Early Thursday, election officials in the Democratic Republican of Congo "provisionally" declared opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi winner of a long-delayed presidential election, setting up the first democratic transfer of power in sub-Saharan Africa's largest county since its independence in 1960. According to the national election commission, Tshisekedi got about seven million votes, narrowly beating another opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, with 6.4 million votes, and far outpacing Emmanuel Shadary, the hand-picked successor of outgoing President Joseph Kabila, with 4.4 million votes.

Polls before the Dec. 30 election showed Fayulu with a commanding lead, and outside observers and institutions — notably the Catholic Church, which deployed 40,000 election observers — considered him the true victor. The Catholic observers and another domestic election-watching organization said there was widespread irregularities or outright fraud.

Just before the electoral commission named him the runner-up, Fayulu said it's an "open secret" that Tshisekedi had entered a power-sharing agreement with Shandary and the Kabila government. "My response is simple," he wrote: "The Congolese people deserve the truth of the ballot, not another backroom arrangement." He can legally appeal the results to the constitutional court.

Kabila — who took power after his father, Laurant Kabila, was assassinated in 2001 — delayed the elections for two years past when his second and final term was supposed to end in 2016, and analysts say he favored Tshisekedi as his best remaining option because he views him as more pliable and less likely to tackle corruption in Kabila's circle. Still, The New York Times reports, "the election commission's early-morning announcement amounted to a startling admission by the government that Mr. Kabila's candidate had suffered a defeat so big that his government — in power for 18 years — could not simply hand him the presidency without risking widespread violence and international condemnation."

Congolese security forces are bracing for violence and on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department advised all Americans in the country to leave. Peter Weber

U.S. asylum officers asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday to block President Trump's "Remain in Mexico" asylum policy, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief that Trump's policy of making asylum-seekers stay in Mexico while awaiting their immigration hearing puts migrants in mortal danger, is unnecessary, and is "fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our nation and our international and domestic legal obligations." A lower court put the policy on hold in April, saying it is probably illegal, but the appellate court allowed it to continue during litigation. Trump and Mexico expanded the policy earlier this month at Trump's insistence.

Since January, 12,000 asylum seekers have been returned to Mexico, The Washington Post reports. The 37-page brief, filed by American Federation of Government Employees Local 1924, a union representing 2,500 asylum officers and other federal workers, says that "asylum officers are duty-bound to protect vulnerable asylum seekers from persecution," that "Mexico is simply not safe for Central American asylum seekers," and that the U.S. asylum system is "not, as the administration has claimed, fundamentally broken," but instead "has the foundation and agility necessary to deal with the flow of migrants through our Southern Border."

"The legal filing is an unusual public rebuke of a sitting president by his own employees, and it plunges a highly trained officer corps that typically operates under secrecy into a public legal battle over one of Trump's most prized immigration policies," the Post reports. "Under Trump, the asylum division has become a target of internal ire, often assailed for approving most initial asylum screenings and sending migrants to immigration court for a full hearing." Last week, new acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief Ken Cuccinelli implicitly rebuked the asylum officers in an internal email for being overly generous with asylum screenings. Peter Weber

Marshae Jones, 27, was taken into custody in the Birmingham, Alabama, area on Wednesday after a Jefferson Country grand jury indicted her on manslaughter charges over the death of her unborn child after a December 2018 incident where another woman shot her in the stomach. The woman who had the gun and pulled the trigger, 23-year-old Ebony Jemison, also faced manslaughter charges, but the grand jury declined to indict her so the charges were dismissed, AL.com reports.

Police argued that Jones, five months pregnant, started the fight and was ultimately responsible for the death of her fetus. The altercation was over the father, according to Pleasant Grove police Lt. Danny Reid. "The investigation showed that the only true victim in this was the unborn baby," Reid said after the Dec. 4 shooting, outside a Dollar Store. "It was the mother of the child who initiated and continued the fight which resulted in the death of her own unborn baby."

Not everyone agreed with Reid. "The state of Alabama has proven yet again that the moment a person becomes pregnant their sole responsibility is to produce a live, healthy baby and that it considers any action a pregnant person takes that might impede in that live birth to be a criminal act,'' said Amanda Reyes, executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund. "Today, Marshae Jones is being charged with manslaughter for being pregnant and getting shot while engaging in an altercation with a person who had a gun. Tomorrow, it will be another black woman, maybe for having a drink while pregnant. And after that, another, for not obtaining adequate prenatal care." Read more at AL.com. Peter Weber

Ten Democratic presidential hopefuls took the stage in Miami on Wednesday night, and The Late Show thinks you can catch 'em all.

"We are live after the first of two Democratic presidential debates," and "I'm going to tell you all about it — if Bill de Blasio doesn't interrupt me," Stephen Colbert said in his monologue. This debate pitted "Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Beto O'Rourke against seven people angling for MSNBC shows." NBC had some technical difficulties, he added, "but it was an excellent dress rehearsal for tomorrow actual debate."

