The Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump cash cow for veteran Republican consultants, has raised $40 million from MSNBC-watching Brunch Liberals in just the last few months, and is now set to launch a media brand off the idea that its GOP operatives are political geniuses.  Their ads focused on trying to court disaffected Republican voters and attack Trump’s character, as Biden loaded up the Democratic convention with GOP speakers. When polls during the summer showed that the strategy wasn’t working, galaxy brain Rahm Emanuel defended it to a national televised audience, insisting that 2020 would be “the year of the Biden Republican.”  Now survey data show the strategy epically failed, as Trump actually garnered even more support from GOP voters than in 2016. Indeed, Edison Research exit polls on Tuesday found that 93 percent of Republican voters supported Trump — three percentage points higher than in 2016, according to numbers from the same firm.

An ancient squid-like animal with a shell like a 1.5-metre-long paperclip may have lived to be 200 years old

U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign says it has filed a lawsuit trying to halt the vote count in battleground Michigan. The latest count gives Trump's Democratic challenger Joe Biden a small lead, but the race is still too early to call. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement Wednesday that the campaign "has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law." He says a suit was filed Wednesday in the Michigan Court of Claims "to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted."

Stung by their party’s disappointing showing at the polls Tuesday, two moderate House Democrats say they and other centrists are privately discussing a plan that was unthinkable just 24 hours earlier: throwing their support behind a challenger to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).  The two Democrats told The Hill on Wednesday that they were reaching out to their colleagues about backing one of Pelosi’s top lieutenants, Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), for Speaker.  “He’s the only one prepared and positioned” to be Speaker, said one of the Democratic lawmakers. “He bridges moderates and progressives better than anyone. And most importantly, he’s not Nancy Pelosi.”

Joe Biden took the lead in Michigan this morning, and once the early absentee votes are counted in Pennsylvania, he’s likely to take the lead there, at least if those votes fit the prevailing trend. That would be more than enough, even if Nevada flips. In fact, if Biden wins every one of the too-close-to-call states (not Alaska, which is just waiting on absentees and will likely go to Trump), my map prediction would be 100 percent accurate. Of course, we may end up in recount territory in a couple of states, and the president is frantically trying to shut down the counting. Winter of Our Discontent, anyone?

Social media platforms are sucking a generation into a misinformation rabbit hole.

But when polls closed hours later, it remained unclear just how many others did. After funneling some $10.3 million into the campaign, West appeared on the ballot in just 12 states. The Late Registration rapper missed the filing deadline in most states and lost several legal battles in a handful of others. Of the states where he did make the ballot—listed under the “Birthday Party”—most were Republican strongholds: Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Utah, Idaho, and Tennessee. West appeared on the ballot of just three competitive states: Colorado, Iowa, and Minnesota. The 12th was Vermont. The math was never on West’s side—no combination of votes in those states would get him to the 270 electoral votes needed to take the Oval Office. The most recent polling on West’s campaign forecast he’d capture 0.0 percent of the vote.

- In a case pitting LGBT rights against religious rights, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday is set to hear arguments in a dispute over the city of Philadelphia’s refusal to place children for foster care with a Catholic Church-affiliated agency that excludes same-sex couples from serving as foster parents.

According to The New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez’s seat was the second most expensive House race in the country after Republican challenger John Cummings raised more than $10 million to try and unseat her. She easily won her race with just under 75 percent of the vote.  The Associated Press called Tlaib’s race early Wednesday morning with over 66 percent of precincts reporting, winning her first race against a Republican opponent, David Dudenhoefer. She did not face a Republican when she was first elected in 2018.  Omar brushed aside GOP challenger Lacy Johnson after he failed to make inroads with his promise to fight poverty and crime through education reform and business savvy. Omar and Tlaib became the first Muslim women elected to Congress in 2018.  Pressley won her strong blue-leaning district over write-in Republican Rayla Campbell. 

A man who died from the coronavirus appears to have won a seat in North Dakota's state legislature, according to unofficial election results. David Andahl, 55, was a Republican nominee for one of two District 8 House seats in the November general election. He and his running mate Dave Nehring, of Bismarck, were leading their Democrat counterparts with around 35% and 41% of votes, respectively, early Wednesday, results showed.

An Australian man says he was able to survive a late-night house fire after his pet parrot roused him from bed. Anton Nguyen had been fast asleep when his two-storey house caught alight in Brisbane, Queensland, on Wednesday. "I heard a bang and Eric - my parrot - he started to yell so I woke up and I smelled a bit of smoke," he told ABC. "I grabbed Eric, opened the door and looked to the back of the house and saw some flames... and so I took off and bolted downstairs." By the time firefighters arrived at about 01:00 local time (14:00 GMT Tuesday), the house was engulfed in flames. It took four crews over an hour to contain the blaze in the suburb of Kangaroo Point. Mr Nguyen, who lives alone, said he had escaped with the bird and a bag, and suffered no injuries.

Regardless of who wins the US presidential election, the United States officially pulls out of the Paris climate agreement on 4 November. The move marks a blow to international efforts to halt global warming. The landmark deal, struck in 2015, aims to limit global warming to “well below” 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures. But in June 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States — the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases — would withdraw from the agreement. Nature examines how the withdrawal will affect global efforts to mitigate climate change.

There’s a record-setting number of openly queer candidates running for elected positions in both state and local government, which means that the Rainbow Wave could hold far-reaching implications for queer inroads into politics this year, even if it trickles in over a couple days.

Fulton County’s absentee-by-mail processing operation at State Farm Arena was delayed four hours today after a water pipe burst in a room with ballots.

A supporter of QAnon, the collective delusion that ridiculously claims President Donald Trump is fighting a satanic cabal of elites who abuse children, has been elected to Congress for the first time. It is hard to overstate this moment. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s election in Georgia could help legitimize a dangerous mass delusion that has festered in the Trump era, where baseless conspiracy theories embraced by the White House were laundered into the American consciousness by willing social media platforms. There have been real-world consequences. QAnon believers have engaged in an armed standoff with federal officials at the Hoover Dam. They’ve tried to hijack legitimate efforts to fight child sex trafficking. They have sent death threats to a Democratic member of Congress. Someone who believed in its precursor, Pizzagate, opened fire in a popular DC pizza parlor, saying he was looking to free children who have been sexually abused. It has infected the minds of boomers and young students alike. Greene — who has espoused QAnon theories, posted a video of herself threatening “antifa terrorists” with an AR-15, and shared a meme of herself with a gun next to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of "the Squad" — won election in Georgia’s 14th District. Decision Desk HQ called the race shortly after polls closed in the state at 7 p.m. ET. She didn’t face any opposition on Tuesday night after her Democratic opponent dropped out of the race.

Well, we don't want that ... or do we?

In Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio Joe Biden’s lead may have disappeared

The uncertainties of 2020 led the folk duo to discover a new emotional urgency in songs about the slow, challenging, beautiful heat of living.

There’s a good chance we won’t know who won the presidential election on election night. More people than ever are voting by mail this year due to the pandemic, and mail ballots take longer to count than ballots cast at polling places. But because each state has its own rules for how votes are counted and reported, some will report results sooner than others. Those disparate rules may also make initial returns misleading: The margins in some states may shift toward Democrats as mail ballots (which are overwhelmingly cast by Democrats) are counted, while states that release mail ballots first may experience a shift toward Republicans as Election Day votes are tallied. Here’s a general picture of how much of the vote we expect to be counted on election night in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. If you click on a given state, it’ll take you to a more detailed description of when to expect results and whether to expect a red or blue shift in the vote count.

Julius Caesar was the Donald Trump of his day, by Timmy, age 11.