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Eric Boehlert: 12 times the Beltway media failed us in 2020
It was a year that required the press to be at its best — a year when a vengeful, unstable president failed to deal with a national health crisis, while launching the most divisive, dishonest re-election campaign in White House history.
Time and again though, the Beltway press failed to meet the crucial challenge. Here’s 12 times when the press let us down. Viewed separately, the transgressions might seem minor. Cumulatively, they’re part of a larger pattern where the mainstream press has stumbled badly in recent years.
The Rude Pundit: Haiku Review of 2020… Fetch the Bolt Cutters
This motherfucking year. I mean, we were already on the express train to Fuckedsville even before COVID reared its spiky head and turbocharged this shit, this 2020, these 12 months that felt like a generation burnt up and was gone. Think about it: Even without coronavirus and the economic collapse that accompanied it, we’d have had the Black Lives Matter uprising, the climate-driven conflagrations out West, the friggin’ impeachment of our goddamn president (yeah, that was this year), the election, and the deaths of both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chadwick Boseman (I know, but that one hurt particularly badly). Jesus fuck, I’m nauseous writing all that out, and that’s just in the United States. You wanna talk Australian fires? Brexit? Other weather shit in Pakistan, India, and elsewhere?
‘There’s no running away from the numbers:’ Fauci laments surging COVID deaths as Trump claims ‘fake news’
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that he did not anticipate the COVID-19pandemic death toll in the United States would reach current levels, lamenting that indoor activity and holiday travel has facilitated virus transmission and calling for Americans to take the necessary public safety precautions to slow the ongoing surge.
“To have 300,000 cases in a given day, and between two and 3,000 deaths a day is just terrible,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told ABC’s “This Week” Co-anchor Martha Raddatz Sunday. “There’s no running away from the numbers, Martha. It’s something that we absolutely got to grasp and get our arms around and turn that inflection down by very intensive adherence to the public health measures, uniformly, throughout the country, with no exception.”
Ex-Defense secretaries say military must stay out of election battles
The U.S. military must not become entangled in any election disputes in the coming days, all 10 living former Defense secretaries wrote in an op-ed published on Sunday.
“American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy,” they wrote in The Washington Post, adding that everyone in the American defense establishment must “refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team.”
Pelosi wins re-election as House speaker with slim majority
Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was re-elected speaker of the House on Sunday despite a shrinking Democratic majority in the House.
With Democrats holding a smaller majority than in the previous Congress, Pelosi could afford to have only a handful of lawmakers peel off and opt to write in someone else. The final count was 216 to 209, with just two Democrats — Jared Golden of Maine and Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania — choosing someone other than Pelosi and three others voting present.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy got 209 votes from his own party. Pelosi won the previous vote for speaker by 220-192 over McCarthy.
Trump begs Georgia secretary of state to overturn election results in remarkable hourlong phone call
President Donald Trump begged Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the election results in an astounding hourlong phone call obtained Sunday by NBC News in which the president offered a smorgasbord of false claims about voter fraud and repeatedly berated state officials.
“So look,” Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
Excerpts of the call, which took place Saturday, were first published Sunday by The Washington Post.
Americans breathe a sigh of relief as $600 Covid payments roll in
Many Americans are waking up this week to at least $600 more in their bank accounts as the federal government begins to disburse the newest round of Covid-19 relief funds.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday that direct deposit payments could appear any time from that night to next week. Paper checks were mailed out beginning Wednesday, Mnuchin said, for qualifying Americans who have not registered their banking information with the IRS.
U.S. coronavirus cases eclipse 20 million
Documented Covid-19 cases in the United States surged past 20 million on Friday amid record hospitalizations and staggering numbers of daily deaths, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
The 20 millionth case comes less than two months after the country tallied its 10 millionth. The U.S. leads the globe in Covid-19 deaths, with the disease claiming the lives of nearly 336,000 people.
Rep. Louie Gohmert Backpedals On ‘Be Violent’ Comments After Election Lawsuit Loss
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) issued a statement Saturday backpedaling on his controversial comments indicating that street violence is the only recourse in the wake of his lawsuit loss to overturn the results of the democratic presidential election.
Gohmert made the remarks about violence Friday on the far-right news channel Newsmax. He spoke after U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle shot down his court case that argued Vice President Mike Pence has the power to unilaterally reappoint Donald Trump as president by selectively choosing the electoral votes he’ll recognize, and replacing the others with votes for Trump.
The judge ruled Gohmert had no standing to sue.
Growing number of Trump loyalists in the Senate vow to fruitlessly challenge Biden’s victory
A last-ditch effort by President Trump and his allies to overturn the election thrust Washington into chaos Saturday as a growing coalition of Republican senators announced plans to rebel against Senate leaders by seeking to block formal certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
The push to subvert the vote is all but certain to fail when Congress gathers in joint session Wednesday to count electoral college votes already certified by each state. Still, Trump is continuing to press Republican lawmakers to support his baseless claims of election fraud while calling on thousands of supporters to fill the streets of the nation’s capital on Wednesday in mass protest of his defeat.
Top lawmakers say pandemic relief deal with aid to individuals, businesses is ‘close’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, said he believes a “bipartisan, bicameral agreement appears to be close at hand” on a COVID-19 relief deal.
“I’m encouraged that our Democratic colleagues have now embraced this framework, that’s been the right solution for our country all this time,” he said.
Lawmakers are working furiously to announce a $900 billion deal ahead of a government funding deadline at midnight Friday, but McConnell warned senators that a short-term funding bill is expected and that it is “highly likely” senators will have to work through the weekend to finish both bills: one for COVID-19 relief and the other a massive $1.4 trillion spending bill.
Pelosi, McConnell To Get Coronavirus Vaccine, Urge Members To Do Same
The top leaders of the U.S. House and Senate will be receiving the coronavirus vaccine this week, and Congress’ attending physician has informed members that they are all eligible for the shots under “government continuity” guidelines.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell both said Thursday that they will get vaccinated in the next few days.
Pelosi, D-Calif., is third in the line of succession for the presidency, after President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. McConnell, R-Ky., is not in the line of succession, but as majority leader, he is in charge of running the Senate.
Millions Of COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Stuck In Warehouses Until Federal Orders, Pfizer Says
Millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine are languishing in warehouses awaiting shipment instructions from the Trump administration — even as states are clamoring for them — vaccine manufacturer Pzifer said in a statement Thursday.
The startling bottleneck is occurring as America is breaking daily COVID-19 death tolls. The U.S. lost more people on Wednesday alone (3,611) than the number of people who died on 9/11.
Officials in several states said they were told Wednesday that their second shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine next week has been mysteriously reduced, CNN reported. That triggered fears by states that the Trump administration may be incapable of hitting the target of delivering enough vaccine doses for 20 million injections by the end of the year. A source told The Washington Post that Pfizer executives were “baffled” that the Trump administration wasn’t immediately shipping out all of the vaccine.
FDA advisers recommend Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, bringing second vaccine closer to reality
An independent panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration overwhelmingly recommended that the agency authorize Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use on Thursday, bringing the United States one step closer to adding a second vaccine to its toolkit in fighting the pandemic.
