per a report by BBC News, the second race in the state between 77-year-old Republican candidate David Perdue and 33-year-old Democrat Jon Ossoff is currently tied almost neck-and-neck.

Per the Associated Press, the 51-year-old pastor acknowledged his projected victory in a message to his supporters on Wednesday, January 6, and thanked his elderly mother, among others, for voting for him.

Warnock stated:

"The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton picked her youngest son to be a United States senator. Tonight, we proved with hope, hard work, and the people by our side, anything is possible.

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However, much like incumbent President Donald Trump, Loeffler has thus far refused to concede the election. Per AP News, she told Warnock in an official statement that:

"We’ve got some work to do here. This is a game of inches. We’re going to win this election. We are going to keep fighting for you. This is about protecting the American dream."

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Per CNN, in a statement made on Monday, January 4, Loeffler said:

"The American people deserve a platform in Congress, permitted under the Constitution, to have election issues presented so that they can be addressed."

It should be noted that, much like in the 2020 US Presidential election, there are still some mail ballots and in-person early votes left to be counted across the length and breadth of the state, so Warnock's victory is not yet totally assured.

The US presidential race is heating up with Donald Trump appearing to gain the upper hand.

The Republican candidate has secured projected victories in pivotal swing states Georgia and North Carolina, BBC News reports, signaling a potential replay of the 2016 election landscape rather than the 2020 defeat.

As counties across the nation count and report their votes, Trump is subtly yet significantly advancing, nibbling away at the margins needed to clinch the presidency.

Despite Kamala Harris achieving comparable vote totals to Joe Biden in various urban and suburban areas, it has thus far proved insufficient in narrowing the burgeoning gap established by Trump.

The atmosphere at Harris headquarters has palpably shifted following these developments. Early optimism has evaporated into the night air, replaced by a somber reality as the big screens flashed the news of Trump’s latest state wins.

What was once a buzzing scene of anticipation has quieted dramatically; the crowd has thinned, with the announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris will not be addressing her supporters tonight.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is expected to arrive shortly at his campaign watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he is expected to address his supporters.

The remaining swing states are: Arizona, Michigan Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

As must be stressed at this time - nothing is set in stone as of this writing. Votes are still being counted. However, all polls in this year’s US presidential election have now closed - the last to do so were in Alaska and Hawaii.

It comes as Republicans were projected to regain the Senate following four years out of power.

Featured image credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty

President Donald Trump has reportedly told Georgia's top election official to "find" enough votes to overturn the election result, in a recording obtained and released by The Washington Post.

Per The Post, the hour-long phone call was made on Saturday (January 2), and sees outgoing President Donald Trump telling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes in an apparent attempt to overturn the election results following his loss to President-elect Joe Biden

You can listen to the recording in question in the video below:

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(The full phone call can be heard HERE.)

While insisting that he had won the election in Georgia, Trump can be heard espousing a number of unfounded claims - at one point telling Raffensperger that he could be held criminally liable if he refused to report the ballots.

Trump goes on to make unverified claims that these ballots had been shredded by the Biden campaign and that voting machinery was removed from Fulton County.

At one point in the recording, Trump states:

"All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.

"The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry, and there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated.

"You know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a criminal offence. You can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer."

Per BBC News, Raffensperger can be heard replying:

"Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.

"You have people who submit information and we have our people that submit information, and then it comes before the court and the court has to make a determination. We have to stand by our numbers, we believe our numbers are right."

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Addressing the recording in a tweet made to his 88.5 million followers made on January 3, Trump later wrote:

"I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 'ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters', dead voters, and more. He has no clue! [sic]"

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However, Raffensperger himself defiantly retweeted Trump, writing in reply: "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out."

Per Sky News, Joe Biden's senior adviser Bob Bauer has also commented on the recording stating:

"We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state's lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.

"It captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump's assault on American democracy."

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Trump has made a number of baseless accusations of voter fraud on the part of the Biden campaign since the Democrat nominee was projected to become the next President of the United States by multiple media outlets in November.

However, despite a flurry of unsuccessful lawsuits from Trump and his supporters, Joe Biden is still expected to be sworn in as the 46th US President on January 20.

A spokesperson for Donald Trump claims that the former President is due to launch his own social media platform "within months."

According to Fox News, Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller told Howard Kurtz on the network's show MediaBuzz that the ex-POTUS is due to return to social media following his ban from Facebook and Twitter in the wake of his controversial comments made in the aftermath of the Capitol riots.

Per Fox News, Miller stated:

"I do think that we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here, with his own platform.

"And this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, it’s going to completely redefine the game, and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does."

Miller continued: "Pay attention to Georgia tomorrow, on Monday. There's a big endorsement that's coming that's going to really shake things up in the political landscape in Georgia. It's big, it's coming tomorrow, and just be sure to tune in."

According to BBC News, Trump was banned from a number of social media platforms shortly after posting a video from the White House during the Capitol riots on Wednesday, January 6.

In it, Trump urged protesters to "go home", before adding: "We love you" and insisting: "This was a fraudulent election but we can't play into the hands of these people but we have to have peace."

Mark Zuckerberg has said that incumbent President Donald Trump has been "banned indefinitely" after he appeared to condone the Capitol rioters in a video posted to Facebook.

The backlash over Trump's comments was immediate, and in a post made the day after, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

"The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.

"His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world.

"We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect - and likely their intent -- would be to provoke further violence.

"Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms."

Zuckerberg continued: "Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies.

"We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech.

"But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.

"We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.

"Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete."

A spokesperson for Twitter later announced that Trump had been permanently suspended from the site as a result of his comments, stating:

"After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them - specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter - we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."

They added: "In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action.

"Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.

"However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement."

Featured Image Credit: PA Images

Donald Trump has continued to falsely profess that he won the 2020 presidential election, adding that he would be a "very gracious loser" if he did lose.

Last night, the incumbent president appeared at his first rally since losing the election to president-elect Joe Biden.

Held in Valdosta, Georgia, Trump was campaigning on behalf of GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are competing in the Senate runoff election next month for control of the upper house against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

However, in between urging people to vote for Senators Loeffler and Perdue, Trump also made several comments regarding his own personal political pursuits, including once again falsely claiming to have won the Peach State, and the election overall.

In fact, per BBC News, Joe Biden is the first Democratic candidate to win the state of Georgia in a presidential election since 1992.

"You know we won Georgia, just so you understand," Trump, 74, claimed to the crowd.

At one point, Trump incorrectly stated: "We actually won, remember? So many of the states - I won every one of them. Every one of these states - and by the way, the swing states that we're all fighting over now? I won them all by a lot."

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Trump added: "We will find that hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast all over your state, and all over the country, by the way. More than enough to give us a total historic victory."

Trump then claimed that if he did lose the election, he would be gracious in defeat.

Watch Trump address the Georgia crowd in the video below:

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"If I lost, I would be a very gracious loser," Trump informed the raucous crowd.

"If I lost, I would say 'I lost', and I would go to Florida, and I would take it easy, and I would go around, and I would say I did a good job."

Trump then continued to profess his unfounded claims of election fraud, telling the crowd: "But you can't ever accept when they steal and rig and rob," a statement that caused the crowd to break out into a "Stop the steal" chant.

The POTUS then stated: "Well, the democrats did try to steal the presidency - they're trying like hell."

CNN currently projects that Biden, 78, has won the presidential election with 306 votes in the electoral college. Trump currently trails on 232.

The college is due to meet on December 14 to formalize the results.