Elena Moore

A calico cat named Patches had belonged to Josie Gower, one of the 23 people killed in the mudslides that hit Santa Barbara, Calif., in January 2018. Patches was thought to have died too.

"We had kinda lost hope," Briana Haigh, Gower's daughter, told NPR. Her mom's several cats had slept in her garage, which was destroyed during the disaster.

Updated at 11:45 p.m. ET

Congress reconvened Wednesday night to certify President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, just hours after the U.S. Capitol was thrust into chaos by supporters of President Trump — an angry mob that breached the complex in an unprecedented violent act at the seat of America's federal government.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET Wednesday

Colorado health officials say they may have found a second case of a coronavirus variant that was first identified in the United Kingdom. Officials are currently conducting more genetic testing to determine if the variant is present.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced one confirmed case on Tuesday, marking the first time the variant has been officially documented in the United States.

Updated at 5:00 p.m. ET

Michigan's 16 electoral college votes have successfully been cast for President-elect Joe Biden, overcoming safety concerns from individuals disputing the results of the 2020 election.

In the days of counting that followed election night, there was plenty of stress in the Biden and Harris families. And the whole world could follow along.

The eldest granddaughter of President-elect Joe Biden, Naomi Biden, joked to her 188,000 Twitter followers that she couldn't stop watching cable news and that she'd "kill to be one of those people who 'can't eat when they're stressed' right about now."

Updated on Jan. 18 at 11:11 a.m. ET

President-elect Joe Biden has assembled his inner circle of advisers and Cabinet officials ahead of Inauguration Day.

Now, he's waiting on Congress to confirm his nominees — particularly those involved in key national security and economic positions.

President Barack Obama congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his win, urging unity and saying that Biden will "do the job with the best interests of every American at heart, whether or not he had their vote."

The Associated Press called the race for Biden on Saturday morning.

"I encourage every American to give [Biden] a chance and lend him your support," Obama said, adding, "the election results at every level show that the country remains deeply and bitterly divided."

Supporters of President-elect Joe Biden are flocking Saturday to the streets in Washington D.C., to celebrate the news of the Democrat surpassing 270 electoral votes, according to The Associated Press and other news organizations. A large crowd is gathering in Lafayette Square and Black Lives Matter Plaza, areas right next to the White House.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told reporters that the state will conduct a recount given the razor-thin margin between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Trump.

"The focus for our office and for the county elections officials for now remains on making sure that every legal vote is counted and recorded accurately," Raffensperger said.

"As we are closing in on a final count, we can begin to look toward our next steps. With a margin that small, there will be a recount in Georgia," he predicted.

Key priorities

Joe Biden

• Make public colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, and minority-serving institutions tuition-free for families making less than $125,000.
• Make two years of community college and training programs tuition-free.
• Cancel $10,000 of every American's student debt and revise the current loan repayment system.
• Establish universal prekindergarten.

Key priorities

Joe Biden

• Combat climate change by pushing the United States on a path toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, with an intermediate goal of ridding the power sector of carbon pollution by 2035.
• Invest $2 trillion over four years in green areas, including infrastructure, transportation and auto industries, housing and construction practices, nature conservation efforts and work in environmental justice.

Key Priorities: Economy

Joe Biden

• Increase investments in American-made products and companies, pouring $400 billion into procurement and $300 billion into research and development, with the aim of creating 5 million new jobs.
• Reverse Trump tax breaks to corporations and seek a higher minimum wage and expanded benefits for low- and middle-income workers.
• Read details of Biden's plans below.

President Trump and close to a dozen key members of his circle, including senior White House and campaign staff and Republican senators, have announced positive coronavirus test results in the days before and after Trump tested positive.

Update at 10:40 p.m. ET: Sen. Ed Markey has topped Rep. Joe Kennedy, while Rep. Richard Neal beat Alex Morse. Read more about Markey's win here.

Massachusetts voters are to cast ballots Tuesday in one of the last state primaries of the year.

On the first day of the Republican convention in Charlotte, N.C., more than five months after the coronavirus began spreading across the country, President Trump characterized the White House's response as "the exact right thing."

But, following a blueprint he has used for months, he also shifted responsibility for the pandemic response to the states. He accused many governors of having been "ill-prepared" for the pandemic, while praising others for doing a "fine job."

An extraordinarily high number of ballots — more than 550,000 — have been rejected in this year's presidential primaries, according to a new analysis by NPR.

