The Ledes

Thursday, October 10, 2024

CNBC: “The pace of price increases over the past year was higher than forecast in September while jobless claims posted an unexpected jump following Hurricane Helene and the Boeing strike, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The consumer price index, a broad gauge measuring the costs of goods and services across the U.S. economy, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.4%. Both readings were 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus. The annual inflation rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than August and is the lowest since February 2021.”

The New York Times' live updates of Hurrucane Milton consequences Thursday are here: “Milton was still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall to parts of East and Central Florida, forecasters said early Thursday, even as the powerful storm roared away from the Atlantic coast and left deaths and widespread damage across the state. Cities along Florida’s east coast are now facing flash flooding, damaging winds and storm surges. Some had already been battered by powerful tornadoes spun out by the storm before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. In [St. Lucie] county [Fort Pierce], several people in a retirement community were killed by a tornado, the police said.... More than three million customers were without power in Florida as of early Thursday.” ~~~

     ~~~ Here are the Weater Channel's live updates.

CNN: “The 2024 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Han Kang, a South Korean author, for her 'intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.' Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection. She later began writing longer prose works, most notably 'The Vegetarian,' one of her first books to be translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, charts a young woman’s attempt to live a more 'plant-like' existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty. Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and just the 18th woman out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901.” The New York Times story is here.

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The Ledes

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Washington Post: “Hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida, a spate of unusually strong and long-lived tornadoes touched down across the state, flipping tractor-trailers and ripping off roofs. The twisters surprised anxious residents, even as the storm’s eye still loomed. Authorities said there had been 'multiple' deaths after the intense and destructive tornadoes.” MB: I'm still on Florida's emergency-call list, and I received several calls from Lee County, urging me to shelter in place.

The Washington Post's live updates of Hurricane Milton developments are here: “Hurricane Milton, which has strengthened to a 'catastrophic' Category 5 storm, is closing in on Florida’s west coast and is expected to make landfall Wednesday night or early Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said. The hurricane, which could bring maximum sustained winds of nearly 160 mph with bigger gusts, poses a dire threat to the densely populated zone that includes Tampa, Sarasota and Fort Myers. As well as 'damaging hurricane-force winds,' coastal communities face a 'life-threatening' storm surge, the center said.” ~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times' live updates are here: “Milton carved a path of destruction after crashing ashore Wednesday evening on Florida’s Gulf Coast, making landfall near Sarasota as the second powerful hurricane to pound the region in less than two weeks. The storm battered the state for much of the day, with heavy winds, pelting rain and a spate of tornadoes.... By around midnight, the storm had destroyed more than 100 homes, killed several people in a retirement community and ripped the roof off Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays.”

Washington Post: “The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to David Baker at the University of Washington and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind.... The prize was awarded to scientists who cracked the code of proteins. Hassabis and Jumper used artificial intelligence to predict the structure of proteins, one of the toughest problems in biology. Baker created computational tools to design novel proteins with shapes and functions that can be used in drugs, vaccines and sensors.”

Sorry, forgot this yesterday: ~~~

Reuters: “U.S. scientist John Hopfield and British-Canadian Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for discoveries and inventions in machine learning that paved the way for the artificial intelligence boom. Heralded for its revolutionary potential in areas ranging from cutting-edge scientific discovery to more efficient admin, the emerging technology on which the duo worked has also raised fears humankind may soon be outsmarted and outcompeted by its own creation.”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Saturday
Nov212020

The Commentariat -- Nov. 22, 2020

Editor's Note: Sadly, Mrs. Bea McCrabbie has retired to an undisclosed location not far from the home of the Constant Weader. I am therefore taking over management of the site and will continue their acerbic but truthful review of daily political news. I shall forever miss & be grateful for their tireless assistance.

 

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Afternoon Update:

Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "President-elect Joe Biden's incoming chief of staff, Ronald A. Klain, said Sunday that some of Biden's first Cabinet picks will be revealed Tuesday, although he declined to say who or what positions will be announced. Klain made the comments during an interview on ABC News's 'This Week.'" A Politico story is here.

Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Several prominent Republicans said this weekend that President Trump's legal arguments had run their course, calling on him to concede to Joe Biden or at least allow the presidential transition process to begin. 'The conduct of the president's legal team has been a national embarrassment,' former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said Sunday on ABC's 'This Week.' Christie, a Trump confidant who helped run debate preparations, said the Republican Party needed to focus on trying to win Georgia's two runoff elections Jan. 5 to secure the Senate majority, rather than continuing with the unsuccessful legal challenges of the election results. 'The rearview mirror should be ripped off,' Christie said." Politico's story is here. ~~~

~~~ Axios: "Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said on 'Meet the Press' on Sunday that it is past time to 'cooperate with the transition' to President-elect Joe Biden, adding that he believes President Trump still has the right to continue fighting in court.... 'It should happen tomorrow morning because it didn't happen last Monday morning,' Cramer said of the GSA administrator giving the go-ahead for the transition. 'Give the incoming administration all the time they need.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: This caveat "open-minded" Republicans add to every recommendation to approve the transition -- that Trump has the right to fight the election results in court -- is past its sell-by date. If you tried to bring nearly three dozen frivolous lawsuits into the courtroom, haranged the judge about fraud, abuse & corruption but never presented evidence of any of it, well, we wouldn't get to three dozen. If they were nice, courts would tell you to go away; if not, they'd fine you for wasting their time.

Jonathan Lemire of the AP: "... Donald Trump and his allies are harking back to his own transition four years ago to make a false argument that his own presidency was denied a fair chance for a clean launch. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid out the case from the White House podium last week and the same idea has been floated by Trump's personal lawyer and his former director of national intelligence.... But the situations are far different. The day after her defeat in 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded.... The next day, President Barack Obama, who had portrayed Trump as an existential threat to the nation, invited the president-elect to the White House and visited with him in the Oval Office. Obama's aides offered help to Trump's incoming staffers.... Trump's team is not wrong that his own transition was chaotic, but the disarray in many ways was of his own doing. Trump fired the head of his transition, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and abandoned months of planning in favor of a Cabinet hiring process that at times resembled a reality show. His team ignored offers of help from the outgoing Obama administration..., leaving briefing books unopened and ignoring special iPads loaded with materials. The lack of preparation left aides clueless even about how to work the overhead intercom in the West Wing."

Paulina Firozi of the Washington Post: "The United States has formally withdrawn from the Treaty on Open Skies, a decades-old pact meant to reduce the chances of an accidental war by allowing mutual reconnaissance flights by parties to the 34-nation agreement. The exit comes six months after President Trump first announced his intention to withdraw, saying Russia has been violating the pact.... The move risks sowing further divisions between the United States and Europea allies, some of which called on the administration to stay in the pact despite concerns about Russia. In a statement in May, Joe Biden said that in announcing the intention to withdraw, Trump 'doubled down on his short-sighted policy of going it alone and abandoning American leadership.' 'I supported the Open Skies Treaty as a Senator, because I understood that the United States and our allies would benefit from being able to observe -- on short notice -- what Russia and other countries in Europe were doing with their military forces,' his May statement added." The Hill's story is here.

~~~~~~~~~~

Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "... the vast machinery of diplomacy, business and lobbying has suddenly been recalibrated for the Biden era. Mr. Trump, by far the dominant world figure for the past four years, is increasingly treated as irrelevant. Bank trade groups have begun meeting with Biden aides in anticipation of new fights over regulation. Foreign diplomats assuming a sharp turn in American foreign policy are retooling their agendas. Corporate executives, who are usually allergic to political statements, are saying out loud what most of Mr. Trump's supporters have so far refused to acknowledge.... Business executives have also united around a call for Mr. Trump to accept his fate and allow his administration to begin the formal transition, freeing career officials -- especially in public health agencies -- to coordinate with the incoming team.... Mr. Biden is seizing the moment, not to aggressively confront the president he defeated, but to act presidential in his stead. Even as he demands that an orderly transfer of power be allowed to begin, the president-elect is proceeding as if the political drama created by Mr. Trump amounts to little more than noise -- or what his new chief of staff [Ron Klain] called the 'hysterics' of a lame-duck president."

Matt Viser of the Washington Post: "... as candidate Biden transitions to President Biden, he is planning an inauguration ceremony that, like his campaign, will look like no other in recent American history. Discussions are ongoing about requiring everyone to wear masks and stand at a social distance, according to interviews with a half dozen people involved in the planning. Those allowed near Biden for the inauguration ceremony will likely undergo coronavirus testing. The traditional post-swearing-in luncheon, held in Statuary Hall with members of Congress, could be scrapped altogether. There may not be any inaugural balls. Crowds, in all cases, will likely be severely limited.... Those close to Biden insist that the ceremony must still have the august feeling of past inaugurations -- a desire that is all the more important to establish his legitimacy as president...."

Clown Car Drives into Ditch, Wheels Keep Spinning

Jim Rutenberg & Kathleen Gray of the New York Times: "... this is ... a moment of truth for the Republican Party: The country is on a knife's edge, with G.O.P. officials from state capitols to Congress choosing between the will of voters and the will of one man. In pushing his false claims to the limits, cowing Republicans into acquiescence or silence, and driving officials ... to nervous indecision, Mr. Trump has revealed the fragility of the electoral system -- and shaken it. At this point, the president's impact is not so much about overturning the election -- both parties agree he has no real chance of doing that -- but infusing the democratic process with so much mistrust and confusion that it ceases to function as it should.... Civil rights leaders are especially alarmed at Mr. Trump's efforts, given that most of them have falsely portrayed cities with large Black populations, like Detroit and Philadelphia, as so corrupt that their votes shouldn't count."

