Is it over? Seems like it is? But no one’s saying. Well, some are saying. The headline from Sonam Sheth, Eliza Relman and Walt Hickey’s Business Insider story, Biden defeats Trump as US voters take the rare step to remove an incumbent president. They cite Decision Desk’s projection this morning along with “our data hero @WaltHickey,” says Kieran Corcoran.  From Dylan Matthews at Vox, Joe Biden has won. Here’s what comes next. Vox also cites “our partners at Decision Desk,” who made the call just before 9 am ET this morning. As Alissa Wilkinson says, “it’s always sunny in etc.” And of course, that call would mean Kamala Harris has made history as the first woman, Black person and South Asian American person to be elected vice president, as Li Zhou reports at Vox.
Meanwhile, “@PhillyInquirer front page asks, ‘A Winner Today?’ Might be! Follow it all here.” Dan Hirschhorn links to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s ongoing updates, which, at press time, reported, Biden takes the lead in Pa. as more ballots are counted; why AP hasn’t called the race at this point. AP News explains, “A close margin and a large number of outstanding votes are what’s making the Pennsylvania contest between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden too early to call.” Vaulting past the threshold  For more from the AP, check out its “2020 Latest” here. And The New York Times has live updates here. Among those election highlights, this report from Katie Glueck, Mark Landler and Marc Santora: Biden is ahead in Pennsylvania and Georgia as nation awaits a winner. “If his lead [in Pennsylvania] holds — and it is expected to — the state’s 20 electoral votes would vault him past the threshold to win the election,” they write.
The Washington Post’s election updates can be found here. The Post notes that the Georgia secretary of state has said that there will be a recount given the tight margin there, but Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would put Biden over the 270 votes needed. Paul Kane shares this “Text from an unaligned GOP consultant: ‘.... looks like Philly blew up the chicken man.’” There you have it — prophecy from The Boss. Back to Georgia, the heart of John Lewis’ district deals blow to Trump, as Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes, noting that it wasn’t absentee ballots in populous Fulton or DeKalb counties that pushed Joe Biden beyond Trump in Georgia. It was Clayton, the south metro county that’s also the bluest bastion in the state, and the county long represented in Congress by U.S. Rep. John Lewis.  Beyond Decision Desk, the race is likely to be called soon by other networks and news outlets. So then there’s this bit from CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Brian Stelter: Fox News has instructed its anchors not to call Biden ‘President-elect’ when the network calls the race. Darcy and Stelter’s reporting is based on two internal memos that also emphasize the network should report moves by Trump’s legal teams to challenge the results, despite legal analysts having dismissed potential challenges as having little to no merit.
A lede for the history books One thing you can count on: The chicken man is not going to go quietly. In case you missed it, or worse, if you actually witnessed it, Calvin Woodward and Maryclaire Dale have the AP fact check of Trump’s remarks from the White House briefing room yesterday, with this headline: Trump fabricates election corruption. That story also comes with what Frank Bajak calls “An AP lede for the history books: WASHINGTON (AP) -- Citing ‘horror stories,’ President Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of fabricated accusations Thursday in an audacious attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. election.” And that’s just the first paragraph.  In fact checking the speech for CNN, Daniel Dale put it this way: Trump delivers most dishonest speech of his presidency as Biden closes in on victory. “I've watched or read the transcript of every Trump speech since late 2016. I've cataloged thousands and thousands of his false claims,” he writes. “I have never seen him lie more thoroughly and more egregiously than he did on Thursday evening at the White House.”
In their piece for The New York Times, In Torrent of Falsehoods, Trump Claims Election Is Being Stolen, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman note that most television networks cut away from the statement he was giving on the grounds that what he was saying was not true. “A presidency born in a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace appeared on the edge of ending in a lie about his own faltering bid for re-election,” they write. Even the New York Post couldn’t get behind this one. The headline of Ebony Bowden’s story about the speech: Downcast Trump makes baseless election fraud claims in White House address. “Murdoch now trying to shove his genie back into the bottle, hard,” tweets Ben Smith. How to wreak havoc in a democratic system Dave Boucher, Clara Hendrickson and Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press pointed out that Trump lied repeatedly about election efforts in Michigan, Detroit during national speech. The allegations he made mirrored those included in conspiracy theories circulating on the internet, repeatedly debunked by the Free Press and others throughout the day. Speaking of conspiracy theories and ledes for the ages, Nick Confessore highlights a “Bracing lead from @AllMattNYT @jimrutenberg @NYTnickc: ‘A disinformation push to subvert the election is well underway, and it is coming straight from President Trump and his allies. The goal: to somehow stop a victory’ by Biden.” There’s also “Quite the headline/deck combination on this story,” says Christopher Cadelago. They’re referring to the new piece by Matthew Rosenberg, Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti of The New York Times, The Disinformation Is Coming From Inside the White House. Aka “How to wreak havoc in a democratic system when its pending results are not in your favor,” tweets Neil MacFarquhar. Troubling We’re already starting to see some of the dangerous consequences of the reckless behavior and messaging coming out of the White House: Bob Brooks and Corey Davis of WPVI in Philadelphia report that police thwarted an alleged plot to attack the Pa. Convention Center where votes are being