Biden Is Projected To Be The President-Elect. Here’s How It All Went Down.

Remember the Hatch Act, which we kept talking about during the Republican National Convention? Well, it’s likely to come up again today, because the Trump campaign has apparently set up a “war room” in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.

That could be a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities while on the job. Trump, as president, is exempt from the Hatch Act, but other federal employees are subject to it and presumably would be in violation if they helped with campaign activities while on the clock. The problem, of course, is that the Hatch Act is enforced by an independent agency that doesn’t have much power over political appointees, particularly ones in high places — which is how the Trump administration has been able to get away with repeatedly blurring the lines between governance and campaign activity.

A Washington, D.C., ban on gatherings larger than 50 people nixed Trump’s plans to spend election night at his hotel in that city. But Trump is planning an indoor event at the White House instead, with a guest list that is reported to run upwards of 400 people. This will be the highest-profile event at the White House since the Sept. 26 celebration of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. That gathering had … some unintended COVID-19-related side effects. Officials say everyone attending tonight will be tested for COVID-19, but testing is, at best, an unreliable method of preventing the gathering from turning into another White House superspreader event. The key problem: Individuals can be contagious before they test positive.

One source of potential uncertainty is the delivery of mail-in ballots in key swing states like Michigan, where ballots must be received by 8 p.m. Eastern on Election Day to be counted. In an effort to ensure that mail delays don’t leave some ballots undelivered, a federal judge issued an order on Sunday, telling the U.S. Postal Service to expedite ballots ahead of the election. Today, the same judge ordered USPS to sweep processing facilities for ballots by 3 p.m. Eastern in a number of states, including Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Texas and Georgia, and certify that “no ballots were left behind.”