"The biggest early moment was a linguistic surprise from Beto O'Rourke," Colbert said. "He's either trying to lock up the Hispanic vote, or he's running for embarrassing dad at a Mexican restaurant." He suggested John Delaney was just doing this as a dare from his brother-in-law, Jay Inslee had never set foot in a McDonalds, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) made up her "all foam and no beer" zinger: "If that's a metaphor you frequently use, senator, then, as we say back in South Carolina, 'I'm a shrimp sandwich in a thunder storm.'" Colbert mocked Booker's Spanish, and Beto's, again, and stepped into the fight between Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Tim Ryan (Ohio): "Tulsi! Tim! Please don't fight — you're both not going to be president."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was kinder about all the Spanish spoken onstage. "I loved it because I represent the Bronx, there was a lot of Spanglish in the building," she told Colbert. "I thought it was humorous sometimes," but also "a good gesture to the fact that we are a diverse country." As for the candidates, Ocasio-Cortez said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) "knocked it out of the park," Julián Castro "did a phenomenal job tonight," and "Cory Booker did a great job in talking about criminal justice," and "there were some surprises, too," though she didn't name them. She also explained her skepticism of Joe Biden's electability. Watch below. Peter Weber

This past week has shone a spotlight on the deplorable conditions at facilities where the U.S. is holding children seeking asylum in the U.S. "Most of the kids in those overcrowded facilities come from Central America's Northern Triangle countries: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador," Samatha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal. President "Trump and his supporters claim it's fine warehouse them like pallets of generic peanut butter because it's their fault for coming to America. But the truth is, the U.S. is a huge reason they were forced to flee here in the first place."

Bee's history lesson began in Ronald Reagan's 1980s and America's Cold War in Central America, and she focused on El Salvador. "When we stomped out communism, we also stomped out pretty much every thing else. For many civilians, getting the hell out of El Salvador became a matter of life or death," she said. "Many of the migrants ended up in Los Angeles, where some younger Salvadorans would wind up in street gangs," which over time became MS-13. "That's right, President Trump's favorite foreign threat was made in the U.S.A. — unlike his ties and two-thirds of his wives," she said.

And MS-13 didn't didn't turn into today's machete-wielding killers until "the American prison system helped transform them from the juvenile delinquents of the '80s to the violent gang we know today," Bee said. Then, starting in the '90s, the U.S. deported tens of thousands of gang members, "brutalized by American prisons," back to Central America, where they took root and made the Northern Triangle one of the most violent regions in the world, sending civilians feeling north for safety, she said. "It's the circle of life, except death."

"All refugees deserve basic compassion, but we owe a special debt to Central American refugees," Bee said. "At the very least, we own their kids some f---ing toothpaste." There is some NSFW language. Peter Weber

Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show was live following the first Democratic debate on Wednesday night, and he didn't spare his network, NBC, over its technical difficulties. But mostly he focused on the debate itself. He laughed at Cory Booker's face when Beto O'Rourke broke into Spanish, and imagined President Trump's reaction: "Cr-p, did I hit the SAP button?" Still, "Booker saw Beto speaking Spanish and decided to join in, too," Fallon added, though he sounded "like Arnold Schwarzenegger learning Rosetta Stone."

"As expected, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker did well tonight, but actually I though Bill de Blasio did a pretty good job too," Fallon said, expressing surprise on behalf of all New Yorkers. "Trump tweeted and called the debate 'boring,' but he still watched, even though he also said it was a 'very unexciting group of people' — as opposed to the rock stars he usually hangs out with, like Mike Pence and Steve Mnuchin. But I think I know why Trump's upset: He's probably jealous of the Democrats. If you think about it, they got to be on TV, they got to talk about themselves, and they got to be in Florida," his three favorite things.

Fallon had a short video to help everyone get to know the 20 Democrats running.

Fallon also had a song advising the Democratic candidates to avoid becoming memes, because "some things can't be unseen." He had examples, and harmonies.

Colin Quinn also had some less-helpful advice for the Democrats, or at least the ones you might not otherwise remember. Watch below. Peter Weber

The first 2020 Democratic presidential debate was Wednesday night, and it gave some of the lesser-known of the 10 candidates a chance to "go from 'Who is that?' all the way to 'Oh yeah, that guy — no, I'm not going to vote for him,'" Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's live Daily Show. "The biggest name on the state was Elizabeth Warren, polling in the lead, and she knew that she was the frontrunner," he said. "So basically it was up to everyone else to try and figure out a way to stand out."

Beto O'Rourke landed on a surefire way "to spice up a bland affair," Noah said, impressed at Beto's Spanish. "Look at how shocked Cory Booker was when Beto switched to Español. ... And while Beto O'Rourke was wowing the crowd with his fluent Spanish, Amy Klobuchar came prepared with zingers that were going to destroy the crowd. But every time she tried to land them, her time was up."

"So Warren was cruising, Beto was fluent, Klobuchar was being her moderate self, and everyone else was just figuring out how to get noticed," Noah said. "Poor Jay Inslee, he spent the night trying to order a drink from a bartender who didn't realize he was there." Policy-wise, the Democrats were mostly on the same page, though "all hell broke loose" when moderators brought up health care, he added. But "to be honest, it was a lot more exciting than most people thought. And I know Trump tweeted that it was boring, but he would always think that policy was boring, because these people had ideas, they had plans for how they were going to do it, and they had information about how they were going to run themselves from the White House."

The Daily Show also had the thrilling and entirely fictional backstory on how the 20-person Democratic field was fit on a debate stage. Watch below. Peter Weber