counted in Philly. The tip involves a group, possibly a family, who drove up from Virginia in a Hummer to attack the Convention Center. And “Here’s a troubling scoop from @rmac18 & @CraigSilverman.” Mat Honan links to Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman’s piece at BuzzFeed News, Facebook Has An Internal Metric For “Violence And Incitement Trends.” Right Now It’s Rising. The metric, which assesses the potential for danger based on keywords, rose to 580 from 400 this week — a 45% increase. Olivia Solon thinks “This would make for a great needle at the top of everyone’s news feed.” “Wow,” says Charlie Warzel. “@RMac18 and @CraigSilverman are on just an amazing run shining light on a place that has long been incredibly difficult to report on.” Meanwhile, sources tell Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post that the Secret Service plans to ramp up protection of Biden in anticipation of his possible win. On Twitter, she shares, “Sources told me senior Secret Service leaders feared angering POTUS if news got out that @SecretService agents were gearing up yesterday for @JoeBiden to be the President Elect. Echoes of agents rushing to Dewey, infuriating Truman.” Who’s engaging in fraud? So, “hours before the president went on TV to declare that ballots received after election day are illegitimate, Republicans were pushing PA voters to turn in absentee ballots by tomorrow’s deadline—in apparent violation of state law.” Lachlan Markay links to his scoop with Sam Stein of The Daily Beast, Trump Warns Of Corrupt Post Election Day Votes As His Supporters Push For Them In PA. Mary Spicuzza and Bruce Vielmetti of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel confirm that they obtained an email sent at 5:19 p.m. Thursday by Kenosha for Trump and headlined “Volunteers Urgently Needed.” It reads: “Trump Victory urgently needs volunteers to make phone calls to Pennsylvania Trump supporters to return their absentee ballots. These phone calls will help President Trump win the election!”  Spicuzza and Vielmetti quote Richard Hasen, a noted elections law specialist at the University of California, Irvine Law School, who says, “This seems deeply stupid as it seems to be a solicitation to commit voter fraud.” “No WONDER the Trump people are certain there was fraud going on. They have been doing it!” tweets S. V. Date.
Also worth noting, Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post reported last night that more than 150,000 ballots were caught in U.S. Postal Service processing facilities and not delivered by Election Day. “In the nine postal districts spanning five states — Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia — that have yet to decide the presidential race, the on-time rate was 84.6 percent. That means roughly 15 out of every 100 ballots in processing plants were not sorted — or delivered — in time,” they report. And Jan Ellen Spiegel is “Asking yet again - who’s engaging in fraud?” Behind the scenes Next up, “@AshleyRParker + @jdawsey1 take you behind the scenes for Trump’s 48-hour meltdown.” Philip Rucker links to the latest dispatch from Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey at The Washington Post, Trump turns angry and despondent as possible defeat looms. As for everyone else, according to Jonathan Swan at Axios, “There’s no organization or coordination”: Trumpworld rages behind the scenes. The new enemy: Fox News. Also, a senior administration official said, “When Bush had this issue they tapped arguably the pre-eminent statesman of his generation, James Baker, to spearhead their legal and PR efforts, to great effect. ... We rolled out Rudy Giuliani, Corey Lewandowski and Pam Bondi. You can draw your own conclusions.” Oh right. The pandemic In an AP News analysis, Carla K. Johnson, Hannah Fingerhut and Pia Deshpande reveal that counties with the worst coronavirus surges overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Sally Ho calls it “Proof of how politicized COVID is in America: An @AP analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.” “Oh right. The pandemic,” tweets Felice Belman. “The amazing thing about this grim @NYTNational report isn’t just that it was reported/written/edited in a single day but that these journalists didn’t even get this assignment until this morning. Such great work.” She’s referring to One Day in America: More Than 100,000 Virus Cases, by Julie Bosman and Sarah Mervosh of The New York Times. “Far away from election drama, this was the scene in Wisconsin today: a park along Lake Michigan, a line of people waiting in cars for Covid tests, windows unrolled to let the warm breeze inside, the sound of their coughs traveling through the open air,” tweets Bosman. More Friday headlines The exclusive from William K. Rashbaum and Alan Feuer of The New York Times, N.Y.P.D. Anti-Harassment Official Accused of Racist Rants. Here’s Tom Gara with the summary: “The commander of the NYPD's Equal Employment Opportunity Division has been reassigned after investigation found he's also an anonymous racist message board troll, who called Obama a ‘Muslim savage’ and de Blasio’s mixed-race son a ‘brillohead.’” As Mary Beth Faller says, “I was going to say that this story is bonkers, but it really isn’t.” Curt Devine and Donie O’Sullivan of CNN report that Twitter permanently suspended Steve Bannon’s account after it suggested Dr. Anthony Fauci and Christopher Wray should be beheaded. And Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner notes that Trump’s Special Treatment on Twitter Would End With Biden Win. Scoop from Carol Lee and Courtney Kube of NBC News, officials say Defense Secretary Esper has prepared a resignation letter. Less than a week before millions of Canadians are set to pay their respects to veterans by wearing a poppy, Kimberley Molina of CBC reports that Whole Foods has banned employees from wearing poppies. Tweets Andrew MacDougall, “In other news, this is seriously dumb from @WholeFoods. A 180 will be coming in 5, 4, 3, 2…” One last thing Marissa Lorusso says, “if you want a short, beautiful break from *waves hands* everything, you could listen to @annkpowers and @BobBoilen chat about Joni Mitchell.” Head over to NPR for that conversation between Bob Boilen and Ann Powers and to Hear Joni Mitchell's Previously Unreleased Early Recordings. | 
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