Good morning, this is Rick Howard with the Daily Beast. It's Thursday, November 5th, and these are the top stories the Chi Chi T is watching right now. As Election Day has turned into Election Week, President Trump had a simple message for his closest political and legal advisors on Wednesday morning as they began devising a plan to challenge and temporarily halt ballot counts in several key states. He wants to give Democrats a court fight that quote, they'll never forget.
Trump's remarks were laid by two people familiar with them, came on the morning after an inconclusive election night, but one that is now trending Joe Biden's way. When Trump had 14 Trump, it was meant as a sounding alarm to use every possible legal resource and a bit of political organizing to help tip the balance of the scale in Trump's favor. The president told his advisors that even if Biden were to grab the presidency, he wanted them to quote, go down fighting even harder than they ever had before. By Wednesday afternoon, some semblance of that approach began to materialize in the form of protests and multiple legal challenges.
Protesters took matters into their own hands Wednesday night. President Trump falsely declared victory on election night and basically claimed a plot was underway to supposedly steal the vote from him. He and his pundits peddled baseless allegations of voter fraud since voting began Tuesday. In response, tense scenes and demonstrations across the country have played out.
Sheriff's deputies in Maricopa County, Arizona wore tactical gear as a crowd of demonstrators outside the county's election office shotted demands to be let inside. Police arrested protesters in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York City. Oregon's governor sent the National Guard to end what was called quote, widespread violence in Portland. Uncertainty over the final presidential ballot count was long expected due to pandemic induced mail-in voting, but that did not stop many on both ends of the political spectrum from taking to the streets.
There have been dueling cries of quote, count every vote versus quote, stop the count. White House senior advisor Jared Kushner reportedly reached out to media mogul Rupert Murdoch after Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden on election night. The New York Times reports that Trump, A.J. Similler, is also set to reach out to Fox News to ask them to retract the race call, but was not successful.
The assessment that Arizona's electoral votes would go to Biden later proved to be true. The president was reportedly infuriated by the news. He went on to defy the advice of aides and falsely claimed victory in the election after angrily watching Biden deliver an optimistic and uplifting election at address in Wilmington. Kushner subsequently began making calls in search of someone who would spearhead a bid to challenge vote counts in various states.
Five women will sit on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the first time in his 168-year history as the result of a Tuesday election. State Senator Holly Mitchell defeated LA City Councilman Herb Wesson to take the final seat on the All-Femail Board. Unlike New York City, where local government centers around a powerful mayor, the county government of Los Angeles holds more power than city officials in Southern California. The men who typically sat on the board, often occupying the seats for decades, had been nicknamed quote, the Five Little Kings, and oversaw a budget of $35 billion in the nation's most populous county.
Mitchell, a former nonprofit executive, told the Los Angeles Times that she decided to run for the first time a year ago after watching male lawmakers cut the state's subsidized childcare budget by a billion dollars. For the first time since the pandemic began, the United States has documented 100,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day. 17 states reported record numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations Wednesday, while Maine, Minnesota, Idaho, and Indiana set single-day records for new infections. Hospitals in Nebraska and Arkansas also face bed and healthcare worker shortages.
With the earliest vaccine results possibly only coming in December, the nation faces the same challenge of enforcing CDC health and safety guidelines to minimize the pandemic's mortality and impact on the healthcare system. The Church Hills song has fired one of its American leaders, Pastor Carl Lentz, or what they described as quote, breaches of trust and quote, moral failures. The Australian Christian mega church has been attended by Justin Bieber and a load of other celebrities. Lentz co-founded the popular New York City branch of the church in 2010.
He rose to fame by way of a star-studded congregation in Justin Bieber's 2014 detox that entailed the singer moving in with the priest. The church's founder Brian Houston did not specify the nature of the offenses and Lentz has yet to offer a response to aspiring. That's all for this morning. Check back every weekday morning and afternoon for more than news you need to know.
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