AP: “Police have jailed a woman in Georgia accused of pretending to be an FBI agent to score a free fast-food meal, saying she allegedly threatened to arrest restaurant workers if they didn’t serve her a complimentary bite. Kimberly Ragsdale, 47, of Dallas, was charged Thursday with impersonating a public officer following repeated attempts to get free meals at a Chick-Fil-A, according to a Rockmart Police arrest report obtained by news outlets.”

“Employees at the restaurant told investigators that Ragsdale showed up at the location multiple times during the week and posed as a federal agent while driving a white minivan, and also threatened to take employees into custody if they didn’t comply, the police report said. It added that the woman continued the farce as police arrived to arrest her in the restaurant parking lot Thursday, reportedly claiming to officers that she was an FBI agent and that her credentials were electronic. While being handcuffed, she allegedly began to ‘alk into her shirt like she was talking into a radio telling someone that we were arresting her and to send someone to Rockmart PD,’ officers wrote in the arrest report.”

CNBC: “The Affordable Care Act seems likely to withstand its third challenge at the Supreme Court. Several of the court’s conservatives on Tuesday expressed an unwillingness to strike down the landmark legislation during oral arguments in a case brought by red states seeking to eliminate the law. Chief Justice John Roberts, who cast the key vote in 2012 upholding Obamacare, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, both suggested that the court may cast aside a challenged provision of the law, known as the individual mandate, while leaving the rest of it standing. The individual mandate provision, as enacted in 2010, requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. The GOP-controlled Congress reduced the penalty to $0 in 2017.”

I just spoke to @JoeBiden to congratulate him on his election. I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our countries and to working with him on our shared priorities – from tackling climate change, to promoting democracy and building back better from the pandemic.

— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 10, 2020

“Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan congratulated U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory in the 2020 presidential election. In his message, Erdogan reiterated Ankara’s ‘determination to work closely with the U.S. Administration’ in the coming period, adding that ‘the strong cooperation and alliance’ between the two countries would continue to contribute to world peace” – CNBC.

A “large portion” of the staff at the Republican National Committee were given layoff notices Monday morning, less than a week after the election in which its titular head, Donald Trump, failed to win reelection, CNN reports.

Most of the layoffs were from the RNC-Trump Victory program, the joint effort between the Trump campaign and the RNC set up for fundraising and local politicking to drive voter turnout.

Rumored to have long-term financial shortfalls, the Trump campaign and the RNC are in the middle of a widespread campaign to raise money to pay for challenges to the election results in contested states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.

The layoffs are an indicator of the way the RNC expects the ongoing Trump lawsuits will turn out, and it gives a weak signal of the ability of the RNC to help in Senatorial runoffs in Georgia.

Gallup: “Heading into the 2020 presidential election, three in five Americans favor amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a popular vote system, marking a six-percentage point uptick since April 2019. This preference for electing the president based on who receives the most votes nationwide is driven by 89% of Democrats and 68% of independents. Far fewer Republicans, 23%, share this view, as 77% of them support keeping the current system in which the candidate with the most votes in the Electoral College wins the election.”

“Of the seven times this question was asked over the past two decades, support for amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College only fell below the majority level once — in November 2016 after Donald Trump won the electoral vote and Hillary Clinton the popular vote. At that point, 49% of Americans wanted the current system to be replaced, and 47% wanted it to remain in place. By 2019, support for using the national vote totals over the Electoral College had risen to 55%.”

Yes. This is that special election from February when the MAGA kids on The Hill went berserk because it was at that time the first seat in the House to be flipped from blue to red over three years into the Trump era after freshman Rep Katie Hill resigned. The seat had been safely Republican for decades before 2018. The LA Times reports California Assemblywoman Christy Smith is now ahead of incumbent Congressman Mike Garcia by 1,287 votes.

CNN: “ Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle are making moves to expand their influence at the Republican National Committee, three GOP sources, including advisers to the President tell CNN. Some sources say they may seek to take over the party structure themselves. President Donald Trump’s eldest son and his girlfriend, a Trump campaign fundraiser and former Fox News host, have made it clear to campaign and White House officials they are unhappy with RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who they view as not having done enough to win a close race. Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle could seek leadership roles at the RNC to position the committee for a comeback run for the President in 2024, the sources said.”