Members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted 20 to 0 in favor of recommending authorization, with one abstention.
Direct cash payments likely as lawmakers near Covid aid deal
Congressional leaders and the White House are nearing agreement on a roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief dealthat will likely include a new round of direct payments, three sources familiar with the negotiations said Wednesday.
The emerging package will include enhanced federal jobless benefits, small-business funding, and money to distribute Covid-19 vaccines. The dollar amount of the stimulus payments has not yet been determined — some say it will probably be $600 per person while others said it may be higher.
Senate Republican uses hearing to pursue baseless election fraud claims as Trump tweets approval
A Republican Senate committee chairman on Wednesday used his panel to keep pressing allegations of what he called “election irregularities” as President Donald Trump appeared to watch from the White House, as Democrats decried the hearing as lending credence to Trump’s baseless claims of fraud.
While Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a strong Trump supporter who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has now said he accepts Joe Biden as the president-elect and that he will not challenge the Electoral College results when Congress meets to certify them next month, he insisted the hearing should “not be controversial.”
French President Macron tests positive for COVID-19
French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for COVID-19, the presidential Elysee Palace announced on Thursday.
It said the president took a test “as soon as the first symptoms appeared.” The brief statement did not say what symptoms Macron experienced.
It said he would isolate himself for seven days. “He will continue to work and take care of his activities at a distance,” it added.
US on track to get 2nd COVID vaccine as FDA panel reviews Moderna data
The U.S. is on the cusp of a second vaccine for COVID-19, with independent federal advisers set to review data Thursday from Moderna that suggests its two-dose vaccine is safe and 94% effective.
An endorsement from the panel paves the way for an official green light by federal regulators to begin distributing next week some 5.9 million Moderna doses to the nation’s front-line health care workers and nursing home residents.
The Moderna batch would be in addition to the 6.4 million doses provided by Pfizer-BioNTech that started to roll out this week after being the first to get emergency authorization.
Campaigning in Georgia, Biden Presses for the Senate Majority He Will Need
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday urged Georgia voters to cast ballots for two Democratic Senate candidates in a pair of critical runoffs early next month that he hopes will give his party control of the Senate and help Democrats advance the agenda he promised during his campaign.
“You all did something extraordinary in November,” Mr. Biden said to cheers and honks at a drive-in campaign rally intended to minimize the spread of the coronavirus. “You voted in record numbers in order to improve the lives of every Georgian. And you voted as if your life depended on it.”
Buttigieg would make history if confirmed as Biden’s transportation secretary
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to name former 2020 rival and South Bend Mayor, Pete Buttigieg to head the Department of Transportation, sources familiar with the transition told ABC News Tuesday.
If confirmed, Buttigieg would bring new diversity to the administration Biden has promised will “look like America,” as the first openly gay Cabinet secretary approved by the U.S. Senate to serve in U.S. history.
Buttigieg, at age 38, would also be the youngest person nominated to Biden’s Cabinet — bringing the average age of Biden’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level appointees down from 61 to 59.
McConnell Asks GOP Senators Not To Object To Certifying Biden’s Electoral Votes
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday urged GOP senators not to object to Congress’ formal certification of the Electoral College vote next month prior to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
An objection would force a “terrible vote” on Senate Republicans by putting them in a position of having to oppose President Donald Trump, McConnell said on a private conference call with his members, according to Politico.
Some allies of the president are hoping the last-ditch effort might reverse the election results, even as dozens of lawsuits from the Trump campaign have failed to prove allegations of voter fraud in court. On Monday, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) called on fellow Republicans to join him in trying to bar what he called Biden’s “illegitimate” victory.
Capitol Hill leaders nearing long-sought COVID stimulus deal
Congressional leaders closed in on an agreement to provide a new tranche of coronavirus relief on Tuesday, haggling deep into the night over how to spend hundreds of billions of dollars before adjourning for the year.
“We’re making significant progress and I’m optimistic that we are going to be able to complete an understanding some time soon,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as he left the Capitol after a day of furious negotiating. “We’re getting closer.”
Top lawmakers vowed that they would not head home for the year until they pass a coronavirus relief deal, the strongest signal yet that McConnell, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are on the verge of breaking the months-long stimulus stalemate. Congress has not passed a significant new round of aid since April.
Bob Cesca: Ready for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago shadow presidency? That’s where all this is heading
On Monday morning’s edition of “Fox & Friends,” Donald Trump’s personal Wormtongue, white supremacist Stephen Miller, announced Trump’s latest and most ludicrous attempt to remain president despite the incontrovertible results of the election.
Also on Monday, the Electoral College officially affirmed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the winners of the election, 306-232. This, Miller seemed to suggest, is irrelevant.
Miller explained that Republican legislators in the major swing states will send alternate electors to Congress — electors who, unlike the actual electors, have cast their ballots for Trump in defiance of the popular-vote outcome.
Charlie Pierce: There Is No End to the Grift
One hesitates to paraphrase the genius of Robert Earl Keen, but it seems the grift goes on forever and the thievery never ends. The folks at CREW got their hot little hands on some of the financial details describing how high Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been living on the hog belonging to the rest of us.
Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire Politics.
US administers 1st doses of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine
Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse from Northwell Long Island Jewish Medical Center was the first vaccinated in New York at 9:23 a.m. during a livestreamed event with Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Congressman cites Trump’s efforts to overturn election in announcing decision to quit GOP
In an exclusive interview, Rep. Paul Mitchell, Republican of Michigan, told CNN that his disgust and disappointment with President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election have led him to request that the Clerk of the House change his party affiliation to “independent,” and to notify GOP leaders in a letter that he is withdrawing his “engagement and association with the Republican Party at both the national and state level.”
“This party has to stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first, and not political considerations,” Mitchell said on CNN’s “The Lead.”
“Not to protect a candidate. Not simply for raw political power, and that’s what I feel is going on and I’ve had enough.”
William Barr Resigns After DOJ Throws Cold Water On Voter Fraud Claims
President Donald Trump said Monday that Attorney General William Barr had resigned, after the nation’s top law enforcement official refused to back up discredited claims of widespread fraud in the Nov. 3 election and reportedly worked to avoid public disclosure of investigations into President-elect Joe Biden’s son.
Trump said in a tweet that he had “a very nice meeting” with Barr at the White House, adding that “our relationship has been a very good one” and that Barr “has done an outstanding job!”
After Electoral College cements win, Biden unleashes scathing attack on Trump’s refusal to concede
President-elect Joe Biden on Monday gave his most scathing indictment yet of the attempts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn November’s election, hours after the Electoral College officially sealed Biden’s victory.
Biden called the election, which Trump and his supporters have tried to overturn with scores of failed legal challenges, “honest, free and fair.” And he called attacks on the election and election officials “simply unconscionable” and Trump’s attempts to overturn the election an “abuse of power.”
“In America, politicians don’t take power — the people grant it to them,” he said. “The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know that nothing, not even a pandemic — or an abuse of power — can extinguish that flame.
Pro-Trump rally descends into chaos as Proud Boys roam D.C. looking to fight
For most of the day, police largely kept opposing factions separated, at times frustrating the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization that supports Trump’s attempts to reverse an election he lost.
