“President Trump won’t get his coveted $2,000 stimulus checks — and he’s blaming the very Senate Republican leaders he’s trying to protect in the closing days of Georgia’s runoffs,” Politico reports.

“Though he is actively campaigning for the state’s two incumbent GOP senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, holding a Monday night rally to drive turnout to help save the Republican majority, Trump is continuing to run roughshod all over the party’s message for Tuesday’s must-win runoffs and, some Republicans worry, giving Democrats a perfect opening.”

The Guardian: Georgia runoffs will help define much of Biden’s first term.

“President Trump is torching his own party and its leaders on his way out of power — and tossing gas on the fire with a public call for mass protest next week and a vote to overturn his defeat,” Axios reports.

“Trump is demanding Republicans fully and unequivocally embrace him — or face his wrath. This is self-inflicted, self-focused — and dangerous for a Republican Party clinging to waning Washington power.”

CBS News: Are congressional Republicans breaking away from Trump?

“Jared Kushner approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president’s family members and spent almost half of the campaign’s $1.26 billion war chest,” Business Insider reports.

“The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump’s top advisors and family members while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.”

“Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, once viewed as a long-shot candidate to be President-elect Joe Biden’s defense secretary, is now considered a leading contender for the position,” Politico reports.

CNN: Biden’s delay in picking a defense secretary opens top contenders to uncomfortable scrutiny.

ABC News has confirmed Rudy Giuliani was admitted to Georgetown Hospital Sunday after testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), one of President-elect Joe Biden’s most influential allies, is pushing hard for Jaime Harrison to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Politico reports.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris tweets:

“The Trump campaign says it will seek recounts in several key states, but that’s highly unlikely to change the outcome,” Axios reports.

“Statewide recounts have historically only changed electoral margins by an average 430 votes, according to the nonpartisan election reform group FairVote. Joe Biden’s lead in several states is thin, but it’s not that thin.”

The New York Times has a very good tracker showing which media outlets have called the winner of each state.

“A federal judge in Texas scheduled an emergency hearing for Monday on whether Houston officials unlawfully allowed drive-through voting and should toss more than 100,000 votes in the Democratic-leaning area,” Reuters reports.

“In a brief order, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston on Friday agreed to hear arguments by a Republican state legislator and others that votes already cast at drive-through voting sites in the Houston area should be rejected.”

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll found that just 20% of voters said that they believed the winner of the presidential election will be called on election night, while 66% said they expect it to happen sometime later.

A new Climate Nexus poll in Pennsylvania finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in the presidential race, 48% to 43%.

A new New York Times/Siena poll of key U.S. Senate races:

• Arizona: Kelly 50%, McSally 42%
• Maine: Gideon 49%, Collins 44%
• North Carolina: Cunningham 42%, Tillis 37%

A new EPIC/MRA poll:

• Michigan: Peters 45%, James 41%

A new CBS News/YouGov poll in Minnesota has Joe Biden leading Donald Trump among likely voters, 50% to 41%.

Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-MN) paid a Texas-based company owned by one of his staff members more than $100,000 of taxpayer money for printing postcards — a business relationship Congressional ethics experts say is a clear violation of government ethics rules, the Minnesota Reformer reports.

“Hagedorn also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for printing to a separate, mysterious company that has existed for less than a year and seems to have gone to great lengths to conceal its ownership.”

New York Times: “President Trump won the White House in no small part by seizing on Hillary Clinton’s missteps and using them to turn many voters against her. But after three unsteady months, and with the Republican convention six weeks away, Mr. Trump is struggling to define Joe Biden to similarly devastating effect, a critical task at this stage of a presidential race.”

“By a combination of design and circumstance, Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has managed so far to deny Mr. Trump the sort of damaging offhand remarks, campaign clashes and clumsy encounters with voters that he used as weapons against Mrs. Clinton in the last general election, as well as his Republican opponents in the 2016 primary.”

“I think if you could clock the amount of time he’s spent actually in the Oval Office versus the amount of time he spends in the little dining room off the Oval Office with the cable news networks of one form or another on — it would be a very interesting statistic.”

— Former national security adviser John Bolton, talking about President Trump on CBS News.