Warm up

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What industry do you work in and what is your role?
What are your responses in your role / position?
Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
What are the minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?

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General discussion about your workweek:

Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
Anything of interest happening?

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Script

1. TOPLINE Joe Biden officially established a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania Friday morning, likely putting him over the number of electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency—and while the Trump campaign launched an aggressive legal strategy in the state as Biden ate into Trump’s early lead, their lawsuits would not affect the vote totals showing Biden in the lead, and likely would not change the outcome of the race.

KEY FACTS

2. The Trump campaign has challenged the vote counting process in Pennsylvania, winning the ability to station its election observers closer to the vote counting process and reaching a settlement in another case that established a certain number of election observers that can be present during the vote count.

3. The ruling allowing observers to be within six feet of vote counting reportedly slowed down Philadelphia’s counting process, but it will not affect the number of votes counted, as Pennsylvania does not allow third party observers to challenge individual mail-in ballots.

4. The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit threatening to invalidate any mail-in ballots that are missing proof of identification if those issues aren’t fixed by a certain date—but those ballots have not been counted yet, and thus would not affect Biden’s current lead if they were invalidated.

5. The Trump campaign is trying to intervene in a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot deadline, which would invalidate a current deadline allowing ballots to be counted if they arrive up to three days after Election Day.

6. The Trump campaign is pushing to invalidate the deadline and any ballots that arrived after Tuesday evening, but these votes have been segregated and are not included in the current vote count, and thus would not affect Biden’s current lead if they’re invalidated.

7. The Trump campaign is suing to invalidate 600 cured mail-in ballots in Montgomery County, which would not be enough to affect Biden’s lead, and other GOP candidates are also suing to invalidate provisional ballots that were cast after a voter’s mail-in ballot was rejected—but the state’s current vote totals show very few provisional ballots have been counted so far, and the majority of those that were counted were actually cast for Trump.

KEY BACKGROUND

8. The Trump campaign has launched an aggressive legal strategy in battleground states in the wake of Election Day as the mail-in vote has increasingly favored Biden, filing lawsuits in Michigan and Georgia and threatening legal action in Nevada in addition to their Pennsylvania suits. The Michigan and Georgia lawsuits have already failed, however, and critics have been skeptical that the Trump campaign’s legal challenge would actually have any actual effect on the presidential race.

9. “I don’t see any real legal strategy here,” Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told ABC News. “They look more like public relation stunts meant to create a false impression that the election is filled with improprieties and fraud.” Though the Trump campaign has alleged voter fraud and impropriety in the vote count as it has broken in Biden’s favor, there is no actual evidence showing any voter fraud or wrongdoing in the vote counting process in any state.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

10. Biden is currently leading in Pennsylvania by approximately 6,700 votes as of 10 a.m. Friday, and that lead is expected to grow as the remaining mail-in votes—which have heavily favored Biden—are counted. The Pennsylvania and presidential races have so far not yet been officially called, however, and Trump and the GOP have not yet signaled they are planning to concede the race.

11. The Republican National Committee released a statement Friday morning touting the party’s legal teams on the ground in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Michigan and vowing to fight against alleged issues with the election, despite not yet providing any concrete evidence showing those issues actually exist. “We will not give up on this process until every last issue has been resolved,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement Friday morning.