Electors meeting today to formally choose Biden as next president
Presidential electors are meeting across the United States on Monday to formally choose Joe Biden as the nation’s next president.
Monday is the day set by law for the meeting of the Electoral College. In reality, electors meet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their ballots. The results will be sent to Washington and tallied in a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress over which Vice President Mike Pence will preside.
The electors’ votes have drawn more attention than usual this year because President Donald Trump has refused to concede the election and continued to make baseless allegations of fraud.
Russian hackers breach U.S. government, targeting agencies, private companies
Hackers who targeted the federal government appear to be part of a Russian intelligence campaign aimed at multiple U.S. agencies and companies, including the cybersecurity company FireEye, officials said Sunday.
A Commerce Department spokesman confirmed a breach, saying it occurred at an unidentified bureau.
Department officials alerted the FBI and a cybersecurity agency within the Department of Homeland Security, the spokesman said, declining to comment further.
Hospitals Prepare for First Shots as Virus Vaccine Shipments Blanket U.S.
Trucks and cargo planes packed with the first of nearly three million doses of coronavirus vaccine fanned out across the country on Sunday as hospitals rushed to set up injection sites and their anxious workers tracked each shipment hour by hour.
The distribution of the first federally approved vaccine marked the start of the most ambitious vaccination campaign in American history, a critical, complicated feat that one top federal official compared to the Allied landings at Normandy during World War II. Now, the United States is trying to turn the tide of battle against a virus whose out-of-control spread has killed nearly 300,000 people, ravaged the economy and upended millions of lives.
Eric Boehlert: Why Fox News’ ratings are tanking
Trump isn’t the only one with the post-election hangover. Fox News is facing its most pressing ratings challenge in years, as Trump fuels a schism within the conservative media.
This Monday, between 4 pm and 11 pm, just two Fox News programs scored as the top-rated in their hours. In the other six, one-hour time slots, Fox News finished second or third vs. CNN and MSNBC. That represents a stunning fall for a network that just two months ago, at the height of the election season, was often posting big ratings wins across the board, all afternoon and all night.
The Rude Pundit: Note to Hopeful MAGA Cretins… You’ll Be Much Happier If You Give Up Now. I Know.
Hey, MAGA jerks,
I don’t like you, and, from your tweets and messages, I’ve got a pretty good idea that you don’t like me. Still, I feel compelled to give you some advice, if only in the hope that it will calm down the overdramatic rhetoric that makes it seem like you’re gonna start some kind of violence. I’ll put it this way: You’re blood’s all het up over nothing.
Trump Administration Executes Brandon Bernard After Jurors Plead For His Life
The Trump administration executed 40-year-old Brandon Bernard on Thursday, his punishment for acting as an accomplice to a crime when he was 18 years old.
The government went through with the killing despite high-profile opposition from 5 of 9 surviving jurors who sentenced Bernard to death, the prosecutor who defended his death sentence on appeal, several members of Congress, 23 current and former prosecutors, reality television star and criminal justice reform advocate Kim Kardashian West, and The Washington Post’s editorial board. Hours before the execution, controversial lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr — who worked on President Donald Trump’s legal team during his impeachment — joined Bernard’s defense team.
States blast Texas bid to overturn election as ‘seditious abuse of judicial process’
Four states sued by Texas in a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election asked the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday to swiftly reject the case and avoid legitimizing “a cacophony of bogus claims” that would upend the will of millions of American voters.
In court filings Thursday afternoon, the attorneys general of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia each offered scathing rebuttals to the Texas suit targeting their states.
“The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process,” wrote Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro in court documents.
Chances for COVID-19 relief compromise grow dimmer
Sources on both sides of the aisle in the Senate told ABC News that chances for a grand compromise on a COVID-19 relief package are growing dimmer, though some aides to negotiators insist there is still hope.
The major sticking point? A shield against lawsuits for businesses, health care facilities, and schools — a top GOP issue.
Making a compromise even less likely, particularly for Republicans, ABC News has confirmed that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled through staff that he is not in favor of a $908 billion bipartisan proposal, saying it would not be supported by most in his conference. The news was first reported by Politico.
HHS secretary Alex Azar says Pfizer vaccine will be approved, vaccinations could start next week
HHS Secretary Alex Azar said on “Good Morning America” Friday morning that COVID-19 vaccinations could come Monday or Tuesday. He said the Pfizer vaccine will be approved, they are just working out the details. “We weren’t counting on it in terms of getting to the projections that you and I have talked about about having enough vaccine for the second quarter,” he told George Stephanopoulos. “The Sanofi vaccine could be an important additional technology for later rounds of vaccination as one goes forward later in 2021.” Azar also said the Food and Drug Administration will proceed with the emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Hunter Biden, long a GOP political target, reveals he is subject of federal tax probe
Hunter Biden, the president-elect’s embattled son, announced Wednesday that federal prosecutors in Delaware are investigating his “tax affairs,” a development that marks the latest controversy surrounding the Biden family’s private business endeavors.
In his statement, Hunter Biden, 50, said he and his attorney learned of the investigation on Tuesday, and that he remains “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”
More Than 3,100 Dead From COVID-19 In U.S. In Grim Single-Day Record
At least 3,124 people in the United States died from COVID-19 on Wednesday, a grim new record as the country grapples with the worst phase of the pandemic thus far.
Johns Hopkins University reported the figure late Wednesday amid a surge in infections around the nation following the Thanksgiving Day holiday period. More than 220,000 people tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday alone, and U.S. hospitals have already begun reporting a frightening limit in intensive care beds.
FDA panel meeting today could lead to approval of Pfizer vaccine for emergency use
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine faces one final hurdle as it races to become the first shot greenlighted in the U.S. — a panel of experts who will scrutinize the company’s data for any red flags.
Thursday’s meeting of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel is likely the last step before a U.S. decision to begin shipping millions of doses of the shot, which has shown strong protection against the coronavirus.
The FDA panel functions like a science court that will pick apart the data and debate – in public and live-streamed – whether the shot is safe and effective enough to be cleared for emergency use. The non-government experts specialize in vaccine development, infectious diseases and medical statistics. The FDA is expected to follow the committee’s advice, although it’s not required to do so.
Supreme Court Rejects GOP Bid To Reverse Joe Biden’s Pennsylvania Win
The Supreme Court has rejected Republicans’ last-gasp bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the electoral battleground.
The court without comment Tuesday refused to call into question the the certification process in Pennsylvania. Gov. Tom Wolf already has certified Biden’s victory and the state’s 20 electors are to meet on Dec. 14 to cast their votes for Biden.
Biden Selects Marcia Fudge As Housing Secretary, Tom Vilsack For Agriculture
President-elect Joe Biden has selected Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge as his housing and urban development secretary and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to reprise that role in his administration, according to five people familiar with the decisions.
Fudge, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, was just elected to a seventh term representing a majority Black district that includes parts of Cleveland and Akron. Vilsack spent eight years as head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Obama administration and served two terms as Iowa governor.
House Approves $731 Billion Defense Bill With Veto-Proof Majority
The Democratic-controlled House on Tuesday easily approved a wide-ranging defense policy bill, defying a veto threat from President Donald Trump and setting up a possible showdown with the Republican president in the waning days of his administration.
