Ga. secretary of state says fellow Republicans are pressuring him to find ways to exclude ballots  —  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) …

GSA official blocking Biden's transition appears to privately plan post-Trump career  —  Emily Murphy has the power to decide when a transfer of power begins.  —  Obama sounds alarm in new interview as Trump digs in  —  The president still has not conceded defeat despite Joe Biden winning …

Trump Sought Options for Attacking Iran to Stop Its Growing Nuclear Program  —  The president was dissuaded from moving ahead with a strike by advisers who warned that it could escalate into a broader conflict in his last weeks in office.  —  WASHINGTON — President Trump asked senior advisers …

Republicans sound alarm on Georgia Senate runoffs as they privately weigh Trump's influence  —  Republican leaders are increasingly alarmed about the party's ability to stave off Democratic challengers in Georgia's two Senate runoff elections — and they privately described President …

Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon to get a top White House job  —  (CNN)Jen O'Malley Dillon will join President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration as a deputy chief of staff, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN.  —  The expected move, first reported by NBC News …

US military anticipates Trump will issue order to plan for further troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq  —  (CNN)US military commanders are anticipating that a formal order will be given by President Donald Trump as soon as this week to begin a further withdrawal of US troops …

Madison Cawthorn has tried to convert Jews to Christianity  —  (JTA) — Madison Cawthorn, the newly elected congressman from North Carolina who was criticized for selfies he took at Hitler's vacation retreat in Germany, is a zealous Christian.  And the 25-year-old firebrand conservative …

A third GOP senator comes out against Trump's Fed nominee, putting confirmation vote on knife's edge  —  Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee joins two other Republicans in opposing Judy Shelton's nomination  —  Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) on Monday said he would not support the nomination …

Portland's anarchists say they support racial justice.  Black activists want nothing to do with them  —  The day after President-elect Joe Biden delivered his victory speech, telling the nation it was time to heal and unite, a clandestine Twitter account — @safePDXprotest — summoned Portland anarchists.

Lawsuits that tried to disrupt Biden's wins in four states are withdrawn  —  (CNN)Voters in four states who had brought longshot lawsuits to disrupt President-elect Joe Biden's win and went nowhere in court have dropped their cases Monday morning.  —  The cases were short-lived in Georgia …

Trump Can't Fight the Laws of Presidential Eclipse  —  Don't worry about the thin squealing you hear wafting in from the White House.  It's just the sound of the last thousand cubic meters of gas escaping the rapidly deflating Trump presidency.  —  This doesn't mean we've heard the last from Donald Trump …

Burgess Owens wins back Utah's 4th Congressional District seat for Republicans  —  Burgess Owens, Republican candidate for Utah's 4th Congressional District, chats with people at an election night event for Republican candidates in at the Utah Association of Realtors building in Sandy on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020.

Scott Atlas's rabble-rousing will lead to illness and death.  He should be fired.  —  SCOTT ATLAS is a neuroradiologist, not an infectious disease expert, nor an epidemiologist.  As President Trump's leading adviser on the coronavirus pandemic, he continues to make statements that will cause more illness and death.

Wisconsin presidential recount would cost Trump $7.9 million  —  MADISON, Wis. (AP) — President Donald Trump will have to pay $7.9 million if he wants a statewide recount of unofficial results in Wisconsin showing him losing to Democrat Joe Biden by about 20,500 votes.

Trump officials rush to auction off rights to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Biden can block it  —  Officials aim to sell drilling rights to the pristine wilderness's coastal plain before Joe Biden takes office  —  The Trump administration has called for oil and gas firms …

Nearly 3,000 Additional Votes Discovered in Hand Recount in FLoyd County  —  With members of both the local Democratic and Republican parties observing hand counting of presidential votes in Floyd County it appears that close to 3,000 ballots were not counted on election night.

Facebook Knows That Adding Labels To Trump's False Claims Does Little To Stop Their Spread  —  Internal data shows that labels on President Trump's posts decrease reshares by about 8%.  They still account for some of the most engaging posts on the platform.  —  Copy

Trump fights to keep a job he shows no interest in performing  —  Imagine if, in November 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had decided to check out of World War II because it wasn't going as well as he had hoped.  Imagine if he had secluded himself in the Oval Office, listening to the radio all day …

Trump digs in on baseless election claims even as legal options dwindle  —  President Trump began his third straight week of angry defiance of the election results, brooding behind the scenes about the state of his campaign's legal challenges and of Georgia's hand recount while refusing …

Unsanitized: Student Debt Cancellation Now an Anti-Austerity Measure  —  Plus, Moderna has great news on its vaccine.  This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for November 16, 2020.  —  Unsanitized-111620  —  The government can prevent the resumption of student loan payments.  —  First Response

Hate crimes in US reach highest level in more than a decade  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Hate crimes in the U.S. rose to the highest level in more than a decade as federal officials also recorded the highest number of hate-motivated killings since the FBI began collecting that data in the early 1990s …

A former right-wing media creator on how a ‘different reality’ became so prominent.  —  Matthew Sheffield started his first conservative website in 2000, dedicating it to criticizing the former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who Mr. Sheffield believed was a partisan liberal and not critical enough …

Why Joe Biden Must Sideline Fox  —  In January of 2007, I had an out-of-body experience.  No, it wasn't during an ayahuasca retreat with a kindly shaman.  Instead, I was floating above my cubicle in the Hart Senate Office building where I worked as a spokesman for then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

The Substackerati  —  Did a newsletter company create a more equitable media system—or replicate the flaws of the old one?  —  The first week of March, Patrice Peck, a freelance journalist living in New York, started sanitizing everything.  She went to Nitehawk, a dine-in movie theater …

Handicapping the contenders for Biden's economic team  —  Welcome to POLITICO's 2020 Transition Playbook, your guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history.  —  ‘I KNOW WE CAN DO THIS’ — President-elect JOE BIDEN promised that his administration could help revive …