Today in one sentence: Biden is on the verge of winning the presidency after taking the lead in the vote count in Pennsylvania and Georgia; Trump – citing no evidence – continued to question the integrity of the election and promised legal action; and the U.S. recorded at least 121,000 new coronavirus cases a day after hitting 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.

Today in one sentence: Biden is on the verge of winning the presidency after taking the lead in the vote count in Pennsylvania and Georgia; Trump – citing no evidence – continued to question the integrity of the election and promised legal action; and the U.S. recorded at least 121,000 new coronavirus cases a day after hitting 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.

1/ Biden is on the verge of winning the presidency after taking the lead in the vote count in Pennsylvania and Georgia. While a recount is expected in Georgia due to the narrow margin, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes alone would put Biden over the 270 threshold needed to win the presidency. In the past 50 years, few recounts have led to changes in the winners. In Nevada, Biden’s lead doubled to about 22,000 votes by Friday morning, while his lead in Arizona shrank to about 43,800 votes with more than 200,000 ballots left to be counted. Trump needs to win at least four of the five outstanding states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania – all of which are too close to call. Biden and Harris, meanwhile, are expected to address the nation in a primetime speech Friday evening. In July, Trump declined to say whether he would accept the results of the election if he lost, saying “I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose.” (Washington Post / New York Times / Politico / NPR / USA Today / The Guardian / NBC News)

2/ Trump – citing no evidence – continued to question the integrity of the election and promised legal action, baselessly tweeting “I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST. The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES. U.S. Supreme Court should decide!” There’s no evidence of widespread illegal votes in any state and the 3:10 a.m. tweet by the president was labeled as “misleading” by Twitter. Trump’s tweet followed a Thursday evening public address, which turned into his most dishonest speech of his presidency. And, in a statement Friday morning, Trump said “this is no longer about any single election. This is about the integrity of our entire election process.” And, despite no evidence that Democrats have resisted counting legal ballots or throwing out illegal ballots, Trump also claimed “all legal ballots must be counted and all illegal ballots should not be counted, yet we have met resistance to this basic principle by Democrats at every turn.” Republicans, meanwhile, have pushed back against Trump’s false and baseless claims of election fraud. (NBC News / Politico / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal / Axios)

3/ Trump has not prepared a concession speech and has told allies that he has no intention of conceding the election. Trump and his aides, meanwhile, are prepared to act like he’s starting his second term early, potentially firing department heads like the FBI’s Chris Wray and Pentagon chief Mark Esper, and sign base-pleasing executive orders. (CNN / Politico / The Guardian / Axios)

4/ The U.S. recorded at least 121,000 new coronavirus cases – a day after hitting 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began It’s the second week in a row of record-breaking growth. At least 20 states saw their highest daily counts, and the number of deaths exceeded 1,000 for the third consecutive day. New U.S. cases are up 55% from two weeks ago on average, and the U.S. is now averaging more than 94,000 cases a day – double where it was a month ago. And, 93% of U.S. counties with the highest number of new coronavirus cases per capita voted to reelect Trump.(New York Times / Washington Post / NPR / Associated Press)

5/ A federal judge ordered the Small Business Administration to disclose detailed information for all Paycheck Protection Program loans, including names, addresses, and loan amounts. The SBA had previously released only summarized and anonymized data for loans under $150,000. The agency denied Freedom of Information Act requests by news agencies to release details about pandemic-related loans that would disclose information on businesses that benefited from $717 billion in federally backed borrowings. (NBC News / Wall Street Journal)

6/ Twitter banned Steve Bannon after he called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray. His comments were made in a video posted to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, which he called a “warning.” Bannon’s criminal defense lawyers, meanwhile, filed court papers seeking to withdraw from his case, where he is accused of defrauding donors to a crowdfunding campaign that claimed to be raising money for the construction of a private wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. (CNN / NPR / The Guardian / CNBC)

Two years ago today: Day 656: Setting a tone.
Three years ago today: Day 291: Bad conduct.