The 335-78 vote in favor of the $731 billion defense measure came hours after Trump renewed his threat to veto the bill unless lawmakers clamp down on social media companies he claims were biased against him during the election.
Biden Vows 100 Million Vaccinations In His First 100 Days
The first doses of the coronavirus vaccine were given in the U.K. on Tuesday, as cases continue to surge in the United States.
To date, more than 15.1 million Americans have contracted the coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 1.55 million people worldwide, including more than 286,000 in the U.S., have died.
The virus continues to disrupt daily life around the globe, with more than 68.2 million people confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 since Chinese officials imposed the first coronavirus lockdown in the city of Wuhan in January.
Bob Cesca: Is Trump staging a coup or just running a con? No reason he can’t do both
It’s pretty damn obvious what’s going on with Donald Trump and the election, and it’s probably not an attempted coup. At least, that’s not necessarily Trump’s primary intention with his laughably unserious procession of 50-some failed legal challenges to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump and his Republican enablers lost five cases on Friday alone, with more in Michigan and Georgia over the weekend. Meanwhile, his perpetually shvitzing lead attorney, Rudy Giuliani, tested positive for COVID after appearing in court on multiple occasions without a mask. And yet Trump and his gullible Red Hats keep reacting like Lloyd Christmas in “Dumb & Dumber.” Faced with one-in-a-gazillion odds of actually winning a case, their response continues to be, “So you’re telling us there’s a chance!”
Trump Administration Declined Summer Offer To Buy More Of Pfizer’s Vaccine: Reports
The Trump administration declined an offer from Pfizer to buy more doses of its COVID-19 vaccine at the end of the summer, according to several reports.
The New York Times first reported Monday that Pfizer offered to sell the U.S. government more of its promising vaccine candidate, developed in partnership with the German company BioNTech. The U.S. agreed to buy 100 million doses of the Pfizer drug in July, but the vaccine takes two injections to work, meaning the contract is only enough for 50 million people. (At the time, there were several promising vaccine candidates, but none had shown widespread efficacy in late-stage, large-scale trials).
Florida authorities raid home of ex-official who said she was ousted over coronavirus data
Authorities in Florida on Monday raided the home of Rebekah Jones, a former state official who has said she was ousted this year for refusing to censor the state’s coronavirus data.
In a search warrant, an investigator with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said a person at Jones’ home who was using her email address illegally gained access to a state-run communications platform and sent a group text Nov. 10 telling people that it was “time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead.”
“You know this is wrong,” the text said, according to the warrant. “You don’t have to be part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late.”
Biden to nominate retired Gen. Lloyd Austin for defense secretary, a first for an African American
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin to be defense secretary, according to three people familiar with the decision.
If confirmed, Austin, 67, a retired four-star general and former head of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, would be the first African American to lead the Defense Department. He was also the first Black American to lead Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East and parts of Africa, Central Asia and South Asia.
Austin was offered the job Sunday. He became the front-runner over the past week, but his relationship with Biden goes back years. The two spent many hours working together when Austin was running CENTCOM.
Britain becomes first to roll out clinically approved BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, first recipient is a 90-year-old woman
At 6.31 a.m. local timeTuesday, 334 days after the first reported Covid-19 death in China, Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person in the world to receive a clinically approved vaccine.
It was a landmark moment in the global fight against the most destructive pandemic in 100 years. In approving and delivering the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine, Britain is forging a path that will likely be followed by the United States and Europe in the coming weeks.
“I feel so privileged to be the first person vaccinated against Covid-19,” said Keenan, who was given the vaccine at University Hospital in Coventry, a city northwest of London.
Charlie Pierce: I Wish the Rolling Blunder Express Would Sit Down and Let Us Enjoy the Holidays
Shit’s getting real in Michigan again. From the Detroit Free Press:
One caller told state Rep. Cynthia A. Johnson, D-Detroit, that she should be “swinging from a … rope.” That echoed another call received by Johnson, who is Black, that predicted the lawmaker would be lynched, according to multiple voicemails Johnson posted on her Facebook page. The calls are some of many threats received by Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Michigan, as President Donald Trump and his allies continue to rely on conspiracy theories — not credible evidence — to argue widespread fraud led to a stolen election. Supporters want lawmakers to step in and award Michigan’s electoral votes to Trump, although President-elect Joe Biden earned 154,000 more votes than the president. Legislative leaders have already said they have no role in intervening in the election, but that didn’t stop Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis from asking lawmakers to take some action when they appeared at a House Oversight Committee meeting last week.
Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire Politics.
Loeffler doesn’t acknowledge Trump’s defeat in only Georgia runoff debate
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) declined multiple times to answer whether President Donald Trump lost the November election while repeatedly attacking her opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock, as a radical during the sole debate of their special election runoff next month.
Warnock, the pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, countered Loeffler’s attacks by repeatedly criticizing her stock trades made in office and her handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying she had no proactive case for her election to the seat to which she was appointed earlier this year.
Biden will pick California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead Health and Human Services
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, three sources familiar with the decision said.
Becerra, 62, served 12 terms in the House of Representatives and was a vigorous defender of the Affordable Care Act who led the defense of the law in the Supreme Court last month.
If he is confirmed, he would be the first Latino to lead the massive department as the incoming administration tries to elevate more diverse candidates to front-line positions. Biden offered Becerra the position in a phone call Friday.
Trump tells supporters to vote in Georgia runoffs, refuses to accept reality of his loss
President Donald Trump emphatically called on Georgia voters to cast ballots for Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in next month’s runoff Senate elections but spent much of his first rally since losing the presidency denying the new reality.
The president several times falsely claimed he had won Georgia and the presidency, lambasted top Georgia Republicans like Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and pushed for wholesale changes to the election system.
Trump announces Rudy Giuliani has Covid
President Donald Trump announced Sunday that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has led his efforts to overturn last month’s election, has tested positive for Covid-19.
“Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, has crisscrossed the country in recent days pushing Trump’s unverified claims of voter fraud. He most recently appeared without a mask during a meeting with Georgia lawmakers Thursday.
Brian Karem: Michael Cohen on What Trump Wants Now
Donald Trump is Captain Chaos.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, pinned that label on him and it has stuck.
Now, with less than seven weeks to go before he is escorted from the White House, Captain Chaos is still trampling norms and harming institutions. He is a dangerous con man and is all about the grift. He probably doesn’t want to burn it all down, because that could damage his income—but he’s too incompetent and stupid to see that his actions risk that very outcome.
Eric Boehlert: Trump’s mob takes aim at GOP, Fox News
Prowling a rally stage in Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon, and decked out in a Make America Great Again hat, lawyer and conspiracy enthusiast Lin Wood beseeched the crowd of Trump supporters to not vote in the Georgia’s two upcoming run-off elections, which will determine control of the Senate. Pushing washed-up claims about how the Georgia presidential contest was “rigged” and “stolen,” Wood told the crowd that the two Republican candidates running for the Senate hadn’t secured their trust because they wouldn’t sign off on blatantly untrue claims of voter fraud in the state. “They have not earned your vote,” he announced.