Zach Montellaro of Politico: "... as a lame duck, [Donald Trump is] launched a new campaign against GOP election officials who won't bend to his will. Trump's drive to discredit the results of an election he lost has put him at odds with the Republican elected officials and administrators who oversaw the vote in key states -- and called it what it was: a free and fair election.... No GOP official has caught more flak than Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fairly conventional Republican who won the job as Georgia's top election official two years ago running as a rock-ribbed, anti-voter fraud conservative -- with Trump's endorsement.... Even those who took the relatively prosaic step of making it easier to vote in the midst of a pandemic -- like Kentucky's Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams -- were not immune." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ashley Nguyen, et al., of the Washington Post: "Though Trump courted Black voters -- and improved his showing over 2016 -- he and his allies are now trying to deny President-elect Joe Biden's victory in key battleground states by targeting ballots cast in heavily Black cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Milwaukee, arguing that these Democratic strongholds are hotbeds of fraud.... The president shows no signs of backing down [despite his multiple losses in court], prompting Black leaders, political analysts and historians to cry foul at what they described as tactics reminiscent of those used to suppress the voice of Black voters following the Civil War.... 'It is a way to create this aura that something went wrong in this election, to play to an audience that is hyped up on white supremacy,' [Prof. Carol] Anderson [of Emory University] said. 'They need to understand how did this happen? How did our savior lose?... And the answer is, as the answer always is, "Those Black people stole it from us."'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Marie: Having lost something like 32 ridiculous lawsuits for want of any evidence supporting the underlying claims, it appears Trump's next conspiracy theory will be that "they" destroyed the evidence.

** Pennsylvania. Jon Swaine of the Washington Post: "A lawsuit brought by President Trump's campaign that sought to block the certification of Pennsylvania's election results was dismissed by a federal judge on Saturday evening.U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann granted a request from Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to dismiss the suit, which alleged that Republicans had been illegally disadvantaged because some counties allowed voters to fix errors on their mail ballots. Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump&'s attorney, personally took charge of the case and appeared at a hearing in Williamsport, Pa., Tuesday in an attempt to justify it. In his order, Brann wrote that Trump's campaign had used 'strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations' in its effort to throw out millions of votes.... Brann wrote ... that Trump's attorneys had haphazardly stitched this allegation together 'like Frankenstein's Monster' in an attempt to avoid unfavorable legal precedent.... 'In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,' Brann wrote." Politico's story is here. ~~~

~~~ Audrey McNamara of CBS News: "The Trump campaign said Saturday they plan to appeal.... [A new] brief filed Saturday, which is littered with spelling errors, including the governor's name, alleges that illegal votes were counted and poll watchers were unable to access vote counting -- allegations that the Trump campaign dropped just last Sunday, before Giuliani was put in charge of the president's growing legal challenges." ~~~

With today's decision by Judge Matthew Brann, a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist, to dismiss the Trump campaign's lawsuit, President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania.... [Recent] developments [in Georgia and Michigan], together with the outcomes in the rest of the nation, confirm that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and will become the 46th President of the United States. I congratulate President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory.... President Trump should accept the outcome of the election and facilitate the presidential transition process. -- Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), in a statement Saturday night ~~~

     ~~~ Rick Hasen: "The judge just excoriates this suit, which those of us in the field have called ridiculous from the start: '... Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption.... That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.... Defendants' motions to dismiss the First Amended Complaint are granted with prejudice. Leave to amend is denied....' This is a total loss for the Trump campaign and a dead end. The campaign can try to appeal this to the Third Circuit and even to the Supreme Court, but this is such a dog of a case I cannot see any chance of success there, even before the most sympathetic judges. Rudy had truly participated in the worst piece of election litigation I have ever seen, both in terms of the lawyering and the antidemocratic nature of what the lawsuit attempted to do." ~~~

Michigan. GOP Tries Again to Disenfranchise Black Voters. Beth LeBlanc of the Detroit News: "The state and national Republican parties have asked the Board of State Canvassers to delay certification of the state's election results in a bid to investigate 'anomalies and irregularities' alleged to have occurred in Michigan's Nov. 3 election. Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna [Romney] McDaniel asked the state to conduct a 'full, transparent audit' before certification.... The Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to meet Monday to consider certification. The request comes a day after Republican U.S. Senate candidate John James requested the same delay. James ... trails U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, by more than 92,000 votes in unofficial results after the 83 counties turned in their certified results, a gain for Peters of 9,000 votes from the preliminary results. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Friday an audit could not be completed prior to the certification of results because 'election officials do not have legal access to the documents needed to complete audits until the certification.' Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons, a Republican, echoed those concerns when testifying Thursday before a joint legislative committee.... Republican state canvasser Norm Shinkle told The Detroit News Friday he ... wasn't convinced the Wayne County Board of Canvassers had successfully certified the election after GOP canvassers there attempted to rescind their affirmative votes after the 14-day deadline. The canvassers were unsuccessful in their attempt, Wayne County's legal counsel said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ According to CNN, McDaniel & Cox are requesting an audit of only Wayne County. ~~~

~~~ Olivia Rubin of ABC News: "A group of Black voters in Detroit announced they are suing ... Donald Trump and his campaign, alleging the targeted effort to overturn the election repeats one of the 'worst abuses in our nation's history' by attempting to disenfranchise African American voters. Specifically, the suit takes issue with the campaign's effort to overturn the results of the election in Michigan by blocking the certification of results in Wayne County, home to Detroit, and attempting to 'intimidate' and 'coerce' state and local officials into replacing electors. 'Central to this strategy is disenfranchising voters in predominately Black cities,' the suit alleges. 'Repeating false claims of voter fraud, which have been thoroughly debunked, Defendants are pressuring state and local officials in Michigan not to count votes from Wayne County, Michigan (where Detroit is the county seat), and thereby disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.'... The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said it filed the new suit in a D.C. federal court on Friday on behalf of the three voters and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization." ~~~

~~~ Dave Boucher & Clara Hendrickson of the Detroit Free Press: "Public skepticism that Michigan's Republican legislative leaders focused on COVID-19 assistance during a Friday meeting with ... Donald Trump was only amplified Saturday, when Trump's tweets implied the election was also a topic of discussion. Photographs of House Speaker Lee Chatfield drinking and sitting, unmasked, with others at the Trump International Hotel -- and the lawmakers not elaborating on what, if anything, the president asked about Michigan election results -- also drew the ire of people already dubious that the president did not try to persuade the lawmakers in his ongoing efforts to undermine the will of voters.... Chatfield, [state Senate Majority Leader Mike] Shirkey and other Michigan lawmakers, including House Speaker-elect Justin Wentworth, R-Clare, appeared to be staying at Trump's hotel in Washington, D.C." ~~~

~~~ Carol Leonnig & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Michigan's attorney general is exploring whether officials there risk committing crimes if they bend to President Trump's wishes in seeking to block the certification of Joe Biden's victory in their state, according to two people familiar with the review. Th move by Dana Nessel, a Democrat, reflected a growing sense of unease among many in her party and some Republicans that the president was continuing his unprecedented efforts to reach personally into the state's electoral process as he seeks to prevent Michigan from formally declaring a winner there.... The attorney general is conferring with election law experts on whether officials may have violated any state laws prohibiting them from engaging in bribery, perjury and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the deliberations.... Trump's critics have said the president's actions appear on their face to be an improper and possibly illegal abuse of his presidential power." Via Steve M. Steve's post is a good summary of what we know so far about that meeting between Trump & Michigan's top state legislators.

Wisconsin. Michael Tarm of the AP: "Election officials in Wisconsin's largest county accused observers for ... Donald Trump on Saturday of seeking to obstruct a recount of the presidential results, in some instances by objecting to every ballot tabulators pulled to count. Trump requested the recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both heavily liberal, in hopes of undoing Democrat Joe Biden's victory by about 20,600 votes. With no precedent for a recount reversing such a large margin, Trump's strategy is widely seen as aimed at an eventual court challenge.... A steady stream of Republican complaints in Milwaukee was putting the recount far behind schedule, county clerk George Christenson said. He said many Trump observers were breaking rules by constantly interrupting vote counters with questions and comments.... At one recount table, a Trump observer objected to every ballot that tabulators pulled from a bag simply because they were folded, election officials told the panel.... At least one Trump observer was escorted out of the building by sheriff's deputies Saturday after pushing an election official who had lifted her coat from an observer chair. Another Trump observer was removed Friday for not wearing a face mask properly as required."

Georgia. AP: "... Donald Trump's campaign requested a recount of votes in the Georgia presidential race on Saturday, a day after state officials certified results showing Democrat Joe Biden won the state, as his legal team presses forward with attacks alleging widespread fraud without proof.... County election workers have already done a complete hand recount of all the votes cast in the presidential race.... Trump has criticized the audit, calling it a 'joke' in a tweet that claimed without evidence that 'thousands of fraudulent votes have been found.' Twitter has flagged the post as containing disputed information."

Garrett Epps of the Washington Monthly: "Lurking on the edges of this sinister opera buffa is the doctrine of 'independent state legislature,' the idea that, because the Constitution requires selection of electors 'in such manner as the [state] legislature ... shall direct,' the lawmakers can do (well) anything they want, and neither the Democratic governor nor the state's courts can step in to stop it.... The 'independent legislature' doctrine is unlikely to make a serious appearance in the melodrama that is 2020 -- but it may play a variety of sinister parts in forthcoming voting-rights dramas, to the great injury of citizens' right to vote.... At the most basic level, this new majority [in the U.S. Supreme Court] is (to put it mildly) not enthusiastic about voting rights." MB: As Epps points out, 49 states "have broad guarantees of the right to vote, and 26 require elections to be 'free and equal' (or something similar)." But a ruling by the Supremes upholding the "independent legislature" doctrine would rescind those state laws. The U.S. doesn't need a new voting rights law; it needs a new voting rights Constitutional amendment, a guarantee that almost all other democracies afford their citizens.


