By Meg Wagner, Mike Hayes and Melissa Macaya, CNN
From CNN’s Dan Merica
Stacey Abrams’ organization Fair Fight has raised $9.8 million since Friday evening, an aide says, with the bulk of that haul going to Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
The fundraising comes from the website GAsenate.com. The ActBlue page splits the raised money three ways — Fair Fight and the two candidates.
Both Democrats and Republicans believe the simultaneous runoff elections could cost both parties tens of millions of dollars.
From CNN's Betsy Klein
The Trump campaign continues to send a barrage of fundraising emails, with hourly appeals sent to supporters since 5 a.m. Tuesday.
The current count is 146 fundraising emails since 11:00 p.m. on Election Night, Tuesday, Nov. 3.
As President-elect Joe Biden continues making transition plans, the US Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a case about President Barack Obama’s signature health care initiative.
The court will hear oral arguments starting at 10 a.m. ET, and the case could overturn part or even all of the Affordable Care Act, also know as Obamacare.
The justices, including newly sworn-in Amy Coney Barrett, are expected to release their opinion in the first half of 2021.
The newest lawsuit against the ACA is the most audacious to date. It asks the court to strike down the entire 2010 law because of an amendment to the individual insurance mandate in 2017. Congress reduced to zero the penalty for people who failed to obtain insurance.
Here's what you need to know about the case, California v. Texas:
From CNN's Nicole Chavez
Antonio Torres drove to different South Texas cities waving a large Trump 2020 flag every weekend for the past three months.
The small caravan of cars that the 51-year-old insurance agent initially joined in the border city of McAllen last summer grew to more than a hundred cars ahead of Election Day. The region had historically been a Democratic stronghold but last week it saw a closer race than before.
"I'm very confident that from now on, the elections down here are not going to be one-sided anymore," Torres said. "There's going to be competition."
Both President Trump and President-elect Joe Biden benefited from the high turnout of Latino voters across the US. Yet the support they received from this diverse and complex electorate of about 32 million people — and why — varied in different parts of the country.
A nationwide CNN exit poll shows that Biden captured 66% of the group across the country, which is the same that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton received four years ago. Trump picked up more Latino voters with 32%, compared to 28% in 2016.
"If you consider us to be natural Democrats or natural Republicans, you're under estimating us as political thinkers," said Geraldo Cadava, who teaches at Northwestern University and is the author of "The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump."
Experts like Cadava and leaders from some of the nation's most prominent Latino political advocacy groups said the election's results should send a resounding signal to both parties that connecting with Latinos long before the election and understanding their political identity is key.
Read the full story:
Today, CNN Citizen will present "What Next, America?" a conversation about the 2020 election results and what they mean for the road ahead.
It will feature CNN's Dana Bash, David Chalian, John King and Abby Phillip.
You can reserve your spot here. It begins at 10 a.m. ET.
From CNN's Arlette Saenz
President-elect Joe Biden will deliver remarks on the Affordable Care Act this afternoon as the US Supreme Court is set to begin hearing arguments on attempts to overturn President Barack Obama’s signature health care initiative.
The event will take place around 2 p.m. ET in Wilmington, Delaware, and Vice-President elect Kamala Harris will join Biden.
Some context: The speech will come as the Supreme Court today hears oral arguments in a case that could overturn part or even all of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
California v. Texas centers on the consequences of Congress' action in 2017 zeroing out the tax penalty for Americans who failed to obtain minimum insurance coverage. That individual mandate was intended to encourage more people, especially young, healthy individuals, to buy insurance and spread out the costs of care.
The ACA was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2012 when it was broadly challenged as a violation of Congress' power to regulate commerce. Chief Justice John Roberts cast the crucial fifth vote to uphold it, saying the individual insurance requirement as part of Congress' taxing authority.
Now that the penalty was taken out, the new arguments are being brought by a group of Republican attorneys general, led by Texas and backed by the Trump administration.
From CNN's Kaitlan Collins, Jeff Zeleny, Betsy Klein
As President Trump continues his legal push to contest Joe Biden’s victory, a round of layoffs at the Republican National Committee Monday left staff blindsided, three sources familiar with what happened told CNN.
The party is in the middle of a fundraising blitz as the national party chair, Ronna McDaniel, is publicly pushing President Trump’s baseless allegations that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Departments within the RNC were instructed Monday to inform staffers who were being laid off, though the scale of the layoffs vary among the departments. Most stemmed from those assigned to the RNC-Trump Victory program, the joint fundraising effort between the RNC and Trump campaign that served as the ground and field program for the Trump campaign.
A Republican source told CNN a “large portion of staff” were laid off. The exact number is unclear and the RNC declined to respond repeated requests for comment.
One source told CNN most of these jobs were only intended to last through the election, but the round of layoffs underscores how the Republican apparatus is hardly moving full-steam ahead to challenge the outcome of the results as President Trump wishes.
In the Florida recount in 2000, the Republican National Committee dispatched large swaths of staff to Palm Beach and Florida’s 66 other counties. A similar effort is not being taken in 2020, though some RNC staffers will be sent to Georgia ahead of expected twin Georgia runoffs.
Though the President refuses to accept his election loss, one RNC source put it bluntly:
"Layoffs are the logical next step considering the outcome."
Additional reporting by Michael Warren.
From CNN's Arlette Saenz
Four years ago today, then Vice President Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Mike Pence met in Biden’s West Wing office in the White House.
“I just met with @VP-elect Pence at the @WhiteHouse to offer support for a smooth, seamless transition of power,” Biden wrote.
That same day, President Obama welcomed President-elect Trump to the White House, where they had a 90-minute Oval Office meeting – a meeting that is not being reciprocated after this year’s election.
CNN’s White House team has reported there are no plans for the President to invite the President-elect to the White House in the coming days.
Biden and Pence remained in touch in the early months of Pence’s tenure, with Biden offering him some advice on foreign policy issues on a few occasions. Their last substantive conversation on these types of matters occurred in the summer of 2017, aides have previously told CNN.
From CNN's Betsy Klein
As President Trump continues to baselessly claim election fraud and refuses to concede the presidential election, the Trump administration also has yet to sign off on a key document needed to formally begin the transition process.
This week, all eyes are on the Trump-appointed General Services Administration administrator, Emily W. Murphy, to recognize Joe Biden as the president-elect and release funds to the Biden transition team through a process called ascertainment.
This would mark the first formal acknowledgment from the Trump administration that Biden has in fact won the election, and would unlock access to national security tools to streamline background checks and additional funds to pay for training and incoming staff.
Murphy has not yet signed off. A GSA spokesperson declined to provide a specific timeline for when ascertainment would take place, a clear signal the agency won't get ahead of the President.
"An ascertainment has not yet been made," GSA spokesperson Pamela Pennington told CNN.
Back in early September, the Trump administration agreed to three memoranda of understanding with the Biden transition team, as laid out by the Presidential Transition Act. They were signed by the General Services Administration, the Department of Justice, and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
At the time, $9.62 million was allocated to the Biden transition team for pre-election services, which the team continues to receive.
Ascertainment would trigger the release of an additional $9.9 million in funds for post-election services, which includes $6.3 million for the incoming administration, $1 million for appointee orientation and training, and $2.6 million for outgoing services.
Read more here