Republicans should stay home on Election Day in January — that was the stunning message from the far-right rally in Atlanta.
The Rude Pundit: Kelly Loeffler and the GOP’s Bullsh** Hyperbole
According to Republican Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, her run-off opponent for her seat, the affable and slightly left-of-center Democrat Raphael Warnock, “is the most radical candidate for Senate our country has ever seen.” He is “dangerous” and embraces “anti-American values,” according to a website that Loeffler has put out called, no, really, radicalraphael.com. It’s filled with some of the most hilariously over the top bullshit that takes moderate political positions and frames them as so evil that you’d think that Warnock, who is the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (yes, that Ebenezer Baptist Church, the one where Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pastor), is Satan, Godzilla, and Osama Bin Laden combined into a Megazord of socialist doom.
Really, this shit is that insanely hyperbolic.
Justice Department Probed ‘Bribery-For-Pardon Scheme’ As Trump Campaigned, Court Reveals
The Justice Department has spent months investigating a “bribery-for-pardon scheme,” even as President Donald Trump was running for reelection, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday.
In a 20-page heavily redacted opinion, dated Aug. 28 but posted Tuesday evening, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote that attorney-client privilege didn’t protect certain communications if they were alleged to be part of a “bribery-for-pardon scheme.” The communications involved in the bribery investigation had been copied to a third party who was not an attorney, the opinion stated.
Barr says no evidence of widespread voter fraud, defying Trump
Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, defying President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to reverse the results.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Barr’s comments are some of the sharpest rejections yet from a Cabinet member of Trump’s false and baseless claims of a “rigged” election.
U.K. becomes first country to approve Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine
The United Kingdom became the first country Wednesday to formally approve the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, a huge symbolic milestone in the fight against the pandemic.
The first inoculations are set to be rolled out next week, the government said, although the initial batch of 800,000 will cover a relatively small number of healthcare workers, care home staff and residents, and people over the age of 80.
The vaccine has been authorized far more quickly than any other in history, its lightning development outpacing the 15 to 20 years it usually takes to develop these types of medicines.
President Trump has discussed possibility of pardons for family members, sources say
President Donald Trump has been discussing the possibility of issuing pardons for his family members and some close associates, multiple sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
One source said the conversations in recent days were within the context of a president who feels embattled, and not because Trump believes he or any of his family members had done anything illegal.
The New York Times first reported the discussions and said Trump had spoken about whether to grant pre-emptive pardons for his three eldest children, Eric and Donald Jr., and White House advisor Ivanka Trump. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and attorney Rudy Giuliani were also mentioned.
Stephanie Miller on “The Michael Harrison Interview” Podcast
Michael Harrison interviews progressive talk radio star Stephanie Miller about her terrestrial radio show, as well as her groundbreaking Sexy Liberal Virtual Tour, and opinions about the state of presidential politics in America.
Trump is Now Demanding Republicans ‘Call Off’ the Georgia Special Election: ‘It Won’t Be Needed’
President Donald Trump seemed to demand a “call off” for the upcoming Senate runoff election in Georgia, are race that is set to determine control of the Senate.
“Do something Brian Kemp,” Trump tweeted at the Republican governor of the state. “You allowed your state to be scammed. We must check signatures and count signed envelopes against ballots. Then call off election. It won’t be needed. We will all WIN!
Scott Atlas Resigns After Whispering Controversial COVID-19 Advice Into Trump’s Ear
Dr. Scott Atlas, a controversial pandemic adviser to President Donald Trump who was lambasted for supporting the idea of herd immunity to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, resigned from his role on Monday.
“I worked hard with a singular focus — to save lives and help Americans through this pandemic,” Atlas, a neuroradiology professor, said in his resignation letter, adding that he “always relied on the latest science and evidence.”
He was serving a 130-day detail as a special government employee, and his term was set to expire this week. His resignation was first reported by Fox News.
Fired cybersecurity chief hints at legal action after Trump campaign lawyer said he should be executed
Christopher Krebs, who was recently fired by President Donald Trump as the head of the federal government’s election cybersecurity efforts, suggested Tuesday that he might take legal action against one of Trump’s lawyers who said that Krebs should be executed.
In an interview on NBC’s “TODAY” show, host Savannah Guthrie asked Krebs how concerned he is about the comments made by Trump campaign lawyer Joe DiGenova in an interview Monday in which he said that Krebs “is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”
Trump falls short in Wisconsin recount he paid $3 million for
Wisconsin finished a recount of its presidential results on Sunday, confirming Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump in the key battleground state. Trump vowed to challenge the outcome in court even before the recount concluded.
Dane County was the second and last county to finish its recount, reporting a 45-vote gain for Trump. Milwaukee County, the state’s other big and overwhelmingly liberal county targeted in a recount that Trump paid $3 million for, reported its results Friday, a 132-vote gain for Biden.
Taken together, the two counties barely budged Biden’s winning margin of about 20,600 votes, giving the winner a net gain of 87 votes.
Biden and Harris announce all-female communications team
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced an all-female communications team Sunday aimed at bringing “diverse perspectives” to the White House.
Jen Psaki, a top member of the transition team who served in the Obama-Biden administration, was chosen as White House press secretary. Kate Bedingfield, who was deputy Biden-Harris campaign manager, will be White House communications director.
In a statement, Biden said the team was made up of “qualified, experienced communicators” who will “bring diverse perspectives to their work and a shared commitment to building this country back better.”
Covid-19: Moderna submits vaccine for FDA regulatory approval
Moderna will submit its coronavirus vaccine for regulatory approval on Monday, the company said — the second leading drug to pass the milestone this month.
The Massachusetts biotech firm said it will ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization after completing its Phase 3 trial, finding the vaccine was 94.1 percent effective against Covid-19.
Moreover, Moderna said the vaccine was 100 percent effective at preventing severe cases of the disease.
Supreme Court blocks NY from enforcing Covid limits on churches
The U.S. Supreme Court issued an injunction late Wednesday blocking New York’s governor from enforcing 10- and 25-person occupancy limits on religious institutions, granting a request from the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel.
The state had told the court there was no need to act because the restrictions, which were adopted as a way to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, had recently been dialed back.
The court apparently divided 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissenting.
Trump Pardons Former Adviser Michael Flynn, Who Pleaded Guilty In Russia Probe
President Donald Trump pardoned Michael Flynn on Wednesday, more than two years after the former national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during an explosive investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Flynn was accused of “willfully and knowingly” making “materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements” in a Jan. 24, 2017, interview with FBI agents on topics including his past communications with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. He resigned from his post in February 2017, after allegedly also misleading top administration officials about his conversations with Moscow.
Trump, limited in his pardoning power by his time left in office, said on Twitter that he pardoned Flynn with the hopes that he and his family “have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving.”
Obama memoir sells a record 1.7 million copies in first week
Former President Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land” sold more than 1.7 million copies in North America in its first week, roughly equal to the combined first week sales of memoirs by his two immediate predecessors and among the highest ever for a nonfiction book.
Crown announced Tuesday that it had increased its initial print run from 3.4 million copies to 4.3 million. Sales also include audio and digital books.
