While Donald Trump has officially secured a second term as president, all eyes remain on the Sunbelt state of Arizona, where election officials continue to tabulate ballots days after the Nov. 5 contest.

As of Friday morning, the Arizona secretary of state’s office estimates there are more than 780,000 votes yet to be counted. Preliminary results released thus far show Trump leading Kamala Harris by 5.9 points and Democrat Senate candidate Ruben Gallego leading Republican Kari Lake by 1.7 points.

Control of the state legislature and numerous local races are also yet to be officially determined as of Friday morning, according to The New York Times.

While winning Arizona is no longer necessary for Republicans to take control of the White House and Senate this year, the state’s reputation for taking days to produce final election results shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

“The longer you drag it out, the more it raises suspicions that shenanigans are occurring, that fraudulent activity is occurring,” Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi told The Federalist. “The only way to eliminate that is to ensure that we have election results on election night.”

Failure to provide voters a definitive answer on the outcome of any given race within the day of the election undermines voters’ faith in the process. Imagine, for instance, if the outcome of the 2024 presidential race came down to which candidate won Arizona. The ineptitude of officials in Maricopa County — Arizona’s most populous locality — and other

Like lots of Americans, I tuned in Wednesday afternoon to hear Kamala Harris’ belated concession speech. I had low expectations for what she was going to say, but the spectacle of Harris graciously conceding to a man she had very recently warned was an incipient fascist was too jarring not to witness.

Anyway, I found the speech pretty innocuous and unmemorable right up until the very end when, rallying the crowd for something resembling a rousing conclusion, she said this:

There’s an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.

Initially what gave me pause was that, while the rest of the speech had been inoffensive pablum, this was just terrible writing. Even by the standards of speechwriting in modern politics, this jumps out as uniquely bad. Why would this trite metaphor about stars be a “law of history”? And man, I hope “the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars” wasn’t the actual text of the speech, because that’s not even grammatical. It was so bad that I wonder if she wrote it herself.

Journalists seem poised to learn all the wrong lessons from Donald Trump’s victory this week, repeating a pattern they’ve been unable to shake since the frenzied days of 2016. A moment from CNN’s “Inside Politics” on Thursday is especially instructive — and an ominous portent of the media’s ability to recapture influence.

Laura Barrón-López is the White House correspondent at PBS News and a political analyst at CNN. On a panel with Dana Bash and John King — the network’s chief political and chief national correspondent respectively — Barrón-López made a claim so objectively false is almost defies believability. Bash and King, of course, found it deeply compelling. 

Reflecting on Trump’s success, Barrón-López mused, “Maybe it’s not so much Democrats policies or messaging or the words that they use specifically, but there is an entire right-wing media ecosystem doesn’t exist on the left, does not exist in center or mainstream, and people are getting their information in very different ways now.”

No self awareness! @lbarronlopez, a correspondent for PBS, while on CNN, blamed Kamala Harris loss on how “there is an entire right wing media ecosystem that doesn’t exist on the left and it does not exist in the center or mainstream.” pic.twitter.com/QKPjTGHhvO

— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) November 7, 2024

“Oh yes. It does not exist on the left,” agreed Bash. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” King repeated.

“And,” continued Barrón-López, “Donald Trump and Republicans and Elon Musk and Joe Rogan know exactly how to reach Americans where they