If you want an oversight board done right, you have to launch it yourself, Facebook's critics have evidently decided.

Facebook is launching an independent oversight board, a so-called "Supreme Court" to which moderation decisions can be appealed, but on Friday, 25 experts and outspoken Facebook critics announced they're forming the "Real Facebook Oversight Board," their own group that will "analyze and critique Facebook's content moderation decisions, policies and other platform issues in the run-up to the presidential election and beyond," NBC News reports.

The advocacy group The Citizens is behind the Real Facebook Oversight Board, which consists of civil rights leaders and academics among other experts who reportedly plan to meet weekly over Zoom. The Citizens' founder, journalist Carole Cadwalladr, described this as an "emergency response."

"We know there are going to be a series of incidents leading up to the election and beyond in which Facebook is crucial," Cadwalladr told NBC News. "This is a real-time response from an authoritative group of experts to counter the spin Facebook is putting out."

Though Facebook's oversight board is launching in October, according to The Verge, given how long the process is expected to take, "that will be too late to hear cases related to the U.S. election." Facebook, according to NBC News, "isn't welcoming the outside board" and has expressed disappointment over its formation, and The Verge notes the board "will hold no power and is largely meant as a symbolic gesture."

An apparent pitch deck for the project reported on by Axios, though, says it plans to use "stunts, viral video, celebrity endorsement and skillful media management to throw a spotlight on the real-time threats to democracy," adding, "Democracy needs its own PR team and creative agency. We are it." Brendan Morrow

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appears to be getting desperate as his re-election race gets narrower and narrower.

Graham has brought in record-breaking fundraising hauls throughout his race — but Democrat Jaime Harrison has still ended up besting him so far this year. Graham admitted his struggles Thursday night in appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, pleading with Hannity's viewers to "help me" because "they're killing me money wise." Hannity then suggested it was famously liberal celebrities who were backing Harrison's campaign, despite the fact that both candidates have gotten a good deal of money from Hollywood, big media companies, and people outside of the state.

Graham made a similar plea on Fox & Friends Thursday morning, leading Harrison to conclude Graham knows "he's going to lose" this election.

As of the most recent Federal Election Commission filings, Harrison has raised $28.6 million to Graham's nearly $30 million. Graham has about $5 million more than Harrison to spend in the last weeks of the race. The latest South Carolina Senate race poll showed Harrison and Graham statistically tied. Kathryn Krawczyk

President Trump has said several times this week he may not accept an electoral loss, won't commit to a peaceful transfer of power, and expects the election to be decided by a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court.

"After more than four years of non-stop voter fraud claims" and "at least one float about delaying the November election," Politico reports, "Republicans can no longer truthfully deny that Trump may be unwilling to leave office in the event he is defeated. And Democrats must now confront the possibility they may not have the power to stop him." But Democrats are lawyering up to fight Trump's expected attempts to throw out mail-in ballots or otherwise circumvent the voters.

"I've been spending the last six weeks gaming out all the crazy things this man could do," one Democratic strategist told Politico on Thursday. "If you're prepared ... it's not as disturbing." Lots of Democrats are still disturbed. "We're a lot more organized than in 2000. A lot," said Matt Bennett at the center-left group Third Way, "but I don't know if it's enough."

The Defense Department has ruled out dragging Trump from the White House, but senior Pentagon leaders are privately discussing what to do if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and tries "to use any civil unrest around the elections to put his thumb on the scales," The New York Times reports. "Several Pentagon officials said that such a move could prompt resignations," starting with Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I know that Milley is trying to think his way through, but I have my doubts he can," John Gans, former chief speechwriter to the defense secretary, told the Times. "The Pentagon plans for war with Canada and a zombie apocalypse, but they don't want to plan for a contested election."

And those congressional Republians subtweeting at Trump about an orderly transfer of power take this more seriously that you might think, Brendan Buck, a top adviser to former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), tells the Times. "Senators are stating their principle here because it's obvious to everyone that he is, in fact, planning to dispute the results if he loses, no matter how lopsided. Calling him names isn't going to stop him, but they are trying to save themselves some trouble later by making clear they're not going to flirt with crazy conspiracies that make a mockery of our democracy." Peter Weber

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has offered a rare apology following the killing of a South Korean official.