“A Promised Land,” the first of two planned volumes, was published Nov. 17 and sold nearly 890,000 copies just in its first day. Among former White House residents, only Obama’s wife Michelle approaches his popularity as a writer. Her “Becoming,” published in 2018, has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and is currently in the top 20 on Amazon.com.
Trump pops into White House briefing room for incredibly weird one-minute impromptu speech
President Donald Trump has kept an unusually low profile since his election defeat, making few public appearances and hardly speaking except for on Twitter.
But when the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 30,000 for the first time on Tuesday, Trump emerged to take a victory lap.
“That is a sacred number,” said Trump, who has long fixated on the stock market as the barometer of his administration’s economic performance. “Nobody thought they’d ever see it.”
A U.S. Record: Two Million New Virus Cases in Two Weeks
For the first time since the coronavirus outbreak hit the United States, the country has added more than one million cases in each of the past two consecutive weeks. Covid deaths, which lag reported cases by weeks, are also at a level not seen since the spring.
Some epidemiologists project that the number of deaths in the coming weeks could exceed the spring peak, in spite of improved treatment.
In the past week, the United States added an average of 173,000 new daily cases. If this growth pattern holds, the total number of cases reported for the full month of November is likely to hit 4.5 million. That would be more than double the number of any previous month.
Trump Reportedly Planning To Pardon Michael Flynn, Start Of Spree
President Donald Trump is planning to pardon Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, according to several media reports on Tuesday evening.
Both Axios and The New York Times said Trump has privately told aides Flynn will benefit from a series of pardons the president will issue before he leaves office. The move would continue Trump’s trend of helping several notable supporters and associates who have been convicted of crimes during his administration. (The president also pardoned a turkey named Corn this week, as part of a White House Thanksgiving tradition.)
Bob Cesca: Enough cowardice… Democrats must forge ahead, without caring what the Trumpers say
Even after the landslide defeat of Donald Trump, Republicans across the board continue to be terrified by Trump’s disciples. Fear of the Red Hats has always been one of the primary reasons why the rest of Trump’s party has refused to speak out against his ongoing horror show. It’s not the only reason, but it’s one of the more potent ones.
It’s fascinating to observe how thoroughly they’ve painted themselves into a corner. While leading Republicans are in love with Trump’s policies, not to mention the cover the Red Hats gave them to pass their agenda, they’re privately disgusted by the president’s total lack of personal restraint and constant self-sabotage.
The Virus Surge, Once Centered in the Midwest, Is Accelerating in 45 U.S. States
When infections began rising sharply in the U.S. in September, the growth was driven largely by outbreaks in the Upper Midwest. States like North Dakota and Wisconsin soon became the hardest hit in the nation, relative to their size, and the region continues to struggle.
Now, though, with the whole country’s daily average of new cases is as high as it has ever been — over 171,000 — the most rapid growth is happening elsewhere. Nine states are reporting more than twice as many new cases a day as they did two weeks ago, and none of them are in the Midwest.
Biden expected to tap history-making pick, Janet Yellen, for Treasury Department
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to name Janet Yellen as his pick for treasury secretary, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
If confirmed by the Senate, Yellen, 74, will be the first woman to hold the top job.
First Latino tapped to head DHS signals shift from Trump’s hard-line immigration policies
Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino chosen for President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet, will head a Department of Homeland Security that is expected to drastically overhaul President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, as well as put Mayorkas at the forefront of the new administration’s anti-terrorism strategy.
Mayorkas will be the first Latino and first immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security, if confirmed by the Senate. The highest-ranking Cuban American in the Obama administration, Mayorkas was deputy secretary of DHS under then-Secretary Jeh Johnson, and before that was the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of DHS that oversees granting citizenship and other immigration benefits.
Trump Administration Finally Clears Way For Biden Transition To Begin
Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, said the transition between President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden can begin, releasing millions of dollars in funds and clearing the way for a new administration.
“I have dedicated much of my adult life to public service, and I have always strived to do what is right,” Murphy wrote in a letter to Biden on Monday. “Please know that I came to my decision independently, based on the law and the available facts. I was never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official — including those who work at the White House or GSA — with regard to the substance or timing of my decision.”
Charlie Pierce: This Is the Beta Test for a Future Where Republicans Will Simply Never Accept a Democratic Victory
The latest episode of the administration*’s ongoing hit legal sitcom takes place in Wisconsin, where the campaign’s “observers” are pretty much super-spreading hecklers at this point, and where his legal teams continue their unparalleled performance as the biggest collection of boobs and yahoos to enter a courtroom since Curly was arraigned for the murder of Kirk Robin.
Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire Politics.
Incoming chief of staff says Biden will begin announcing Cabinet picks this week
Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden will begin announcing his Cabinet picksearly this week.
Klain said on ABC News’ “This Week” that Americans will see the first of Biden’s nominees Tuesday.
“Meeting the pace — beating, in fact, the pace that was set by the Obama/Biden transition, beating the pace set by the Trump transition,” Klain said, adding, “But if you want to know what Cabinet agencies they are, who’s going to be in those Cabinet agencies, you’ll have to wait for the president-elect to say that himself on Tuesday.”
Trump campaign cuts ties with attorney Sidney Powell after bizarre election fraud claims
President Donald Trump appears to have cut ties with Sidney Powell, a key member of his legal team who also represents former national security adviser Michael Flynn in his long-running attempt to unravel a guilty plea for lying about his 2016 contacts with Russia.
The abrupt shake-up came in a terse Sunday-evening statement from the Trump campaign that offered no explanation for Powell’s removal.
“Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis said in the statement. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.”
AstraZeneca says its coronavirus vaccine can be around 90 percent effective
British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said on Monday that its vaccine for Covid-19 could be up to 90 percent effective in preventing the disease — the third promising breakthrough in the fight against a pandemic that has killed nearly 1.4 million people worldwide.
“This vaccine’s efficacy and safety confirm that it will be highly effective against Covid-19 and will have an immediate impact on this public health emergency,” Pascal Soriot, Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement.
Carl Bernstein Names Names: 21 Republican Senators Who’ve Privately Ripped Trump
Journalist Carl Bernstein on Sunday night called out Republicans in the Senate for remaining silent as President Donald Trump attempts to overthrow the results of the election and remain in office via lawsuits based on false claims.
And he’s naming names.
Bernstein identified 21 lawmakers who he said have “expressed extreme contempt for Trump & his fitness to be POTUS” behind the scenes.
See the list of names and read the rest of the story at HuffPost
Eric Boehlert: Biden White House should give Fox News the boot
Over the last four years, the Trump White House press briefing room has welcomed the right-wing media swamp, with conspiracy outlets like Gateway Pundit and OAN granted access to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was part of a Trump campaign to de-legitimize the press and turn the traditionally-serious briefings into partisan showdowns, where Trump’s far-right media supporters were able to turn the sessions into a farce by asking absurd questions that echoed Trump talking points.
The Biden White House needs to fumigate all of that. While they’re at it, they should give Fox News the boot, too. An avowed propaganda outlet that damages our democracy every day, it’s time for a Democratic administration to tell the truth about Fox News.
