10 things you need to know today: November 6, 2020
1.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden closed in on the electoral votes needed to win the presidency on Thursday, as ballot counting continued and he came closer to overtaking President Trump in two undecided battleground states, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Biden pulled ahead by more than 1,000 votes in Georgia early Friday. Biden, leading the national popular vote by four million, made a brief speech calling for patience. As his path to victory became narrower, Trump made unfounded allegations of voter fraud in the states where he was losing ground. "If you count the legal votes, I easily win," Trump said in the White House. "If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us." Trump accused election workers of not being "honest." [The Washington Post]
2.
The United States recorded more than 121,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the second straight single-day record as the long-anticipated fall wave continued to rise. Twenty out of 50 states reported their highest single-day increases since the pandemic started, breaking a record of 16 state highs in a single day set on Oct. 30, Reuters reported. The spread affected every region of the country, although the Midwest was hit especially hard. Texas led the nation in the most cases confirmed over the last week. Illinois reported nearly 10,000 new cases. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, called for unity in fighting the pandemic. "This virus doesn't care if we voted for Donald Trump, doesn't care if we voted for Joe Biden," DeWine said. "It's coming after all of us." [The New York Times]
3.
Republican Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) fell below the 50 percent threshold in the vote count on Thursday, signaling he could be forced into a runoff against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. The battle for Georgia's other Senate seat is already headed into a January runoff after Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock led a crowded field, setting up a January second round between him and Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R). If both Georgia races remain to be decided in the next vote on Jan. 5, the state could determine which party controls the Senate. Democrats fell short of their goal to pick up the four seats they needed to win a majority. They did pick up one seat, however, so sweeping Georgia would split the Senate evenly at 50-50. If Democrat Joe Biden is declared winner of the presidential election, that would mean his vice president, Kamala Harris, would break any ties, essentially flipping control away from the GOP. [USA Today]
4.
Supporters of President Trump stepped up protests in battleground states that remained undecided as Democratic challenger Joe Biden continued to gain ground. Trump backers massed for a second night in Arizona outside the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix. Some news outlets have projected Biden as the winner of the state's 11 electoral votes, but his lead narrowed as counting continued on Thursday. Right-wing talk-radio host Alex Jones told protesters that Democrats "are trying to steal the election but America knows what happened and it's fighting back," echoing Trump's unfounded claims of mail-in vote fraud. Biden supporters in Philadelphia called for counting every vote in all states, saying a fair count would put Biden in the White House. [Reuters]
5.
The four former Minneapolis police officers charged with killing George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, will be put on trial together, according to a ruling made public Thursday. Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter A. Cahill denied defense requests for separate trials made by defense attorneys who argued that the officers would make "antagonistic defenses" against one another that could threaten their right to a free trial. Floyd died after he was pinned to the ground for several minutes while one of the officers, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd's neck. Cahill said that the evidence against Chauvin, and against Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao, "will substantially overlap." [The Washington Post]
6.
Facebook on Thursday pulled down an account of a group calling itself "Stop the Steal" that posted violent rhetoric backing President Trump, and made baseless allegations of vote fraud by Democrats. The group called for "boots on the ground to protect the integrity of the vote." It grew to 365,000 members in one day. "The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group," a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, adding that the decision to remove the group was among a series of "exceptional measures" the company had used to address the "heightened tension" of the November elections. [Reuters]
7.
Judges on Thursday rejected two claims filed by President Trump's campaign against vote counts in battleground states. A judge in Georgia threw out a Trump lawsuit against the Chatham County Board of Elections over its handling of late-arriving ballots. The campaign alleged that a witness had seen late-arriving ballots being improperly stored, and mixed with on-time ballots. Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass said there was no evidence election officials had violated the law. "The Court finds that there is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7:00 p.m. on election day, thereby making those ballots invalid," Bass said the one-paragraph decision. In Michigan, a Court of Claims judge denied the campaign's request to halt ballot-counting, saying it made no sense because the count was essentially finished, with Democrat Joe Biden up by 150,000 votes. [The Washington Post, The Hill]
8.
The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced that it had decided to hold its target short-term interest rate near zero, as expected. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that the economy is growing but there is more the central bank can do to help the economy recover from the damage it has suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic. "Is monetary policy out of power or out of ammunition? The answer to that is no, I don't think that," Powell said in a news conference after the Fed's meeting. "I think that we're strongly committed to using these powerful tools that we have to support the economy during this difficult time for as long as needed and no one should have any doubt about that." [CNBC]
9.
U.S. stock index futures pulled back early Friday as wrangling continued over the presidential vote count. On Thursday, U.S. stocks closed with big gains, extending a post-election rally as Democrat Joe Biden appeared close to winning the presidential race and Republicans appeared likely to retain control of the Senate, signaling possible gridlock in Washington. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 jumped by 2 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq shot up by 2.6 percent. The S&P 500 has now risen by 7.4 percent this week, more than making up for last week's 5.6 percent loss. The Dow is up by 7.1 percent this week. Both indexes are on track for their best week since April. "I think we're getting closer to clarity," says J.J. Kinahan, chief market strategist for TD Ameritrade. [CNBC, USA Today]
10.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected the Labor Department to report Friday that U.S. employers added 530,000 jobs in October. That would mark the sixth consecutive month of strong job growth following the unprecedented losses that hit in the spring as the coronavirus pandemic shut down businesses across the country. Economists also predicted that the unemployment rate would fall to 7.7 percent, down from 7.9 percent in September. If the gains come through as expected, the economy will have recovered about half of the 22 million jobs lost in March and April, when the unemployment rate peaked at 14.7 percent. But job growth has slowed since June as coronavirus cases started rising again, and a fall wave is threatening to cause more damage. [The Wall Street Journal]
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