** Trump Cements His Legacy as the Most Anti-democratic President* in History. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... on issues of war, the environment, criminal justice, trade, the economy and more, President Trump and top administration officials are doing what they can to make ... [Joe Biden's presidency] more difficult. Mr. Trump has spent the last two weeks hunkered down in the White House, raging about a 'stolen' election and refusing to accept the reality of his loss. But in other ways he is acting as if he knows he will be departing soon, and showing none of the deference that presidents traditionally give their successors in their final days in office.... With [Trump's] encouragement, top officials are racing against the clock to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, secure oil drilling leases in Alaska, punish China, carry out executions and thwart any plans Mr. Biden might have to reestablish the Iran nuclear deal. In some cases, like the executions and the oil leases, Mr. Trump&'s government plans to act just days -- or even hours -- before Mr. Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. At a wide range of departments and agencies, Mr. Trump's political appointees are going to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent Mr. Biden from rolling back the president's legacy. They are filling vacancies on scientific panels, pushing to complete rules that weaken environmental standards, nominating judges and rushing their confirmations through the Senate, and trying to eliminate health care regulations that have been in place for years."

Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump would have the world falsely believe that he won the election and is preparing for a second term. In private huddles and phone conversations, however, Trump has been discussing an entirely different next act: another presidential run in 2024. In a nod to the reality that he is destined to leave office in January, the president is seriously contemplating life beyond the White House, telling advisers that he wants to remain an omnipresent force in politics and the media -- perhaps by running for the White House again. Trump has told confidants he could announce a 2024 campaign before the end of this year, which would immediately set up a potential rematch with President-elect Joe Biden. Trump also has been exploring ways to make money for relatively little work, such as giving paid speeches to corporate groups or selling tickets to rallies. In addition, he may try to write a score-settling memoir of his time as president and appear on television, in a paid or unpaid capacity." ~~~

~~~ Marie: We will have to keep covering Trump as long as he holds (without performing) the president* job, but I am hopeful that in two months, I can largely avoid stories about him, just as Reality Chex once managed to relegate one Sarah Palin to the dustbin of history, with a few incursions for particularly bizarre Palin episodes. However, any Trump stories that invoke schadenfreude -- like, say, an indictment -- will likely garner notice.

Not-President* Not at Work. Kevin Liptak of CNN: "... Donald Trump participated in his final Group of 20 summit on Saturday by tweeting throughout the opening session and skipping a special side-conference focused on the coronavirus pandemic. It was a fitting end to Trump's career in global multilateralism, which he has expressed his displeasure for since his first group summit -- a G7 meeting held cliffside in Sicily -- resulted in the feeling he was being ganged up upon by other world leaders.... Only 13 minutes after the scheduled 8 a.m. ET, start time, Trump was sending tweets focused on his efforts to overturn the results of the US presidential election. By 10 a.m. ET, the President had departed the White House on his way to his namesake golf club outside Washington, DC."

History famously holds happy endings for autocrats who lose and then retreat to their bunker. -- Stephen Colbert ~~~

~~~ David Smith of the Guardian: "... two weeks after his defeat by Joe Biden in the election, Trump has effectively gone missing in action. Day after day passes without a public sighting. He does not hold press conferences any more. He has even stopped calling into conservative media. For critics, it is evidence of a monumental sulk as Trump contemplates his imminent loss of power and exit from the White House. In their view, it is also a staggering abrogation of responsibility as the coronavirus pandemic surges to new highs, infecting more than 158,000 Americans -- and killing in excess of 1,100 -- every day. Amid the deafening silence, Trump's only 'proof of life' since Biden's victory has been a handful of public events at the White House and a military cemetery, weekend outings to his golf course in Virginia and a barrage of tweets airing grievances and pushing baseless conspiracy theories that the election was stolen from him." An enjoyable read. I had no idea presidential historian Michael Beschloss had such a good sense of humor.

Seung Min Kim & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is injecting new demands into congressional negotiations over a government spending bill that threaten to sink the must-pass package, people familiar with the discussions said. The disagreement concerns how to classify $12.5 billion in cost increases in veterans' health care, expenses that are part of veterans' care changes signed into law by President Trump in 2018 with much fanfare. The impasse could complicate the ongoing negotiations over legislation to fund the government, which if not resolved would lead the federal government to shutdown on Dec. 11 in the middle of the pandemic -- a dangerous scenario lawmakers are working to avoid. Months ago, lawmakers agreed to designate the increased cost of veterans' health care as emergency spending. Emergency spending isn't subject to certain spending restrictions. But on Friday, administration officials insisted to congressional officials that the $12.5 billion in veterans' care cost increases be considered non-emergency spending, said people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the private negotiations." (Also linked yesterday.)

** David Folkenflik of NPR: "The chief executive over the Voice of America and its sister networks has acted unconstitutionally in investigating what he claimed was a deep-seated bias against President Trump by his own journalists, a federal judge has ruled. Citing the journalists' First Amendment protections, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell on Friday evening ordered U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack to stop interfering in the news service's news coverage and editorial personnel matters. She struck a deep blow at Pack's authority to continue to force the news agency to cover the president more sympathetically. Actions by Pack and his aides have likely 'violated and continue to violate [journalists'] First Amendment rights because, among other unconstitutional effects, they result in self-censorship and the chilling of First Amendment expression,' Howell wrote in her opinion. 'These current and unanticipated harms are sufficient to demonstrate irreparable harm.'" Thanks to Ken W. for the link. As Ken notes, "This is another win for the Deep State." MB: And for that pesky First Amendment.

Today is the 57th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Saturday are here: "The United States passed 11 million total coronavirus cases on Sunday, and its caseload has now soared past 12 million. New daily cases are approaching 200,000: on Friday, the country recorded more than 198,500, a record. As the nation reconsiders the usual winter holiday travel and cozy indoor gatherings, new cases are being reported at an unrelenting clip. The seven-day average has exceeded 100,000 cases a day every day for the last two weeks...."

Christina Maxouris of CNN: "The number of US coronavirus cases surpassed 12 million Saturday -- an increase of more than 1 million cases in less than a week. At least 12,085,389 cases have been confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and 255,823 Americans have died. It's another horrific milestone in a month full of devastating Covid-19 records in the country. November already accounts for almost a quarter of all Covid-19 cases and 9% of deaths. Almost every state has reported a rapid surge in cases, and nationwide numbers have been climbing much faster than ever before -- with the country reporting a staggering 2.9 million infections since the beginning of the month."

Laurie McGinley & Carolyn Johnson of the Washington Post: "The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday granted emergency authorization to the experimental antibody treatment given to President Trump last month when he developed covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The drug, made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, is designed to prevent infected people from developing severe illness. Instead of waiting for the body to develop its own protective immune response, the drug imitates the body's natural defenses. It is the second drug of this type -- called a monoclonal antibody -- to be cleared for treating covid-19. The FDA authorized Eli Lilly & Co.'s drug on Nov. 9.... The Regeneron drug is a biological product that is complicated and time-consuming to make; initially, it will be in short supply. The shortages, coupled with the complexities of administering the intravenous medication, have raised concerns about whether people with the greatest need will be able to get it.... Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson disclosed on Facebook on Friday that he had also been cleared to receive the Regeneron drug for covid-19, through Trump's intervention, 'which I am convinced saved my life.'" A Politico story is here.

Guardian & Agencies: "Donald Trump appears to have admitted that coronavirus is 'running wild' across the US, in contrast with his statements throughout the election campaign that the country was 'rounding the turn' on the pandemic. As new Covid infections in the US approached 200,000 a day, Trump took to Twitter on Saturday night to insist things were bad outside the United States as well: 'The Fake News is not talking about the fact that "Covid" is running wild all over the World, not just in the U.S.'"

Guardian: "Donald Trump Jr..., who has tested positive for the coronavirus, has said he will pass the time in isolation battling with the virus by cleaning his collection of guns." MB: Gosh, I hope there isn't some kind of accident.

Hannah Knowles of the Washington Post: "Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) is quarantining after testing positive for the coronavirus on Friday and then receiving an inconclusive result the next day, a spokesman for her campaign said. Loeffler has no symptoms and is taking precautions 'until retesting is conclusive,' spokesman Stephen Lawson said in a Saturday night statement. The potential disruption to her campaigning comes as Loeffler and her Republican colleague, Georgia Sen. David Perdue (R), try to fend off Democratic challengers in runoff elections that will determine the power balance in the Senate." The Hill's story is here.


Dan Hinkel of the Chicago Tribune: "Kyle Rittenhouse was released from jail in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon after his attorneys posted $2 million bail, setting the teenager free as he awaits trial for fatally shooting two men and wounding a third during summer protests in Kenosha, police said. His release came over the objections of family members and lawyers for two of the men he shot. They had asked for higher bail and voiced concerns Rittenhouse would flee.... The 17-year-old's release was funded by donations sought by his attorneys, who appealed to the political right, where Rittenhouse is popular. Those lawyers also are seeking to overturn Democratic President-elect Joe Biden's victory." (Also linked yesterday.)

Comments Off
Friday
Nov202020

The Commentariat -- Nov. 21, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Saturday are here: "The United States passed 11 million total coronavirus cases on Sunday, and its caseload has now soared past 12 million. New daily cases are approaching 200,000: on Friday, the country recorded more than 198,500, a record. As the nation reconsiders the usual winter holiday travel and cozy indoor gatherings, new cases are being reported at an unrelenting clip. The seven-day average has exceeded 100,000 cases a day every day for the last two weeks...." AND Donald Trump is golfing today.