The Rude Pundit: Rudy Giuliani Is Sweating His Hair Color Off for America
Goddamn, why can’t we just be fucking done with Rudy Giuliani? At this point, his story should have ended in a fading Manhattan hotel room when the housekeeper finds his corpse hanging in a closet with a belt around his neck and no pants, his hand rigor-mortised around his dick. like he was choking a garden snake, before he realized he couldn’t reach the foot stool he thought was close enough. Of course, the housekeeper would have to nudge him a few times because Giuliani already looks like a corpse that’s been buried and dug up several times over. Prison rape porn would definitely be playing on his computer. An open, one-way plane ticket to Moscow would definitely be in his briefcase.
Trump campaign asks for another Georgia recount
President Donald Trump’s campaign said Saturday it is seeking a second recount of presidential election votes in Georgia after the first one did not turn out in his favor.
Under state election rules the campaign is within its rights; the first hand recount, completed Thursday and certified Friday, had been automatically triggered by a new state law.
Campaigns can request an additional machine recount if a vote margin is within 0.5 percent. The final certified results had Joe Biden at 49.51 percent compared to Trump at 49.25 percent for a margin of 0.26 percent.
In blistering ruling, judge throws out Trump suit in Pennsylvania
A federal judge issued a scathing order Saturday dismissing the Trump campaign’s futile effort to block the certification of votes in Pennsylvania, shooting down claims of widespread irregularities with mail-in ballots.
The case was always a long shot to stop President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, but it was President Donald Trump’s best hope to affect the election results through the courts, mostly because of the number of electoral votes, 20, at stake in Pennsylvania. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, stepped into a courtroom for the first time in decades to argue the case this past week.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann wrote in his order that Trump had asked the court to disenfranchise almost 7 million voters.
Congress heads home for Thanksgiving without pandemic relief deal
But there is some hope that renewed talks could see some sort of coronavirus relief aid in the coming weeks even with little time remaining on the legislative calendar before the end of the year.
Democratic aides have told ABC News that staffers of the congressional ‘Big Four’ met Thursday to discuss ways coronavirus relief could be tacked on to a must-pass spending bill that needs to clear both chambers of Congress by Dec. 11 to avert a government shutdown. The ‘Big Four’ includes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Promising more lawsuits, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani recycles litany of debunked claims
President Donald Trump‘s legal team on Thursday staged a bizarre 90-minute press conference where they outlined plans to resurrect a crumbling legal strategy, in part by recycling a litany of false claims — including several that have already been rejected in the courts.
Rudy Giuliani led the effort in a winding, and at times, angry speech in which he lashed out at the mainstream press for failing to repeat his unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud. Giuliani, sweating profusely, told gathered reporters that the claims would be the foundation of new lawsuits in multiple states.
Rachel Maddow Reveals Partner’s Harrowing COVID-19 Battle On Return To MSNBC
Rachel Maddow made an emotional return to MSNBC airwaves Thursday night, revealing that she has spent the past two weeks caring for her partner, whose COVID-19 infection was so serious they thought it might kill her.
The 47-year-old anchor told viewers in a from-home broadcast that the COVID-19 exposure from a close contact that has prompted her absence since Nov. 6 was in fact her longtime partner, Susan Mikula, whom she described as the “center of my life.”
“At one point, we really thought it was a possibility it might kill her, and that’s why I’ve been away,” Maddow said.
Georgia hand count of votes affirms Biden’s narrow victory over Trump
A hand tally of the presidential race in Georgia is complete, and the results affirm Democrat Joe Biden’s lead over Republican President Donald Trump.
Biden went into the recount with a margin of 13,558 votes, according to votes tallied by NBC News. Previously uncounted ballots discovered during the hand count reduced the margin to 12,284 votes, the Georgia secretary of state’s office reported.
“The recount process simply reaffirmed what we already knew: Georgia voters selected Joe Biden to be their next president,” said Jaclyn Rothenberg, Georgia communications director for the Biden campaign. “We are grateful to the election officials, volunteers and workers for working overtime and under unprecedented circumstances to complete this recount as the utmost form of public service.”
Harry Litman: Why not sue the GSA to get the transition going? Wouldn’t be prudent.
Occupants of the real world recognize that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. His lead is far too large to reverse, and President’s Trump’s disingenuous defenders haven’t even offered a legal theory, much less any evidence, that would so much as dent it.
But the president and his appointed administrator of the General Services Administration, Emily Murphy, continue to constitute a two-person blockade preventing the Biden team from commencing the transition. That is because the law — the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 — assigns to the GSA head the responsibility to “ascertain” the “apparent” winner and trigger the government’s formal transition-of-power apparatus.
Read the rest of Harry Litman’s column at The Los Angeles Times.
Trump Campaign Attorneys Admit ‘There Is No Evidence’ of ‘Any Fraud’ in Connection with Challenged Ballots in Bucks County, Pa.
Attorneys representing President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign in challenging thousands of ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania agreed to sign court documents on Wednesday informing the court that there was no evidence of fraud or misconduct pertaining to those ballots.
The lawsuit—filed last week by the campaign as well as the Republican National Committee and two GOP candidates for state office—sought to have the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas invalidate more than 2,200 “defective ballots” that were counted following a review by the Board of Elections.
‘You Got Me Emotional’: Biden Gets Choked Up During Video Chat With Pandemic Health Care Workers
President-elect Joe Biden got emotional during a video conference with a group of health care workers treating Covid-19 patients, getting teary-eyed after hearing a heartbreaking story from an ICU nurse.
CNN’s Brooke Baldwin played a clip of the discussion Wednesday, introducing the video as part of a segment with reporter Arlette Saenz about the challenges the Biden transition team is facing getting the Trump administration to cooperate with them.
“So Biden really, for the fourth day in a row, he and his team are again pressing the case and trying to keep the pressure on the Trump administration to begin coordinating with them when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic,” said Saenz, and as part of his effort to “trying to put a personal face to this pandemic,” Biden held a video conference with “the front line health care workers who are battling this virus day in and day out.”
Two MI GOP Election Officials Now Want to ‘Rescind’ Their Vote Approving Wayne County Results
The two Republicans on the Wayne County (Mich.) Board of Canvassers now want to “rescind” their vote to certify the 2020 election results in their county, releasing an affidavit late on Wednesday night that seeks to double back on their flip-flop from just one day earlier.
On Tuesday night, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann initially voted against certification, deadlocking the county board in a 2 – 2 tie, which would’ve pushed the vote certification up to a state board for review. The shocking move ignited a fierce, public backlashand over the course of a three-hour public meeting, the pair ultimately changed their minds, endorsing a second, unanimous vote validating the vote, which included hundreds of thousands of votes for President-elect Joe Biden from majority African-American Detroit.
U.S. surpasses 250,000 coronavirus deaths as virus mortality rate surges
The United States has recorded a quarter-million Covid-19 deaths, the latest NBC News numbers showed Wednesday, and the death rate has been accelerating in recent weeks as cases have been surging across the country.
The 250,000th death was logged Wednesday morning, the data revealed.
In the last four weeks there has been a 42 percent increase in the number of fatalities, from a weekly average of 821 per day in early October to last week’s average of 1,167 per day, according to an NBC News analysis of the available data.
