Stunning turn of events tonight in Michigan. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked and was unable to certify the county’s vote. Wayne County includes Detroit. The Board has two Republicans and two Democrats. The Republicans refused to certify. But tellingly the GOP Chair said they’d agree as long as Detroit was left out. Basically, they were trying to pull a power play in which they used their power to toss out the votes of the city of Detroit.

The state GOP jumped in and lauded the decision. Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis excitedly predicted it was the first step toward the GOP state legislature tossing out the results of the election and appointing Trump electors to the electoral college. Finally President Trump himself tweeted excitedly that it was a turning point.

But then it all changed.

Just to keep you up to date, this Lindsey Graham story continues to grow. As we noted last night, Graham approached the Republican Secretary of State in Georgia with a plan to throw out what appears to have been a huge number of legally cast mail-in ballots. Since mail-in ballots overwhelmingly favored Joe Biden, there’s every reason to think that would have made Trump the winner and quite possibly avoided a run-off for David Purdue.

The full story of the Falwells’ romantic entanglement with a one-time pool attendant-turned business associate appears to be far messier and more surprising than we knew.

NBC is out this morning with an article which seem to signal President-Elect Biden’s “wary” of having the Justice Department scrutinize and possibly indict his predecessor, Donald Trump. It’s a bit of a hard article to decipher. On its face, it simply says that Biden is going to leave prosecutorial decisions to the Justice Department, which is exactly what should happen. A President who makes the DOJ and its prosecutorial power a tool of his personal will is the problem we’re trying to solve not the solution it. But you can also read it as Biden doesn’t want his presidency consumed by the drama and pyrotechnics of investigations and prosecutions of Trump and his family, which sounds a lot like ‘turning the page’ and ‘looking forward not back.’

According to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Sen. Lindsey Graham approached him about throwing out all mail-in ballots in counties that had higher than average ballot signature mismatches. This is a request (almost certainly at President Trump’s behest) to violate the law by throwing out huge numbers of legally cast votes on an absurd premise. He might as well have asked Raffensperger to falsify the numbers. And in fact, I think that is what it amounts to. This comes out in a new interview with Raffensperger from The Washington Post.

That’s a headline that could encompass the societal feeling of just about any stage of 2020. But it feels particularly pointed right now.

You may have heard that the Trump campaign has now dropped most of its case against the results of the presidential election in Pennsylvania. But they’re expanding their case in other directions. Specifically, counsel for the President’s campaign is asking the court to sanction counsel for the State of Pennsylvania (technically, the Secretary of State) because an unnamed associate at Kirkland Ellis left a mean voicemail in her voicemail box.

Last night I was heartened to hear that The Washington Post had called for the abolition of the electoral college in an editorial. This is hardly a controversial view, certainly among Democrats. But I was glad to see it because I’ve been thinking in recent months of the critical importance of building in this country what for lack of a better phrase I’ll call a democracy agenda. This is critical first because what we’ve long considered the most basic assumptions of civic democracy are so clearly under threat but also because longstanding features of the apparatus of the American state, which had the potential to thwart the democratic will, have now begun actively to do so.

I don’t know if you watched the President’s comments yesterday at his vaccine event. But one of our number, TPM Reader EB, said after it ended that that was the concession. He was right. I didn’t quite get it as it was happening. But after EB said it I realized he was right.

Of course he didn’t literally concede anything. Trump was petulant, lashing out at perceived enemies. But he was low energy and notably did not take questions. There was one moment even when he had to catch himself because he almost inadvertently admitted that he lost and that his presidency is ending.

It’s been rumored for years that President Trump doesn’t actually enjoy being president. And that’s never been more clear than the last week.