Michigan. Another GOP Effort to Disenfranchise Black Voters. Beth LeBlanc of the Detroit News: "The state and national Republican parties have asked the Board of State Canvassers to delay certification of the state's election results in a bid to investigate 'anomalies and irregularities' alleged to have occurred in Michigan's Nov. 3 election. Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna [Romney] McDaniel asked the state to conduct a 'full, transparent audit' before certification.... The Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to meet Monday to consider certification. The request comes a day after Republican U.S. Senate candidate John James requested the same delay. James ... trails U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, by more than 92,000 votes in unofficial results after the 83 counties turned in their certified results, a gain for Peters of 9,000 votes from the preliminary results. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Friday an audit could not be completed prior to the certification of results because 'election officials do not have legal access to the documents needed to complete audits until the certification.' Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons, a Republican, echoed those concerns when testifying Thursday before a joint legislative committee.... Republican state canvasser Norm Shinkle told The Detroit News Friday he ... wasn't convinced the Wayne County Board of Canvassers had successfully certified the election after GOP canvassers there attempted to rescind their affirmative votes after the 14-day deadline. The canvassers were unsuccessful in their attempt, Wayne County's legal counsel said." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: According to CNN, McDaniel & Cox are requesting an audit of only Wayne County.

~~~ Ashley Nguyen, et al., of the Washington Post: "Though Trump courted Black voters -- and improved his showing over 2016 -- he and his allies are now trying to deny President-elect Joe Biden's victory in key battleground states by targeting ballots cast in heavily Black cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Milwaukee, arguing that these Democratic strongholds are hotbeds of fraud.... The president shows no signs of backing down [despite his multiple losses in court], prompting Black leaders, political analysts and historians to cry foul at what they described as tactics reminiscent of those used to suppress the voice of Black voters following the Civil War.... 'It is a way to create this aura that something went wrong in this election, to play to an audience that is hyped up on white supremacy,' [Prof. Carol] Anderson [of Emory University] said. 'They need to understand how did this happen? How did our savior lose?... And the answer is, as the answer always is, "Those Black people stole it from us."'"

Zach Montellaro of Politico: "... as a lame duck, [Donald Trump is] launched a new campaign against GOP election officials who won't bend to his will. Trump's drive to discredit the results of an election he lost has put him at odds with the Republican elected officials and administrators who oversaw the vote in key states -- and called it what it was: a free and fair election.... No GOP official has caught more flak than Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fairly conventional Republican who won the job as Georgia's top election official two years ago running as a rock-ribbed, anti-voter fraud conservative -- with Trump's endorsement.... Even those who took the relatively prosaic step of making it easier to vote in the midst of a pandemic -- like Kentucky's Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams == were not immune."

Seung Min Kim & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is injecting new demands into congressional negotiations over a government spending bill that threaten to sink the must-pass package, people familiar with the discussions said. The disagreement concerns how to classify $12.5 billion in cost increases in veterans' health care, expenses that are part of veterans' care changes signed into law by President Trump in 2018 with much fanfare. The impasse could complicate the ongoing negotiations over legislation to fund the government, which if not resolved would lead the federal government to shutdown on Dec. 11 in the middle of the pandemic -- a dangerous scenario lawmakers are working to avoid. Months ago, lawmakers agreed to designate the increased cost of veterans' health care as emergency spending. Emergency spending isn't subject to certain spending restrictions. But on Friday, administration officials insisted to congressional officials that the $12.5 billion in veterans' care cost increases be considered non-emergency spending, said people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the private negotiations."

Dan Hinkel of the Chicago Tribune: "Kyle Rittenhouse was released from jail in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon after his attorneys posted $2 million bail, setting the teenager free as he awaits trial for fatally shooting two men and wounding a third during summer protests in Kenosha, police said. His release came over the objections of family members and lawyers for two of the men he shot. They had asked for higher bail and voiced concerns Rittenhouse would flee.... The 17-year-old's release was funded by donations sought by his attorneys, who appealed to the political right, where Rittenhouse is popular. Those lawyers also are seeking to overturn Democratic President-elect Joe Biden's victory."

~~~~~~~~~~

Michael Crowley of the New York Times: "President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday announced new staff appointments and met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, maintaining his focus on the economy and the coronavirus pandemic while ignoring President Trump's continued efforts to subvert the election results.... Friday was Mr. Biden's 78th birthday, and Ms. Pelosi gave the president-elect a white orchid in celebration, according to an aide.... In a joint statement [after their meeting] they said they 'agreed that Congress needed to pass a bipartisan emergency aid package in the lame duck session,' including money to fight the coronavirus and to support struggling families, businesses and state and local governments.... Underscoring the strange limbo Mr. Trump has created, Mr. Biden on Friday posted on Twitter a plea for private donations to fund his transition activities." The story names four White House staff the President-elect announced.

From the New York Times' live business updates Friday: "President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s transition team criticized the Trump administration's decision to pull the plug on several Federal Reserve programs introduced during the pandemic, saying it smacked of politics and would hurt the economy. 'The Treasury Department's attempt to prematurely end support that could be used for small businesses across the country when they are facing the prospect of new shutdowns is deeply irresponsible,' Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the transition, said in a statement. (The statement was not by Mr. Biden, as was previously reported here.) 'At this fragile moment, as the Covid and economic crises are reaccelerating, we should be reinforcing the government's ability to respond and support the economy -- not undermining it.'" ~~~

~~~ Heather Long of the Washington Post: "On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stunned many by sending a letter to the Fed insisting the central bank return all unused emergency Cares Act funds to Treasury by the end of the year.... Mnuchin wants to take that support away just as the economy appears to be heading into a very rough winter -- and a transition of power to the Biden administration.... Numerous Wall Street analysts and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued statements condemning Mnuchin's actions as 'political machinations' and supporting the Fed's stance that this is not the time to remove any supports."

Kate Sullivan of CNN: "President-elect Joe Biden's margin of victory over ... Donald Trump surpassed 6 million votes on Friday, as ballots continue to be counted across the nation. Trump has refused to accept defeat in the 2020 election, despite Biden's decisive win in the Electoral College and the popular vote. The former vice president has won nearly 80 million votes, which is more votes than any US presidential candidate in history by a considerable margin. Trump has received nearly 74 million votes."

Nancy Scola of Politico: "The presidential @POTUS Twitter handle will automatically transfer to President-elect Joe Biden the moment he's sworn in at noon on Inauguration Day -- whether or not ... Donald Trump has conceded.... Same goes for @whitehouse, @VP, @FLOTUS, and a handful other official accounts associated with the presidency. All existing tweets on those accounts will be archived and Twitter will transfer the accounts -- reset to zero tweets -- to the Biden White House that day.... It might not matter [because] President Trump has used his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, for most of his tweeting even while president. Trump, as a private citizen, will keep control of that account. That said, the account will lose the protections it carries under Twitter's 'world leaders' policy -- which allows rule-breaking tweets to remain up, with warning labels -- the moment that Biden is sworn in to office."

Boris Tries to Keep the U.K. Relevant. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Boris Johnson rolled out ambitious, back-to-back initiatives on military spending and climate change this week, which have little in common except that both are likely to please a very important new person in Mr. Johnson's life: President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The prime minister, whom President Trump has embraced as a like-minded populist, is eager to show he can work with the incoming president as well as he did with the outgoing one. Building more warships and phasing out new gas- and diesel-powered cars within a decade demonstrates to Mr. Biden that Britain can be a useful and relevant partner, even if it no longer belongs to the European Union. That is important, analysts said, because Brexit will deprive Britain of what had historically been one of its greatest assets to the United States: serving as an Anglophone bridge to the leaders of continental Europe." (Also linked yesterday.)

The Clown Car Gets Two Flats

     ~~~ Many thanks to PD Pepe for the link.

Trump Fundraises Off Rudy's Bad Hair Day Dye. Greg Clary & Fredreka Schouten of CNN: "The Trump campaign sent out another fundraising email to supporters on Friday, signed by ... Donald Trump, praising his attorney Rudy Giuliani's widely panned news conference this week and featuring a photo of Trump taken when he was a coronavirus patient in the hospital. 'Did you watch my legal team's press conference yesterday? They were SPECTACULAR,' the email read, discussing Giuliani and other members of the Trump campaign's legal team peddling conspiracy theories and lies for over 90 minutes Thursday in front of reporters.... In the fine print of the Friday's solicitation, Team Trump has upped the share of the money that goes to Trump's leadership PAC, Save America. Now, 75% of each contribution goes to Save America. It had been a 60% cut last week.... The recount and legal accounts are not the first beneficiaries of Trump's avalanche of fundraising requests. The first cut of the money that Trump is raising will help fund his post-White House political life."

Lisa Rein, et al., of the Washington Post: "Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration, has refused to declare [President-elect Joe] Biden the 'apparent' winner, as the law requires for the transition to begin. And she still has not determined when she will, her aides and associates say, leaving the changeover in a vacuum that threatens essential functions of government. Day after day, Murphy ... weighs her options but declines to say what fact or development she is waiting for. She has told agencies that the first step in the transfer of power ... may be weeks away. Murphy's silence has plunged a normally apolitical, ministerial process into precedent-setting territory as Democrats target her in nasty, personal tones and even some high-profile Republicans -- among them former president George W. Bush, whose administration she served -- urge her to get on with it.... Late Thursday, House Democrats summoned Murphy to brief them immediately on her continued blocking of the transition and threatened to bring her, her deputy, her chief of staff and her general counsel to testify before Congress at a public hearing.... Federal agencies have received instruction to prepare briefing materials but not provide them or take any calls from Biden's team."

Paul Kane, et al., of the Washington Post: "Three Senate Republicans have publicly criticized President Trump's effort to overturn election results in states that he lost. A couple more have acknowledged that President-elect Joe Biden is likely to be sworn in as the 46th president on Jan. 20, without addressing Trump's actions. The rest did what many Republicans have done for four years when faced with Trump's brazen, sometimes outlandish actions: They said nothing, or tried to avoid the issue. Their response, or lack of it, served to harden one of the party's legacies of the Trump years: its complicit silence, which has not only made GOP lawmakers appear subservient to the president, but has contributed to a notable shift in the party toward conspiracy and away from facts. Only this time, their collective refusal to speak up comes at an unusually perilous moment for American democracy -- as a president takes the unprecedented step of wielding the powers of his office to try to subvert the will of the voters."

Richard Fausset, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump's attempt to undo the election results was undercut twice by fellow Republicans on Friday, as Georgia became the first contested state to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s victory and Michigan lawmakers -- after meeting with the president -- said they would not intervene in their state's election certification process." ~~~