WE ARE MAKING BIG PROGRESS. RESULTS START TO COME IN NEXT WEEK. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2020

WE WILL WIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2020

The landscaping company that reportedly accidentally became the site of a press conference by Trump lawyer and Nosferatu cosplayer Rudy Giuliani has humorously taken control of its newfound fame to release new merchandise celebrating its newfound fame.

Four Seasons Landscaping, which apparently became the site of the Trump cabal press briefing because a campaign staffer got it confused with the Four Seasons Hotel, has released at least one new logo playfully mocking the Trump campaign’s slogan.

The Philadelphia landscaping company, located between a crematorium and a dildo shop, has the design on stickers and facemasks, but will soon have it on t-shirts and other merch.

Washington Post: “Errol Webber was never expected to have much of a chance at winning his race for Congress. The Republican had challenged a popular incumbent, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), in a deep-blue swath of Los Angeles, so it was no surprise returns showed him losing by more than 72 percentage points. But that did not stop Webber, a 33-year-old movie producer, from questioning the results in California’s 37th District in the House. ‘I’m going to the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office in Norwalk today to audit the vote counting procedures,’ he wrote Monday. ‘I will NOT concede. Every LEGAL vote needs to be counted!'”

“It has become a familiar cry among losing GOP candidates in recent days, including from inside the White House. As President Trump makes unfounded allegations of voting fraud and demands a recount in the presidential election, his rhetoric and unwillingness to concede seem to be trickling down the ballot. Despite having lost to their Democratic opponents by decisive margins last week, Webber and a few other Republican congressional candidates — all fervent Trump supporters — have followed his lead, refusing to concede and making their own baseless claims about the election. In Maryland, House candidate Kimberly Klacik (R) declared Sunday her campaign would ‘investigate’ the results of her race against Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), in which the incumbent trounced her by more than 40 points. It was unclear how she would probe the results, and neither Klacik nor her campaign manager immediately responded to a request for comment.”

“The coming days will bring postmortems about the future of Trumpism without Trump. But we should also pay attention to the future of anti-Trumpism, an undeniable political force now searching for an outlet, when its unifying hate figure recedes from the limelight. By fighting the election on character rather than policy, Biden drew on a grand coalition of elite support: Democrats and independents were bolstered by former Trump administration officials and Republican grandees such as Colin Powell. That coalition self-destructed the minute the election result was declared. A group that agrees on the need to defeat Trump has little else in common.”

“Still, a force as powerful as Trumpism doesn’t just vanish—and neither does the political logic underlying anti-Trumpism, even if the constituent elements drift apart. In Britain, the 2016 EU referendum polarized the country around a new axis. Voters coalesced around political identities that cut across traditional party lines. (To indulge in stereotypes, Remainers were for quinoa, recycling, and tearing down statues of slave traders. Leavers were for Remembrance poppies, the Union Jack, and bringing back the death penalty.) Although Britain has now legally left the European Union, those fault lines have not disappeared. When a political affiliation merges with an identity, it becomes deeply emotional. The knot is hard to untangle. For more than a thousand days, Donald Trump held the world’s attention. He demanded that everyone have an opinion on him. He inspired fear and fervor in millions. It was exhausting, but it was also addictive. And it’s difficult to imagine Americans—even those who are happiest to see him defeated—going cold turkey on the high-volume, emotional, Manichean style of politics he represents. When you’re used to fighting enemies, how do you go back to having mere opponents?” – The Atlantic.

UPDATE 9:29 AM EST 11/10/20: Eric deleted the tweet… luckily I anticipated that and took a screenshot before he did so.

Wall Street Journal: “President Trump’s presidential campaign on Monday asked a federal judge to block Pennsylvania election officials from certifying the results of the election. Matthew Morgan, a Trump campaign lawyer, alleged at a press conference in Washington that Republicans were unfairly treated in Pennsylvania’s election process and that GOP poll watchers weren’t able to closely observe mail-in ballot counting. He didn’t provide any evidence for his assertions.”