That's far more than the 318,728 ballots rejected in the 2016 general election and has raised alarms about what might happen in November when tens of millions of more voters are expected to cast their ballots by mail, many for the first time.

Updated Aug. 17 at 12:31 p.m. ET

The next phase of the presidential election started Monday with the launch of the Democratic National Convention. While the quadrennial event usually attracts tens of thousands of people to the host city, which this year is Milwaukee, Wis., the coronavirus has erased the possibility of a traditional series of events.

Challenger Jamaal Bowman has defeated longtime U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary for New York's 16th Congressional District, The Associated Press projects.

Mail-in voting, which tens of millions of Americans are expected to use this November, is fraught with potential problems. Hundreds of thousands of ballots go uncounted each year because people make mistakes, such as forgetting to sign the form or sending it in too late.

Former Vice President Joe Biden took direct aim at President Trump on Tuesday, saying that Trump, who once called himself a "wartime president" taking on the coronavirus pandemic, seems to have now "surrendered."

"Remember when he exhorted the nation to sacrifice together in the face of this ... 'invisible enemy'? What happened? Now it's almost July, and it seems like our wartime president has surrendered," Biden said in prepared remarks.

Updated at 6 p.m. ET

The Democratic Party's more establishment wing is victorious in a high-profile Kentucky Senate primary despite a late surge from a rising progressive lawmaker.

Retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath has beaten state Rep. Charles Booker in the state's Democratic U.S. Senate contest, The Associated Press projects.

The call came Tuesday, a week after the primary, as absentee ballots were counted.

McGrath will now face Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who easily won the Republican primary.

A progressive shift underway in Colorado Democratic politics is spotlighted Tuesday in the primary for a U.S. Senate race that will likely help decide control of the chamber.

The contest between former Gov. John Hickenlooper and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is the marquee race on Tuesday, but other themes are at play elsewhere, as voters also head to the polls in Utah and Oklahoma:

• Former Gov. Jon Huntsman is looking to make a comeback in Utah.

Progressives are mounting efforts to best establishment Democrats in Kentucky and New York Tuesday.

Black Lives Matter protests around the country have added energy to the left, and Black progressives are surging in contests in both states.

In Kentucky, the race between the two leading Democrats vying for the right to likely take on Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is coming down to the wire. All the momentum is on the side of state Rep. Charles Booker over Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot with a lot of money and the party's backing.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams says the state's Tuesday primary performance was "an unmitigated disaster," pinning the blame on Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Polling locations all around Georgia experienced delays and long lines Tuesday due to a mix of logistical problems, technical issues with the state's new voting machines and COVID-19-related restrictions resulting in fewer available voting sites.

Updated at 8:40 p.m. ET

Jon Ossoff has won Georgia's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, The Associated Press projects.

Votes continued to be counted Wednesday across Georgia following its Tuesday primary, which was plagued with long lines and voting machine issues.

Former Vice President Joe Biden again denied the sexual assault allegation made against him by former Senate staffer Tara Reade in an interview on MSNBC Thursday night, but added that voters who stand by Reade should not support him.

"If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me," Biden said when asked what message he would give to female voters who accept Reade's allegation as true, but were planning on supporting him.

"I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade," Biden added.

Former Vice President Joe Biden formally began the process of selecting a running mate on Thursday morning, releasing the names of former and current Democratic officials who will lead his search for a vice presidential candidate, who Biden has said will be a woman.

Former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, Delaware Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Cynthia C. Hogan, a top aide to Biden in the Senate and White House, will lead the search over the coming months.

Testing is the key that will unlock normalization for millions of Americans.

It's the doorway between the disaster response mode of the pandemic and confidence about returning to work, school and life. And it's also still apparently weeks or more away from scaling to a level that will make a big difference for most people in most places.

Precisely how far away isn't clear, although President Trump and a pageant of guests attempted on Monday to sell the idea that victory is just around the corner.

A few weeks ago, Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff held his first digital organizing event over the video conferencing service Zoom, geared at teaching volunteers how to conduct phone banks from home.

"There is nothing more effective than going door to door and having those face-to-face conversations," Ossoff told over 70 attendees. Since moving his primary campaign online over a month ago, the campaign held several virtual town halls and events with local political organizations.

A month ago, President Trump went on Fox and downplayed the potential lethality of the novel coronavirus and compared it to the seasonal flu.