~~~ ** Bada-bing. Michigan. Brett Samuels of the Hill: "Two top Michigan state lawmakers said following a meeting with President Trump on Friday that they had not seen anything that would change the election outcome in their state and pledged to follow the normal process amid a push from the president and his allies to overturn the result. 'We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan's electors, just as we have said throughout this election,' Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirley and Speaker of the Michigan statehouse Lee Chatfield, both Republicans, said in a joint statement. 'Michigan's certification process should be a deliberate process free from threats and intimidation,' they added. 'Allegations of fraudulent behavior should be taken seriously, thoroughly investigated, and if proven, prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And the candidates who win the most votes win elections and Michigan's electoral votes....'" Mrs. McC: According to CNN, the legislators met with Trump for about an hour. The NYT story linked above reports that seven Michigan officials met with Trump. It would seem these guys did stand up to Trump. Good for them. (Hope at least one of them wore a wire.) ~~~

     ~~~ Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Rudy Giuliani and other key members of President Trump's outside legal team [did not attend Friday's] meeting with two Michigan lawmakers because they've been exposed to the coronavirus, two sources familiar with the internal discussions tell Axios.... 'It's just a shitshow, it's a joke,' said a Trump campaign adviser.... Trump's campaign lawyers have been holed up for days in a conference room at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlingon, Va., one of the sources said, Andrew Giuliani [-- who tested positive for the coronavis (story linked below) --] had been around all of them." ~~~

~~~ Dave Boucher & Clara Hendrickson of the Detroit Free Press: "Michigan Republican legislative leaders under a national spotlight for agreeing to meet with ... Donald Trump said late Friday they focused on COVID-19 assistance, not the president's ongoing efforts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election.... In stating they focused on requests for additional COVID-19 assistance, the leaders echoed a call made earlier this week from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. On Thursday, Whitmer said she sent a letter to Trump and federal legislative leaders asking for additional federal aid for unemployment benefits and small business relief. She said she asked the Republican legislative leaders to sign onto the letter but they declined. In their own letter, Republican leaders said 'we feel it is important to represent our position distinctly from the governor's.'... Barbara McQuade, the former U.S. attorney in Detroit..., [said,] 'One of the things that I see as a prosecutor is a candidate for elected office calling on state and local officials to discuss an election and try to bully them into overturning the will of the people. That is potentially criminal under federal statutes and state statutes and so I think in that way, to be soliciting people to commit crimes is incredibly shocking for someone who is the president of the United States.'..." ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE. Jan Wolfe of Reuters: "Lawyers for the city of Detroit have asked a judge to reprimand ... Donald Trump's campaign for spreading 'disinformation' in a court filing about the certification of a Michigan county's election results. Trump's campaign on Thursday said they were voluntarily dropping a lawsuit contesting Michigan's election results because election officials in Wayne County 'met and declined to certify the results of the presidential election.'... Detroit's lawyers said on Thursday that the campaign included 'impertinent and false language' in the filing and asked a federal judge to strike the disputed document from the case record."

~~~ Bada-boom. Georgia. Jason Morris & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Friday that will 'follow the law' and sign the paperwork that officially grants Georgia's 16 electoral electors to President-elect Joe Biden. State law requires Kemp, a Republican, to award Georgia's electoral votes to the certified winner of the presidential election. A federal judge on Thursday rejected a last-ditch lawsuit that tried to block certification, and Biden's victory was certified Friday afternoon by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger." ~~~

~~~ The New York Times' live election updates Friday are here: "Georgia's top election official will certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s victory in the state on Friday, dealing a blow to President Trump's Hail-Mary bid to overturn the vote in a half-dozen battleground states and with it the national election that Mr. Biden won decisively. The Georgia certification will be an early milestone in the state-by-state process of finalizing Mr. Biden's victory in the coming days, a process that appears set to unfold as Mr. Trump continues to deny his defeat and cry fraud and his campaign and its surrogates inundate the courts with largely baseless lawsuits that have so far been unsuccessful.... [Georgia Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger is expected to formally certify the state's presidential election results before noon Eastern time, ensuring that Mr. Biden receives Georgia's 16 electoral votes.... The Trump campaign has one more bite at Georgia's results: State law allows the loser of an election to request a recount done by high-speed scanning machines if the winner is ahead by than half a percentage point, as is the case here, with Mr. Biden ahead by 0.25 percent. Mr. Trump will have two business days to request the recount." ~~~

    ~~~ Update from the Washington Post's live election updates Friday. Free to non-subscribers: "Despite an earlier announcement, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said the office is still completing its certification. The office issued a correction, reversing an earlier announcement that had declared the certification was complete. Raffensperger said he expects certification to be completed later Friday. ~~~

~~~ Update Update: "On Friday afternoon, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) certified the state's general election results, including Biden as the winner of the state's presidential vote. The secretary of state's office had erroneously sent an alert earlier in the day saying the vote had been certified." (Also linked yesterday.)

Doo Dah Parade. From the New York Times report, also linked above, by Fausset & others: "Mr. Trump's legal challenges have so far produced mostly losses and embarrassing missteps. An affidavit filed by Mr. Trump's legal team intended to prove voter fraud in Michigan apparently used data taken from counties in Minnesota, the latest in a series of embarrassments that have made the president's uphill legal fight even steeper. In Wisconsin this week, the president turned to a reality-warping tactic he has used more commonly in attacks against news organizations, falsely describing a routine meeting of the state elections commission about recount rules and manuals as a shadowy, back-room ploy against him. The event, a standard step in the electoral process, was livestreamed." ~~~

~~~ Jack Nicas of the New York Times: "On Friday morning, President Trump shared a seemingly innocuous article on Twitter. The piece said that his sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, had publicly voiced her support for her brother amid his baseless claims that he won the 2020 election. 'Thank you Elizabeth,' Mr. Trump wrote to his sister, who has long avoided the spotlight. 'LOVE!' There was just one problem: Ms. Trump Grau had not said what the article claimed. In fact, the article Mr. Trump shared was based on a fake Twitter account that posed as his sister.... The account had tweeted increasingly bizarre messages, sharply criticizing Democrats, journalists and Republicans who had questioned the false claim that Mr. Trump was re-elected. 'If someone pours gravy down Chris Wallace's pants at Thanksgiving dinner, I promise, I will take care of the legal fees!' the account said.... The bizarre episode illustrates how easily misinformation spreads online, often with the help of the president himself." ~~~

~~~ Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "For more than a week, a plain-spoken former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell made the rounds on right-wing talk radio and cable news, facing little pushback as she laid out a conspiracy theory that Venezuela, Cuba and other 'communist' interests had used a secret algorithm to hack into voting machines and steal millions of votes from President Trump.... [Comes now Tucker Carlson, who said on his Fox 'News' show Thursday night,] 'What Powell was describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history....' But, he said, when he invited Ms. Powell on his show to share her evidence, she became 'angry and told us to stop contacting her.' The response was immediate, and hostile. The president's allies in conservative media and their legions of devoted Trump fans quickly closed ranks behind Ms. Powell and her case on behalf of the president, accusing the Fox host of betrayal.... The backlash against Mr. Carlson and Fox for daring to exert even a moment of independence underscores how little willingness exists among Republicans to challenge the president and his false narrative about the election he insists was stolen."


Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "President Trump on Friday announced two major actions aimed at lowering the price of prescription drugs, as he seeks to make a mark on the issue in the final months of his administration. One rule announced Friday would lower drug prices in Medicare Part B to match the lower prices paid in other wealthy countries, a proposal known as 'most favored nation.' The second action would eliminate the rebates that drugmakers pay to 'middlemen' known as pharmacy benefit managers, in a bid to simplify the drug pricing system and pass the discounts on to consumers instead. Trump touted the moves while speaking in the White House briefing room on Friday, one of few public appearances by the president since his electoral defeat earlier this month. The president took no questions during the appearance as he continues to contest election results showing a win for President-elect Joe Biden.... The future of Trump's moves also could depend on whether the Biden administration decides to keep them, which Trump seemed to acknowledge.... 'I hope they have the courage to keep it,' Trump said." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

You wouldn't have a vaccine, if it weren't for me, for another four years because FDA would’ve never been able to do what they did -- what I forced them to do. And Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine; in other words, not come out with a vaccine until just after the election.... What I'm doing here -- I don't know if anybody is going to appreciate it. These people can't even believe it.... So they waited and waited and waited. And they thought they'd come out with it a few days after the election. And it would've probably had an impact. Who knows? Maybe it wouldn't have. I'm sure they would've found the ballots someplace -- the Democrats and the group. -- Donald Trump, in public remarks Friday ~~~

~~~ Margot Sanger-Katz & Noah Weiland of the New York Times: "Health officials on Friday finalized a policy that would base the price Medicare pays for certain drugs on the lowest price paid in some other developed nations. It is the most ambitious of several drug-pricing rules issued in the final months of President Trump's term, but is likely to be vulnerable to legal challenges.... The idea is anathema to the pharmaceutical industry, which has fought hard against any price controls on its products and has advertised heavily against the policy. And it runs counter to the policy preferences of lawmakers in Mr. Trump's own party.... Though Mr. Trump described the policy as transformational, it may have very limited impact for most Medicare beneficiaries [because of the ways Medicare recipients purchase drugs].... Mr. Trump's news conference was dotted with grievances against the pharmaceutical industry.... (The president at one point baselessly said he had won the election.)"

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

Carolyn Johnson of the Washington Post: "Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech applied Friday for emergency authorization of their coronavirus vaccine, a landmark moment and a signal that a powerful tool to help control the pandemic could begin to be available by late December. The U.S. race to develop a vaccine has set scientific speed records since it launched in January, and the submission of a first application to regulators cements that. Now, that effort will move to its next, deliberative phase -- a weeks-long process in which career scientists at the FDA to scrutinize the data and determine whether the vaccine is safe and effective to be used in a broad population." Politico's story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Friday are here: "Maps tracking new coronavirus infections in the continental United States were bathed in a sea of red on Friday morning, with every state showing the virus spreading with worrying speed and health care workers bracing for more trying days ahead. More than 250,000 people have died in the United States, a number that grew by another 1,962 on Thursday. The Covid Tracking Project reported that more than 80,000 people were in the hospital, the highest number since the pandemic began.... As the picture across the country grew more dire, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people against traveling and visiting family for the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House coronavirus task force appeared in public for the first time in months, along with Vice President Mike Pence, who said the country was in fine shape.... More than 187,000 cases were announced nationwide on Thursday, another single-day record, and daily tallies have been rising in 47 states, according to a New York Times database." (Also linked yesterday.)

All Their Children. Kaitlin Collins of CNN: "President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., has tested positive for Covid-19, his spokesperson said. 'Don tested positive at the start of the week and has been quarantining out at his cabin since the result. He's been completely asymptomatic so far and is following all medically recommended COVID-19 guidelines,' his spokesperson said." This is a breaking story. Update: The New York Times story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Junior has repeatedly underplayed the virus & mocked those who take it seriously. As the Times report notes, "In recent months, Mr. Trump has questioned the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, saying in a Fox News interview that since deaths from the virus had dropped to 'almost nothing' the outbreak had come under control. That day deaths in the United States topped 1,000."