“Mr. Morgan said more than 682,000 ballots were counted in Philadelphia and Allegheny County while poll watchers were kept at a distance. ‘We believe that a meaningful review of those ballots could discern that there were ballots that were illegally counted,’ Mr. Morgan said. Among other issues, the lawsuit contends that in-person and mail-in ballot voters were treated differently, with some people who voted by mail being allowed to fix technical issues, such as a problem with a signature. The Trump campaign argued that the difference in treatment violates the U.S. Constitution. Local election officials have previously said that they followed all applicable rules, some of which changed before the election due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump campaign and two people identified as Pennsylvania voters filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania against the state’s secretary of state Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat.”

Trump losing just has to be taking up too much of their emotion bandwidth for them to get worked up over this ungodly “romantic” comedy about two attractive millennial women in an apparently healthy committed relationship who need to hide it from one of the women’s values-voting parents. Can’t imagine anything really animates Megachurchers these days besides trying to mentally cope with their grief over the end of the white nationalist MAGA empire.

“It was a memo so outrageous, it caused a top Justice Department official to quit on the spot. But for Donald Trump’s dwindling band of loyalists at the White House, it still wasn’t enough. On Monday, Attorney General Bill Barr “authorized” Justice officials to investigate allegations of voter irregularities. But his memo doing so practically admitted there was little-to-no evidence for any such election fraud” reports the Daily Beast.

“Shortly after Barr’s declaration broke, officials close to the president and working on his re-election effort said they thought the memo could give the president and Rudy Giuliani another element to incorporate into their messaging war against the results of the free and fair election, but that it wouldn’t prove to be the legal game changer that they needed. Four officials working on President Trump’s flailing post-election effort and a senior White House official told The Daily Beast on Monday evening that the Barr memo was, at best, too little too late, a letdown, or just, in the White House official’s words, ‘nothing to write home about.’ ‘This is not what some of us wanted. This is not what I wanted,’ said a senior official on the Trump re-election effort, following the news of the DOJ memo. ‘This will give the president [and others] something to play with for a while, but until Bill Barr actually puts up or shuts up, we’re still where we [have been].'”

Washington Post: “The Trump White House on Monday instructed senior government leaders to block cooperation with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, escalating a standoff that threatens to impede the transfer of power and prompting the Biden team to consider legal action. Officials at agencies across the government who had prepared briefing books and carved out office space for the incoming Biden team to use as soon as this week were told instead that the transition would not be recognized until the Democrat’s election was confirmed by the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency that officially starts the transition. While media outlets on Saturday projected Biden as the winner, President Trump has not conceded the election. ‘We have been told: Ignore the media, wait for it to be official from the government’ said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.”

“Subtropical Storm Theta formed in the Northeast Atlantic Monday night, becoming the 29th named storm of the 2020 hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center confirmed. The formation of Theta, which was some 995 miles southwest of the Azores overnight, breaks the record for the most named storms in a season — set in 2005. The World Meteorological Organization sets 21 alphabetical names for every season (excluding Q,U, X, Y and Z). This is the second time ever it’s used all and had to turn to the Greek alphabet” – Axios.

Daily Beast: “Given the actual election results, you could expect the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., to stand all but empty on Inauguration Day. After all, you would think that not even the most fervent deniers of President Trump’s defeat would check in there come January really thinking their guy and not Joe Biden will be inaugurated. But as Trump’s baseless falsehoods and groundless legal challenges proved futile, too many of his supporters have become only more determined to believe that it’s not over even when it’s truly over. And, on Monday, the delusion that Trump still might get a second term was so persistent among some Trumpoids that his hotel remained booked solid on the days surrounding the Jan. 20 ceremony.”

“The person who answered the reservation line reported that every room had been taken ‘for some time.’ What Trump follower would not dream of staying in this late 19th century edifice of stone and colored brick with its 315-foot clock tower? Trump had opened the hotel just two months before the last presidential election, and he had lost millions on it since then despite the many lobbyists and foreign diplomats who sought the administration’s favor by staying there. But the hotel stood with that name TRUMP on it as if it belonged between the White House and Capitol, as if a TRUMP presidency were destiny. And you could be part of it by staying there.”