Kim in a message to South Korea on Friday said he's "deeply sorry that an unexpected and unfortunate thing has happened in our territorial waters" after a government official from South Korea was killed at sea by North Korean troops earlier this week, The New York Times reports.

The official, South Korea said, was apparently "trying to defect to North Korea" and "was killed by troops in the North who set his body on fire for fear he might be carrying the coronavirus," the Times previously wrote. It was the "first time ​that North Korea has killed a South Korean citizen in its territory since 2008," the Times added, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in called the official's killing a "stunning and deeply regrettable act that cannot be tolerated."

North Korea in its message on Friday reportedly denied that troops burned the body of the official, who they called an "illegal intruder," but did say they burned his flotation device "according to our epidemiological regulations."

Institute for National Security Strategy researcher Byun Sang-Jung explained to ABC News that it's "extremely unusual for North Korea to issue a statement of regret so fast," and in fact, according to the Times, this was the first apology to the South issued in Kim's name during his time as North Korean leader. Ewha Womans University international studies professor Leif-Eric Easley told the Times this apology was a "low-cost way of managing a potential crisis situation," adding that it "may also mitigate the deepening of North Korea's pariah status in South Korean public opinion." Brendan Morrow

A federal judge in California blocked the U.S. Census Bureau late Thursday from ending the 2020 count of every U.S. resident at the end of September, siding with civil rights groups and local governments who argued that the Trump administration's premature termination of the census would result in an undercount of minorities and other hard-to-count communities. The Commerce Department had argued that ending the already shortened decennial head count on Sept. 30, not Oct. 31, was necessary to meet a Dec. 31 deadline.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh agreed with the plaintiffs that the inaccurate results would inequitably affect the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding and skew political representation. Lawyers for the Census Bureau and Commerce Department said they will likely appeal the ruling. Peter Weber

"Folks, you know you're going through a bit of a dark patch in your nation's history when the president not endorsing the peaceful transition of power is the feel-good story of the day," Stephen Colbert said on Thursday's Late Show. The decision in Kentucky that "no officers would be charged with the killing of Breonna Taylor" once again "undermines many Americans' faith in our system of government — and clearly Trump is jealous, because that's kind of his thing."

Colbert was perplexed at why Team Trump would openly tell us how they plan to steal the election, but Joe Biden was right that Trump himself refusing to commit to leaving office isn't surprising: "I'm not putting it past Trump to barricade the White House gates and put Eric in a Baby Bjorn and use him as a human shield, but what Trump really wants to do is undermine your faith in the election, so you go, 'Eh, what's the point of voting?' The point is: You vote, he goes, regardless of what he tries. We just need to bury him under a mountain of votes."

If Trump "doesn't win, he wants to burn this country down," and "what he just said is terrifying," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "Rarely do you see someone be a sore loser before they even play the game." Still, "several Republican senators pushed back on the president's dangerous words," he added. "Even that old son-of-a-Mitch McConnell poked his head out of his shell to refute it."

"And if recent news has taught us anything, it's that you can always count on Mitch McConnell to keep his word," Jimmy Fallon deadpanned at The Tonight Show. "Seriously, even other Republicans were like, 'Mitch, please.'"

"When Time Life releases a box set of Trump's craziest moments, this will be on it," Fallon said. "I'm getting the feeling this is gonna end with Trump locking himself in the Oval Office while yelling into the phone, 'Space Force attack!'"

The reporter's "mistake was phrasing the question that way," Late Night's Seth Meyers said. "You should've asked: 'If Joe Biden wins, do you commit to playing even more golf?'"

What Trump said was alarming, but "this does give me an idea for a new sitcom," James Corden said at The Late Late Show: "Trump refuses to leave the White House, Biden moves in anyway — Our Two Presidents, this January on CBS." Watch below. Peter Weber