~~~ Quint Forgey of Politico: "Andrew Giuliani, a special assistant to ... Donald Trump and the son of Rudy Giuliani, announced Friday that he had tested positive for coronavirus. Giuliani received his results Friday morning, he wrote on Twitter, and reported 'experiencing mild symptoms.' He also wrote that he was 'following all appropriate protocols, including being in quarantine and conducting contact tracing.'... Andrew Giuliani stood in the back of the packed room of reporters as his father [delivered a rambling monologue Thursday].... Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis tweeted Friday afternoon that she and Rudy Giuliani both tested negative for Covid-19, and that the 'entire legal team will continue to follow the advice and protocols of our doctors.' Andrew Giuliani also was one of the few White House staffers seen without a mask in the Rose Garden last Friday as Trump delivered remarks on the administration's Operation Warp Speed vaccine development efforts." CNN reported on-air that Rudy was "self-isolating."

Veronica Stracqualursi of CNN: "Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said Friday he became 'desperately ill' from Covid-19, but now believes he is 'out of the woods' after receiving an antibody treatment. Carson, 69, was among the latest Trump administration officials or campaign advisers who have tested positive for Covid-19. Carson tested positive last Monday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. In a Facebook post Friday giving an update on his condition, Carson shared that he was 'extremely sick' with the virus and that he initially saw 'dramatic improvement' from a product he took, which is not FDA-approved or a proven treatment for Covid-19. 'However, I have several co-morbidities and after a brief period when I only experienced minor discomfort, the symptoms accelerated and I became desperately ill,' Carson wrote. Carson claimed that ... Donald Trump was monitoring his condition and cleared the secretary to receive a monoclonal antibody therapy given to Trump in October when he was diagnosed with Covid."

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on Friday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, roughly a week after he started self-quarantining. Scott, in a statement, said that after getting multiple negative results, a test that he took on Tuesday came back positive on Friday morning.... Scott announced on Saturday that he was going to self-quarantine after being exposed to an individual in Florida the previous day who subsequently tested positive for the coronavirus." (Also linked yesterday.)

Comments Off
Thursday
Nov192020

The Commentariat -- Nov. 20, 2020

Two More Months!

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Carolyn Johnson of the Washington Post: "Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech applied Friday for emergency authorization of their coronavirus vaccine, a landmark moment and a signal that a powerful tool to help control the pandemic could begin to be available by late December. The U.S. race to develop a vaccine has set scientific speed records since it launched in January, and the submission of a first application to regulators cements that. Now, that effort will move to its next, deliberative phase -- a weeks-long process in which career scientists at the FDA to scrutinize the data and determine whether the vaccine is safe and effective to be used in a broad population." Politico's story is here.

Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "President Trump on Friday announced two major actions aimed at lowering the price of prescription drugs, as he seeks to make a mark on the issue in the final months of his administration. One rule announced Friday would lower drug prices in Medicare Part B to match the lower prices paid in other wealthy countries, a proposal known as 'most favored nation.' The second action would eliminate the rebates that drugmakers pay to 'middlemen' known as pharmacy benefit managers, in a bid to simplify the drug pricing system and pass the discounts on to consumers instead. Trump touted the moves while speaking in the White House briefing room on Friday, one of few public appearances by the president since his electoral defeat earlier this month. The president took no questions during the appearance as he continues to contest election results showing a win for President-elect Joe Biden.... The future of Trump's moves also could depend on whether the Biden administration decides to keep them, which Trump seemed to acknowledge.... 'I hope they have the courage to keep it,' Trump said."

The New York Times' live election updates Friday are here: "Georgia's top election official will certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s victory in the state on Friday, dealing a blow to President Trump's Hail-Mary bid to overturn the vote in a half-dozen battleground states and with it the national election that Mr. Biden won decisively. The Georgia certification will be an early milestone in the state-by-state process of finalizing Mr. Biden's victory in the coming days, a process that appears set to unfold as Mr. Trump continues to deny his defeat and cry fraud and his campaign and its surrogates inundate the courts with largely baseless lawsuits that have so far been unsuccessful.... [Georgia Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger is expected to formally certify the state's presidential election results before noon Eastern time, ensuring that Mr. Biden receives Georgia's 16 electoral votes.... The Trump campaign has one more bite at Georgia's results: State law allows the loser of an election to request a recount done by high-speed scanning machines if the winner is ahead by than half a percentage point, as is the case here, with Mr. Biden ahead by 0.25 percent. Mr. Trump will have two business days to request the recount." ~~~

    ~~~ Update from the Washington Post's live election updates Friday. Free to non-subscribers: "Despite an earlier announcement, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said the office is still completing its certification. The office issued a correction, reversing an earlier announcement that had declared the certification was complete. Raffensperger said he expects certification to be completed later Friday. ~~~

~~~ Update Update: "On Friday afternoon, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) certified the state's general election results, including Biden as the winner of the state's presidential vote. The secretary of state's office had erroneously sent an alert earlier in the day saying the vote had been certified."

Boris Tries to Keep the U.K. Relevant. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Boris Johnson rolled out ambitious, back-to-back initiatives on military spending and climate change this week, which have little in common except that both are likely to please a very important new person in Mr. Johnson's life: President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The prime minister, whom President Trump has embraced as a like-minded populist, is eager to show he can work with the incoming president as well as he did with the outgoing one. Building more warships and phasing out new gas- and diesel-powered cars within a decade demonstrates to Mr. Biden that Britain can be a useful and relevant partner, even if it no longer belongs to the European Union. That is important, analysts said, because Brexit will deprive Britain of what had historically been one of its greatest assets to the United States: serving as an Anglophone bridge to the leaders of continental Europe."

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Friday are here: "Maps tracking new coronavirus infections in the continental United States were bathed in a sea of red on Friday morning, with every state showing the virus spreading with worrying speed and health care workers bracing for more trying days ahead. More than 250,000 people have died in the United States, a number that grew by another 1,962 on Thursday. The Covid Tracking Project reported that more than 80,000 people were in the hospital, the highest number since the pandemic began.... As the picture across the country grew more dire, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people against traveling and visiting family for the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House coronavirus task force appeared in public for the first time in months, along with Vice President Mike Pence, who said the country was in fine shape.... More than 187,000 cases were announced nationwide on Thursday, another single-day record, and daily tallies have been rising in 47 states, according to a New York Times database."

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on Friday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, roughly a week after he started self-quarantining. Scott, in a statement, said that after getting multiple negative results, a test that he took on Tuesday came back positive on Friday morning.... Scott announced on Saturday that he was going to self-quarantine after being exposed to an individual in Florida the previous day who subsequently tested positive...."

~~~~~~~~~~

Michael Crowley & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "In his sharpest condemnation yet of President Trump's efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Thursday that Mr. Trump's refusal to authorize an orderly transition ensured that he would be remembered as 'one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history.' 'It's hard to fathom how this man thinks,' Mr. Biden said in response to a question about the president's extraordinary interventions in Michigan's election certification process. 'I'm confident he knows he hasn't won, and is not going to win, and we're going to be sworn in on Jan. 20.' But Mr. Biden warned that as a result of Mr. Trump's actions, 'incredibly damaging messages are being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions.... It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country.'"...

Bart Jansen of USA Today: "President-elect Joe Biden said after meeting online with governors of both parties that there was consensus about working jointly to distribute a potential vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic and provide economic relief to cities, states and tribal governments. 'It's going to take time. It's going to take coordination,' Biden told bipartisan members of the National Governors Association from The Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware. 'It's going to the federal government and state governments working hand in glove, working together.'... Biden promised to provide federal funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard, to assist states in their response.... Biden said he's been hindered in coordinating a response to the pandemic because the Trump administration hasn't formally allowed him access to government agencies during the transition. He said projections are for a total of 400,000 deaths by February without changes in the response. 'There is no excuse not to share the data and let us begin to plan,' Biden said. 'If we don't have access to all this data, it's going to put us behind the eight-ball by a matter of a month or more.'"

