More than two dozen CEOs of major U.S. corporations took part in a video conference on Nov. 6 to discuss what to do if Trump refuses to leave office or takes other steps to stay in power.

During the conference, which lasted more than an hour, the CEOs agreed that while Trump had the right to pursue legal challenges alleging voter fraud, if he tries to undo the legal process or disrupts a peaceful transition, the CEOs discussed making public statements and pressuring GOP legislators, said Yale Management Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who convened the meeting.

Action could include threats to stop donations to political action committees or even corporate relocations, Sonnenfeld said.

The CEOs weren't worried about reprisals against their businesses but emphasized acting together. They referred to a Benjamin Franklin quote at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,” according to Sonnenfeld.

YouTube is facing growing criticism for allowing election misinformation after it decided not to remove or individually fact-check videos that spread unfounded conspiracy theories alleging voter fraud.

While all internet platforms are struggling to contain the volume of misinformation since voting ended last week — and all have been criticized to some degree by researchers for their handling of the situation — YouTube has staked out a position that is less aggressive than its social media competitors, most notably Facebook and Twitter.

YouTube said before the election that it wouldn’t allow videos that encourage “interference in the democratic process,” but now, as state officials are working to certify vote tallies, the company said it wants to give users room for “discussion of election results,” even when that discussion is based on debunked information.

Somewhere in between those two policies it has decided to leave up videos challenging Joe Biden’s election, and some have received millions of views.

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Sen. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican, conceded Friday to Democrat Mark Kelly, one week after NBC News called the race for him.

McSally said in a statement that she has “trust God will lead me to my next mission to make a difference.” 

"With nearly all the votes counted, I called Mark Kelly this morning to congratulate him on winning this race,” McSally said. “I also offered support in his transition to ensure Arizonans are best served during this time. I wish him all the best."

McSally lost by 2.4 percentage points — the same margin as her defeat by Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in 2018.

After that loss, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey appointed McSally, a former congresswoman and Air Force fighter pilot, to the Senate to replace Jon Kyl, who had returned to Washington temporarily after the death of his friend and former colleague, Sen. John McCain. 

President Donald Trump is scheduled to make public remarks on Friday afternoon, his first public comments since Joe Biden was projected the winner in the presidential race — snapping the longest stretch of silence in his presidency.

The Rose Garden appearance is his first comments since Nov. 5th and is slated to focus on Covid-19 vaccines. Trump initially had no public events scheduled, but the White House sent out an update in the early afternoon saying he'd make remarks about Operation Warp Speed in the Rose Garden at 4 p.m. ET.

Trump received an update Friday on the coronavirus vaccine development and delivery program. The virus that's already killed over 244,000 in the U.S. has surged across the country in recent weeks, with spikes in infections and hospitalizations from coast-to-coast.

Trump's failure to concede is already affecting his successor's plan to combat the virus by blocking his ability to communicate with government officials about their current efforts.

That has doctors close to Biden’s transition team working to develop their own plans to mass distribute a coronavirus vaccine, concerned that Trump administration planning will leave them underprepared when he leaves office.

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President Trump said Friday that he might attend an expected large gathering of supporters in Washington, D.C., dubbed the Million MAGA March, on Saturday.

Trump tweeted his thanks to supporters for "rallies springing up all over the Country, including a big one on Saturday in DC."

"I may even try to stop by and say hello," he continued. 

At the gathering, the president's supporters are expected to protest the election results, which NBC News and other news organizations called for Joe Biden last week. D.C. officials told NBC affiliates they expect street closures throughout the district. 

Republican Sen. David Perdue has been forced into a runoff with Democrat Jon Ossoff after neither captured 50 percent of the vote in their Georgia Senate race, NBC News projected Friday.

The development paves the way for a dramatic Jan. 5 election that will determine control of the U.S. Senate for the start of the new Biden administration — a race for which Ossoff and Perdue are preparing and raising money.

Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler is facing Democrat Raphael Warnock for the state's other Senate seat on that same date, as neither cleared the 50 percent mark in their contest — giving Democrats a glimmer of hope that they could snare the two seats they need to claim control of the Senate and further Biden's agenda.

Ossoff said the races are critical to the country's future.

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WASHINGTON — While the country has largely focused on President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the presidential election to Joe Biden, it is also having a trickle-down effect in state and local races as defeated Republican candidates follow suit.

Trump's insistence that fraud affected the outcome of the election has fueled down-ballot defeated candidates to make the same claim and are similarly refusing to concede despite falling thousands of votes short.

The wave of refusals to concede comes as Trump continues to falsely claim that mass voter fraud fueld Joe Biden’s victory, which has been projected by news outlets since Saturday when the former vice president surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

To justify not conceding, Trump has been pointing to mail-in ballots — many of which were cast by Democrats because of the ongoing pandemic — which he incorrectly describes as illegal votes.

“Many Republican voters believe that there was fraud in this election,” said Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in election law, about their baseless claims. “It's not a surprise right now that losing candidates have now taken a page out of the Trump playbook since it seems to be working for him, at least among Republican voters.”

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A Michigan state court judge Friday declined to block the certification of election results in Detroit, rejecting claims in a lawsuit filed by two poll challengers who said they saw several kinds of irregularities that allowed invalid ballots to be counted.

Timothy Kenny, the chief judge of Wayne County Circuit Court, said those making the claims "did not have a full understanding" of the vote counting process and their "interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible."

In their lawsuit, filed Nov. 8, the poll workers said they saw troubling conduct at the TCF Center, where Detroit ballots were processed and tabulated. They asked the judge to block certification of the results and order an independent audit. Their suit also said the judge should consider invalidating the results and ordering a new election.

Affidavits attached to the lawsuit from other election observers claimed that workers at the counting center backdated mail-in ballots, accepted ballots that arrived after the 8 p.m. deadline on election night, and failed to verify ballot envelope signatures. These were examples, the lawsuit said, of “fraud and misconduct.”

But city and county officials, in their response to the suit, said the complaints were based on “an extraordinary failure to understand how elections function.” They said ballots were not backdated and that none received after the deadline were counted.

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President-elect Joe Biden has won Georgia, picking up 16 Electoral College votes in winning the state, which hadn’t voted for a Democrat for president in almost 30 years. President Donald Trump picked North Carolina, which he won four years ago, for a gain of 15 electoral votes.

The win brings the final Electoral College tally to 306 votes for Biden and 232 votes for Trump. The outcome in Georgia, however, is subject to a planned recount of the state’s votes.