Today in one sentence: Trump told associates he intends to declare premature victory on Election Night in order to cast doubt on the integrity of the election and undermine the validity of uncounted mail-in ballots in the days after; Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the U.S. should prepare "for a whole lot of hurt" this winter from the coronavirus pandemic, saying "it's not a good situation" and "you could not possibly be positioned more poorly"; Trump threatened to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after Election Day; and Trump approved of his supporters surrounding a Biden campaign bus and attempting to run it off the highway in Texas.

1/ Trump told associates he intends to declare premature victory on Election Night in order to cast doubt on the integrity of the election and undermine the validity of uncounted mail-in ballots in the days after. Many states, however, won’t be done counting mail ballots by Tuesday night and it’s common for some states to take several days to finalize vote counts. Trump, nevertheless, told confidants he’ll declare victory on election night if it looks like he’s “ahead.” Speaking to reporters later, Trump first denied that he would declare victory prematurely, before confirming that he would try to shut down tabulating votes after polls close. “I think it’s a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election […] when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over […] that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election. As soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.” (Axios / CNN / The Guardian / Bloomberg / New York Times)

  • 🗳 Dept. of Vote, damn it.

  • ℹ️ Voter Guides: FiveThirtyEight / Washington Post / NBC News / Wall Street Journal

  • ⛅️ Presidential Election Forecasts: The Economist / FiveThirtyEight / New York Times

  • 🖥 Daily Election Live Blogs: New York Times / Washington Post / FiveThirtyEight / NBC News / The Guardian / CNN / CNBC / ABC News / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal

  • 😱 Election Day Guides: FiveThirtyEight / Wall Street Journal / Washington Post / New York Times

  • 💬 WTF Community Election Discussion

  • ⚡️ We Have Never Had Final Results on Election Day. “The scenario Mr. Trump is outlining — every vote in a modern election being “counted, tabulated, finished” by midnight — is not possible and never has been. No state ever reports final results on election night, and no state is legally expected to.” (New York Times)

  • The Texas Supreme Court rejected a Republican effort to invalidate 127,000 ballots that had already been cast in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston and is largely Democratic. (Texas Tribune / New York Times / Axios / CNN)

  • A Nevada judge rejected a Republican lawsuit seeking to halt early vote counting in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. The campaign and the Nevada Republican Party alleged that Clark County refused to allow full observation of the ballot-counting process as required under state law. (Bloomberg / CNN)

  • U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the U.S. Postal Service to follow its “extraordinary measures” policy and use its Express Mail Network to expedite ballots. USPS agreed with the judge’s order that the postal service must reinforce its “special procedures” to ensure it “delivers every ballot possible by the cutoff time on Election Day.” (Reuters)

  • Federal authorities are expected to build a “non-scalable” fence around the entire perimeter of the White House. (CNN)

2/ Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the U.S. should prepare “for a whole lot of hurt” this winter from the coronavirus pandemic, saying “it’s not a good situation” and “you could not possibly be positioned more poorly.” Fauci said the country needs to make an “abrupt change” in its public health practices, because “all the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors.” Fauci also praised the Biden campaign’s approach to the coronavirus, saying it was “taking it seriously from a public health perspective,” while Trump is “looking at it from a different perspective,” which he said was “the economy and reopening the country.” The White House, meanwhile, said it was “unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci […] to choose three days before an election to play politics.” Trump, however, has continued to tour the country insisting that the U.S. has “turned the corner” on the coronavirus even as the nation set a new daily record Friday with more than 98,000 cases. (Washington Post / NBC News / The Guardian / New York Times)

  • 😷 Dept. of “We Have It Totally Under Control.”

  • Global: Total confirmed cases: ~46,835,000; deaths: ~1,204,000

  • U.S.: Total confirmed cases: ~9,269,000; deaths: ~232,000

  • Source: Johns Hopkins University

  • 💻 COVID-19 Live Blogs: Washington Post / New York Times / CNN / CNBC / Wall Street Journal

  • The U.S. set a world record for coronavirus cases in 24 hours, with more than 100,000 new infections recorded. The daily caseload surpassed the 97,894 cases reported by India on a single day in September. (The Guardian / New York Times)

  • A new study from Stanford University estimates that 18 of Trump’s campaign rallies resulted in 30,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 700 deaths. A separate investigation of 17 Trump campaign rallies found that 82% of host counties had an increased rate of new COVID-19 cases one month after the rally. (Washington Post / CNN)

  • America’s economy faces severe new strains in the two months between Tuesday’s election and January. “Millions of Americans are also at risk of having their power and water shut off with unpaid utility bills coming due, while protections for renters, student borrowers and jobless Americans will expire by the end of the year absent federal action.” (Washington Post / Bloomberg)

  • A House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis called the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic in a report “an American fiasco” that’s “among the worst failures of leadership in American history.” (NBC News)

  • The Strategic National Stockpile is running low on medical gloves amid soaring demand across the country and is “woefully behind.” The Department of Health and Human Services’ goal is to have 4.5 billion gloves on hand. The stockpile, however, has 2 million. (NBC News)

3/ Trump threatened to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after Election Day. While Trump was complaining about news media coverage of COVID-19 a campaign rally in South Florida, the crowd broke out into a “Fire Fauci” chant. “Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait till a little bit after the election,” Trump said, adding he appreciated their “advice.” At a campaign stop in Cleveland, Ohio, Biden weighed in: “I got a better idea. Elect me, and I’m gonna hire Dr. Fauci. And we’re gonna fire Donald Trump.” (The Guardian / Associated Press / NBC News / New York Times / Bloomberg / Politico / Washington Post / ABC News)

  • Trump baselessly claimed that doctors are lying about the number of Americans who’ve died from COVID-19 for monetary gain. There is no evidence for Trump’s claim. “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of Covid,’” Trump said, without citing any evidence, at a rally in Michigan. (CNN / Bloomberg)

4/ Trump approved of his supporters surrounding a Biden campaign bus and attempting to run it off the highway in Texas, tweeting a video of the caravan boxing in the campaign bus with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS!” The FBI said it was investigating the incident. Trump defended the Texas drivers, tweeting “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!” Trump revisited the story hours later, falsely claiming that an FBI investigation was “FALSE” and tweeting that his supporters “did nothing wrong.” Trump again said the FBI should be investigating “ANTIFA” instead. The Biden campaign canceled at least one event in Texas following the episode. Meanwhile in New York and New Jersey, a caravan of Trump supporters halted traffic on two major highways. (New York Times / Texas Tribune / NPR / Washington Post / CNN / NBC News / CNN / The Guardian)

Two years ago today: Day 652: Too stupid.
Three years ago today: Day 287: Cut, cut, cut.