Georgia. AP & Dartunorro Clark of NBC News: "A hand tally of the presidential race in Georgia is complete, and the results affirm Democrat Joe Biden's lead over Republican ... Donald Trump. The hand recount of nearly 5 million votes stemmed from an audit required by a new state law and wasn't in response to any suspected problems with the state's results or an official recount request. The state has until Friday to certify the results that have been certified and submitted by the counties. Once the state certifies the election results, the losing campaign has two business days to request a recount if the margin remains within 0.5%. That recount would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the counties, Gabriel Sterling, who oversees Georgia's voting systems, said.... Going into the hand tally, Biden led Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes. Previously uncounted ballots discovered in four counties during the hand count will reduce that margin to about 12,800, Sterling said." ~~~

~~~ Matt Johnson of WSB-TV Atlanta: "Georgia's election audit and hand re-count is done and the Secretary of State says there is almost no difference between the results. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office released the results of the audit by the state Thursday night that reaffirmed President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia in November's election.... '... The audit has aligned very close to what we had in election night reporting,' Raffensperger said. 'It's so close, it's not a thimble full of difference.'"

Clown Car on the Road to Sedition

Michael Martina, et al., of Reuters: "... Donald Trump's strategy for retaining power despite losing the U.S. election is focused increasingly on persuading Republican legislators to intervene on his behalf in battleground states Democrat Joe Biden won, three people familiar with the effort said. Having so far faced a string of losses in legal cases challenging the Nov. 3 results, Trump's lawyers are seeking to enlist fellow Republicans who control legislatures in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which went for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020, the sources said.... Trump's lawyers are seeking to take the power of appointing electors away from the governors and secretaries of state and give it to friendly state lawmakers from his party, saying the U.S. Constitution gives legislatures the ultimate authority.... A senior Trump campaign official told Reuters its plan is to cast enough doubt on vote-counting in big, Democratic cities that Republican lawmakers will have little choice but to intercede.... Asked at a news conference on Thursday about Trump's outreach to Michigan officials, Biden called it 'outrageous' and added it was the latest evidence that Trump is among the 'most irresponsible presidents in American history.... Most of the Republicans I've spoken to, including some governors, think this is debilitating. It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country,' he said." ~~~

~~~ Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump on Thursday accelerated his efforts to interfere in the nation's electoral process, taking the extraordinary step of ... inviting [top Michigan legislators] to the White House on Friday for discussions as the state prepares to certify President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner there.... The president has also asked aides what Republican officials he could call in other battleground states in his effort to prevent the certification of results that would formalize his loss to Mr. Biden, several advisers said. Trump allies appear to be pursuing a highly dubious legal theory that if the results are not certified, Republican legislatures could intervene and appoint pro-Trump electors in states Mr. Biden won.... Many states are now poised to certify their election vote totals; crucially, six key states that Mr. Biden won -- Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin -- have deadlines between Friday and Dec. 1 to certify his victories. Facing those deadlines, the president has grown more strident with his false messages about a stolen election in a last-ditch bid to do nothing less than disenfranchise the legally registered votes of entire states and cities.... The Republican effort to undo the popular vote is all but certain to fail, as even many Trump allies concede, and it has already suffered near-total defeats in courts in multiple states...." ~~~

~~~ Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump is using the power of his office to try to reverse the results of the election, orchestrating a far-reaching pressure campaign to persuade Republican officials in Michigan, Georgia and elsewhere to overturn the will of voters in what critics decried Thursday as an unprecedented subversion of democracy. After courts rejected the Trump campaign's baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, the president is now trying to remain in power with a wholesale assault on the integrity of the vote by spreading misinformation and trying to persuade loyal Republicans to manipulate the electoral system on his behalf. In an extraordinary news conference Thursday at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Trump's attorneys claimed without evidence there was a centralized conspiracy with roots in Venezuela to rig the U.S. presidential election. They alleged voter fraud in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and other cities whose municipal governments are controlled by Democrats and where President-elect Joe Biden won by large margins." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: At least Trump is being consistent in his belief that all Black people know each other, hang out together, and are criminals. (You may remember back in 2017 when he asked White House reporter April Ryan, who is black, to set up a meeting between the Congressional Black Caucus and him. "Are they friends of yours?" he asked, possibly rhetorically.) Now his theory of the case is that the mostly-African-American mayors all know each other -- they probably do -- and have conspired to defeat him by fraudulent means -- they have not. ~~~

~~~ Gene Robinson of the Washington Post: "President Trump is trying to cling to power by disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Black voters. His desperate legal maneuvering is straight out of the old racist Jim Crow playbook -- and the vast majority of elected Republicans, to their eternal shame, are going along with him -- whether actively or passively. In Wisconsin, Trump's campaign has paid for recounts in just two counties, one of which is Milwaukee County. In Michigan, Trump personally called two Republican officials who now want to decertify the vote in Wayne County, which includes Detroit. In Pennsylvania, Trump's legal team has challenged vote-counting procedures and made unsupported allegations of fraud in two cities:  Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In Georgia, the Trump team filed a lawsuit targeting absentee ballots in Savannah, and another suit took aim at the state's ballot-curing process. The pattern is obvious and appalling: Trump and the Republicans are trying to invalidate votes in cities with large African American populations -- cities that happen to have voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. In effect, Trump is arguing that Black people have no right to vote him out of office." ~~~

~~~ "Sins" of the Predecessors. Dana Bash & Gloria Borger of CNN: "... Donald Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the Russia investigation, a source familiar with the President's thinking told CNN on Thursday. The President's refusal to concede, as CNN has previously reported, stems in part from his perceived grievance that Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama undermined his own presidency by saying Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could have impacted the outcome, people around him have said. Trump continues to hold a grudge against those who he claims undercut his election by pointing to Russian interference efforts, and he has suggested it is fair game to not recognize Joe Biden as the President-elect, even though Clinton conceded on election night in 2016 and the Trump transition was able to begin immediately." Mrs. McC: Perfectly reasonable to let an unjustified personal grudge rend asunder a nation. ~~~

~~~ Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump has invited the leaders of Michigan's Republican-controlled state legislature to meet him in Washington on Friday, according to a person familiar with those plans, as the president and his allies continue an extraordinary campaign to overturn the results of an election he lost. Trump's campaign has suffered defeats in courtrooms across the country in its efforts to allege irregularities with the ballot-counting process, and has failed to muster any evidence of the widespread fraud that the president continues to claim tainted the 2020 election.... At present, [Trump] trails President-Elect Joe Biden in the state by 157,000 votes. Earlier this week, the state's Republican Senate majority leader said an effort to have legislators throw out election results was 'not going to happen.' But the president now appears to be using the full weight of his office to challenge the election results, as he and his allies reach out personally to state and local officials in an intensifying effort to halt the certification of the vote in key battleground states." This is an update of a story linked yesterday. ~~~

~~~ Ed White, et al., of the AP: "Two people ... told The Associated Press that Trump invited [Michigan] Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield. They agreed to go, according to a state official.... Trump's campaign is openly floating the notion of trying to get friendly state legislatures to appoint electors who would overturn the will of the voters. The Michigan Legislature would be called to select electors if Trump succeeds in convincing the state's board of canvassers not to certify Biden's victory in the state. Both Shirkey and Chatfield have indicated they will not try to overturn Biden's win.... Asked at a Lansing news conference about the plan for legislative leaders to visit Trump, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said, 'I hope they wear masks, and I hope they stay safe.... All the meetings in the world, though, can't take away from the fact that Joe Biden won Michigan by over 150,000 votes,' Whitmer added. 'That's 14 times the margin that Donald Trump won by in 2016.... So we will be sending a slate of electors that reflects the will of the people of Michigan at the end of this process.'" ~~~

~~~ Tom McCarthy of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has mounted an all-out assault on the election result in Michigan.... On Tuesday night, Trump placed phone calls to two Republican members of a county-level vote certification board the night before the pair tried to reverse their previous endorsement of a large chunk of the vote in Michigan. The news emerged as Republican lawmakers in Michigan prepared to fly to Washington on Friday to meet with Trump at his request, the Washington Post first reported." ~~~

~~~ Colleen Long, et al., of the AP: "... Donald Trump and his allies are taking increasingly frantic steps to subvert the results of the 2020 election, including summoning state legislators to the White House as part of a longshot bid to overturn Joe Biden's victory.... there is great concern that Trump's effort is doing real damage to public faith in the integrity of U.S. elections.... The president's constant barrage of baseless claims, his work to personally sway local officials who certify votes and his allies' refusal to admit he lost is likely to have a lasting negative impact on the country. Legions of his supporters don't believe he lost." ~~~

~~~ David Sanger of the New York Times: "President Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election are unprecedented in American history and an even more audacious use of brute political force to gain the White House than when Congress gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency during Reconstruction. Mr. Trump's chances of succeeding are somewhere between remote and impossible, and a sign of his desperation after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by nearly six million popular votes and counting, as well as a clear Electoral College margin. Yet the fact that Mr. Trump is even trying has set off widespread alarms, not least in Mr. Biden's camp." ~~~

~~~ From the New York Times' live election updates Thursday: Mitt Stands Alone. "In the strongest criticism of President Trump by a fellow high-ranking Republican so far, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah on Thursday night excoriated the president on Twitter for his continuing and overwhelmingly unsuccessful efforts to overturn his election defeat earlier this month to Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said that the president had exhausted his legal challenges in several battleground states and had resorted to trying to defy the will of the voters. His rebuke of Mr. Trump came on the same day that the president invited Republican state leaders in Michigan to the White House to discuss their efforts to stop the certification of the election results in the state. 'Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the president has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,' Mr. Romney wrote. 'It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president.'"

~~~ Kevin Brueninger & Dan Mangan of CNBC: "... Donald Trump's reelection campaign on Thursday dropped an election-related lawsuit in Michigan, the latest development in the multi-state effort to challenge President-elect Joe Biden's projected electoral victory. In a court filing, a lawyer for the Trump campaign said the lawsuit, which had sought to stop the certification of ballots in Wayne County, Michigan, was being withdrawn because the county's board of canvassers 'met and declined to certify the results of the presidential election.' But that statement is false: The board voted to certify the results, after an outcry over Republican members who initially voted not to certify. Those two GOP members now say they want to rescind their votes. But state officials say that is not possible, and that the certification is official.... David Fink, a lawyer for the city of Detroit in the lawsuit, told CNBC, 'They can put whatever spin they want on it. They dismissed the case because they were going to lose.'... A similar federal lawsuit challenging the vote counting in Wayne County, which was filed by two women ... was voluntarily dismissed by those plaintiffs on Thursday, according to court records." ~~~

~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: There's a kicker. All Michigan counties' certified results now go to a state board of canvassers, which is to meet on Monday to finalize & certify the state's vote counts. This board also is comprised of two Democrats & two Republicans. Here's where that stands as of Thursday evening: Andrew Prokof of Vox: "... it is highly likely that Republicans on that board are facing pressure to go along with Trump's wishes as well. One Republican on the board, Aaron Van Langevelde, is a lawyer for Michigan state House Republicans. He does not appear to have commented on the process. The second Republican, Norm Shinkle, has been more loquacious. In fact, Shinkle's wife is a witness in a federal lawsuit the Trump campaign filed alleging improper election practices in Detroit. 'She saw a lot of strange things going on,' Shinkle told Jonathan Oosting of Bridge Michigan last week. But he stressed he would 'hear both sides before I make a decision.'" According to the NYT report by Haberman & others, linked above, "Shinkle said he had not made up his mind as to how he would vote, especially given the questions in Wayne County. He said he was being deluged with calls about his upcoming vote." So not very reassuring. Also not reassuring: Trump's summons to Michigan's two state legislative leaders. Do we really expect these relatively insignificant guys to take a stand in the iconic Oval Office against the infamous POUTUS whom they probably adore & admire? As Jeff Timmer, a former Republican member of Michigan's state board of canvassers, told Rachel Maddow, these two fellows could not even stand up to a rag-tag gang of armed insurgents who took over the state's capitol building.

~~~ Trump's "Elite Strike Farce Team" Holds a Briefing. Quint Forgey & Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "... the madcap news conference by ... Donald Trump's attorneys on Thursday afternoon was more campaign farce than cogent legal argument, as Rudy Giuliani offered several conspiracy theories and a litany of false claims that he pledged would reverse the outcome of the 2020 White House race.... The former New York mayor and his colleagues spun a web of mistruths that made mention of the Clinton Foundation, liberal megadonor George Soros and the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez.... Giuliani said [Joe Biden had perpetrated a] scheme ... 'specifically focused on big cities' with a 'long history of corruption,' all of which were controlled by 'Democrat bosses.' Mail-in ballots 'are particularly prone to fraud,' he falsely claimed, and the lack of security protocols in some states meant that votes could have been cast by 'a dead person' or even 'Mickey Mouse.'... And although [Jenna] Ellis described their remarks as merely an 'opening statement' on behalf of the campaign, the discursive briefing -- during which streams of what appeared to be hair dye dripped down both sides of Giuliani's face -- betrayed almost immediately the desperation of Trump's flailing effort to undermine President-elect Joe Biden's victory.... Trump campaign officials looked on aghast as the circus-like affair unfolded." Mrs. McC: AND Rudy invoked "My Cousin Vinny." ~~~

~~~ The Big Drip. Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times: "Speaking from the headquarters of the Republican National Committee in Washington, Mr. Giuliani grew increasingly agitated as he expanded on the debunked allegations of widespread voter fraud that he has pursued since the election was called for Joseph R. Biden Jr. earlier this month. About 40 minutes into his statement, his sweat began to drip in color. By the time Mr. Giuliani began to take questions from reporters, the dark rivulets of liquid streaking down his face had become impossible to ignore, even as he pleaded with those present not to make light of his claims, for which he has yet to present evidence.... Several Manhattan hairdressers said that what was dripping down the face of the president's lawyer was likely not hair dye.... Mirko Vergani of the Drawing Room, a salon in downtown Manhattan, said it was far more likely that Mr. Giuliani had used mascara or a touch-up pen to make sure his sideburns matched the rest.... Mr. Giuliani did not immediately return a request for comment." ~~~

~~~ Nomaan Merchant of the AP: Trump's "attorneys have repeatedly made elementary errors in those high-profile cases: misspelling 'poll watcher' as 'pole watcher,' forgetting the name of the presiding judge during a hearing, inadvertently filing a Michigan lawsuit before an obscure court in Washington and having to refile complaints after erasing entire arguments they're using to challenge results. 'The sloppiness just serves to underscore the lack of seriousness with which these claims are being brought,' said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.... 'I've never seen an election lawyer handle a case as poorly as Giuliani has,' Hasen said. 'The idea that the lawyer arguing the most important case in Pennsylvania would not understand what it means to apply the standard of strict scrutiny [-- a judicial standard taught in law school --] in a constitutional case is mind-boggling.'... 'It's kind of a fallacy to say, well, Trump might be doing better if he had better lawyers,' Hasen said. 'Part of the reason he doesn't have good lawyers is he doesn't have good claims to bring.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Re: the "pole watchers," yesterday Akhilleus reckoned "... this was a holdover from [Rudy's] last trip (the night before?) to a strip club to watch the pole dancers." Mrs. McC: Still, it is hard to figure how a team bringing an election fraud case would not know how to spell "poll," when "polls," not "poles," were at issue. I remind you here that Giuliani was once the associate attorney general -- the third-highest job at DOJ -- & the U.S. attorney at SDNY, a job he sought because he's a showman & he liked to litigate. He may be rusty, but he's not a novice. He may not have "My Cousin Vinny"'s skills, but he has a lot more experience than the fictional Vinny did.

~~~ Kara Scannell, et al., of CNN: "State judges in Arizona and Pennsylvania and a federal judge in Georgia rejected election-related lawsuits Thursday from Republicans and the Trump campaign.... One of the judges, a Trump appointee in Georgia, called the attempt by Republican-allied lawyers to block election results 'quite striking,' refusing their attempt to stop Biden's win there.In Arizona, a state judge declined to audit votes in the state and delay the finalization of results, saying the lawsuit couldn't be retooled and brought again. And in Pennsylvania, a state judge ordered the counting of more than ... 2,000 [absentee] ballots the Trump campaign wanted to exclude.... Losses for the Trump campaign have piled up on other recent days, including when nine cases from the Trump campaign or his allies were either denied or pulled last Friday, and when Trump-supporting voters dropped four lawsuits pushing fraud claims earlier this week. Despite pledges by Trump campaign attorneys ... to continue the fight, nearly no viable post-election cases remain for the Trump campaign that could deprive Biden of the electoral votes to become president. Legal analysts have widely said Trump's bids in court to change the election results will all fail."


Sabotage! Rachel Siegel & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday said he would not extend most of the emergency lending programs run in tandem with the Federal Reserve, a move the central bank immediately criticized, citing the fragile recovery. The Fed's exceedingly rare public response reflected a government divided on how to act as the pandemic surges across the nation, threatening a new wave of shutdowns and marking an inflection point of the economic recovery. In a letter to Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell, Mnuchin not only said that several of the programs would wind down at the end of the year, but he also requested that unspent money allocated to the Fed under the first stimulus effort, the Cares Act, be reallocated by Congress. However, the Treasury Department does not have the sole authority to reallocate the funds and would need to secure Fed agreement.... Democrats swiftly criticized Mnuchin's decision as a politically motivated attempt to hurt the economy President-elect Joe Biden is set to inherit."

As the Screws Turn. Danny Hakim, et al., of the New York Times: “Two separate New York State fraud investigations into President Trump and his businesses, one criminal and one civil, have expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to Ivanka Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The inquiries -- a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and a civil one by the state attorney general, Letitia James -- are being conducted independently. But both offices issued subpoenas to the Trump Organization in recent weeks for records related to the fees, the people said.... The development follows a recent New York Times examination of more than two decades of Mr. Trump's tax records, which found that he had paid little or no federal income taxes in most years.... Among the revelations was that Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by deducting about $26 million in fees to unidentified consultants.... Some of those fees appear to have been paid to Ms. Trump, The Times found." ~~~

     ~~~ Matthew Choi of Politico: "Ivanka Trump on Thursday called New York state investigations into her father's business dealings 'harassment,' seeming to confirm that the probes now include tax write-offs that appear to involve her. 'This is harassment pure and simple,' she wrote on Twitter, linking to a New York Times report of recent subpoenas on the Trump Organization. 'This "inquiry" by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that there's nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless."

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

Brittany Shammas of the Washington Post: "... the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday recommended against traveling or gathering for [Thanksgiving], urging Americans to consider celebrating in their own households instead. In the agency's first news briefing in months, officials said they were alarmed to see 1 million new cases reported across the United States within the past week. As the nation's death toll since the start of the pandemic reached 250,000, officials spoke of the risks in stark terms, warning that as friends and relatives get together over the holidays, they could inadvertently bring the coronavirus with them. Tragedy could follow, they said. 'At the individual household level, what's at stake is basically the increased chance of one of your loved ones becoming sick and then being hospitalized and dying,' said Henry Walke, the CDC's covid-19 incident manager." The story is free to non-subscribers.

Anne Gearan & Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "President Trump will be remembered as one of the nation's most reckless leaders for holding up cooperation on the deadly coronavirus pandemic after losing his bid for reelection, President-elect Joe Biden said Thursday. At the White House, Vice President Pence tried to apply a veneer of calm to a tumultuous outgoing administration as he and federal health officials held what has become a rare public discussion of the federal government's efforts to address the pandemic. In Wilmington and in Washington on Thursday, the two events provided a split screen of sorts illuminating the challenges confronting the incoming administration on the most immediate crisis it faces. The events also showed the extent to which the Trump administration is ignoring the reality that in just two months there will be a change of power at the White House.... Pence and public health officials ... They urged the country to continue mitigation measures such as wearing masks and social distancing -- even as Pence did not wear a face covering at the White House podium. ~~~

~~~ "But in a private telephone briefing with both Republican and Democratic senators earlier Thursday, the leaders of Operation Warp Speed -- the Trump administration's primary vaccine apparatus -- said they had not been asked to brief Biden officials on their efforts, according to multiple officials directly familiar with the call. The officials -- Gustave Perna and Moncef Slaoui -- indicated they would communicate with the Biden team if asked, noting they would indeed want the new administration to be prepared, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private call." Mrs. McC: Looks like a crack in castle wall. Biden should walk on through.

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