Pentagon announces troop reductions in Afghanistan and Iraq
The U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan and Iraq will be reduced to 2,500 in each country by mid-January, acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller announced on Tuesday.
Miller made the announcement in remarks to Pentagon reporters that highlighted the next step in what he called “President Trump’s plan to bring the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to a successful and responsible conclusion and to bring our brave service members home.”
He said that President Donald Trump made the decision to draw down troops in both countries in consultation with his top national securityofficials and that it did not amount to a change in policy.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) tests positive for coronavirus
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the second-oldest member of the Senate, has tested positive for coronavirus.
The 87-year-old Iowa Republican said in a statement that he learned he was exposed to the coronavirus Tuesday morning and received a positive test.
“While I still feel fine, the test came back positive for the coronavirus,” Grassley said. “I am continuing to follow my doctors’ orders and CDC guidelines. I’ll be keeping up my work for the people of Iowa from home.”
Michigan GOPers Try To Steal Election For Trump, Change Minds At The Last Minute
The two Republicans on Michigan’s Wayne County Board of Canvassers initially refused on Tuesday to certify the county’s election results, which show former Vice President Joe Biden defeating President Donald Trump.
But they suddenly reversed their decision after hours of phone calls from the public lambasting them for trying to exclude predominantly Black Detroit from the certification.
The board first deadlocked at 2-2 with the Republicans voting against certifying the results and Democrats voting to certify. It would have been an unprecedented move by a local board to refuse to certify an election result as part of a scheme to overturn the outcome.
Trump fires head of election cybersecurity who debunked conspiracy theories
Christopher Krebs, who led the federal government’s election cybersecurity efforts, has been fired by President Donald Trump via Twitter.
Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has been the target of public criticism from Trump since the Nov. 3 election over his agency’s Rumor Control blog, which rebuts a list of false claims about election fraud and hacking — many of which Trump or his lawyers have touted as real after he lost the election.
“I’m proud of the work we did at CISA,” Krebs told NBC News on Tuesday night after the firing. “I’m proud of the teammates I had at CISA. We did it right.”
Charlie Pierce: I’m Not Going to Be Comfortable Until Joe Biden’s Hand Comes Off the Bible
Because I do not believe that everything that’s bad crazy in American conservatism, and in the Republican Party into which it injected its prion disease decades ago, began on Election Night, 2016, I can remind people that the Republicans floated this notion in 2000, if things in Florida had turned sour on George W. Bush. There even was talk that Florida would send two slates of electors to Washington and let the House of Representatives sort it out, which would have left us with C-Plus Augustus anyway, but at least would have been marginally inbounds as regards the Constitution. That this ratfcking subtropical gorgon has revived the notion is merely DiSantis’ picking up a notion that has become common strategy among defeated Republican candidates.
Strict New Limits Imposed Coast To Coast In U.S. As COVID-19 Surge Continues
The city of Philadelphia and several large U.S. states on Monday announced strict new limits on social gatherings and commercial activity to tamp down a coronavirus surge threatening to overwhelm healthcare systems and claim thousands more lives in the weeks ahead.
New Jersey, California, Ohio and Pennsylvania’s largest city joined a growing list of states and local jurisdictions re-imposing tough measures designed to blunt a nationwide spike in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, following a summertime ebb.
Health experts warn the coming holiday travel season and the onset of colder weather will only exacerbate the trend, with people more likely to congregate indoors.
Trump Reportedly Talked Out of Plan to Strike Iranian Nuclear Facility Before He Leaves Office
President Donald Trump was talked out of nascent plans to strike at Iran’s main nuclear site in the few remaining weeks of his administration.
Per a report in the New York Times, Trump asked about options to hit the country during an Oval Office meeting last week, just one day after the International Atomic Energy Agency published a report that estimated Iran has now rebuilt its stockpile to nearly three tons of enriched uranium, enough to build two nuclear weapons. When Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018, the country had off-loaded 97 percent of its old stockpile out of the country, leaving it with too little uranium to build even one weapon.
Georgia Sec of State Speaks Out: Lindsey Graham Implied That I ‘Look Hard and See How Many Ballots You Can Throw Out’
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger appeared on CNN Monday night to talk about the attacks he’s gotten from fellow Republicans and to clarify a stunning claim he made about his conversation with Senator Lindsey Graham.
In a new Washington Post interview, Raffensperger claimed that Graham suggested he exclude legal ballots
Biden warns ‘more people may die’ because of Trump’s transition delays
President-elect Joe Biden on Monday warned that the biggest threat to the country and to his transition posed by President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 race is that “more people may die.”
Biden made the stark warning during remarks about the economy from Wilmington, Delaware, during which he was asked by NBC News’s Geoff Bennett about the dangers created by Trump’s delay in the transfer of power to Biden.
“More people may die, if we don’t coordinate,” Biden replied.
Thousands rally behind Trump, insisting he won a race that he lost
Fervent supporters of President Donald Trump rallied in Washington on Saturday behind his spurious claim of a stolen election and swarmed his motorcade in adulation when he detoured for a drive-by on his way out of town.
Hours later, after night fell in the nation’s capital, demonstrators favoring Trump clashed in the streets with counterprotesters, videos posted on social media showing fistfights, projectiles and clubs. Police arrested at least 20 people on a variety of charges, including assault and weapons possession, officials said. One stabbing was reported, two police officers were injured and several firearms were also recovered by police.
Trump seems to suggest Biden ‘won’ but later says he’s not conceding
President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that Joe Biden had “won” the presidential election while saying that the election was rigged — a claim that has been widely debunked.
“He won because the Election was Rigged,” Trump wrote before falsely claiming that no watchers or observers had been allowed.
It was not clear whether the tweet represented a grudging or an accidental concession by Trump that he had lost the election, which he has repeatedly claimed to have won, even after every major news organization projected Biden as the victor.
Incoming Biden chief of staff warns transition delay puts vaccine distribution at risk
President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, urged the Trump administration Sunday to reverse course and begin working on a presidential transition so “nothing drops in this change of power” that would jeopardize the new administration’s ability to distribute a coronavirus vaccine.
President Donald Trump and his campaign continue to pursue legal challenges in several states contesting results and making unfounded allegations of widespread fraud.
U.S. hits 11 million Covid cases as restrictions increase and holiday worries mount
The United States surpassed more than 11 million Covid-19 on Sunday, as the third wave of the virus continued its uncontrolled spread, new restrictions were introduced, and Americans weighed whether and how they can celebrate Thanksgiving.
The U.S. recorded more than 1 million new cases this past week alone, including 156,416 on Saturday, which marked the eleventh day in a row that the United States recorded more than 100,000 daily cases. More than a dozen states, including New Hampshire, Maryland, Colorado, and Montana, all broke daily records of cases on Saturday as well. Georgia was the only state in the country to see a decrease in cases over the past 14 days.
Eric Boehlert: Trump’s election madness… The press gives Republicans a pass
As Trump continues to thrash around, ordering his lawyers to file absurd lawsuits in an attempt to overturn free and fair election results nationwide, the press once again is giving Republicans a pass. Refusing to hold the GOP accountable for truly outrageous and destructive behavior from the head of its party, the Beltway media continue a distressing Trump era tradition of caving into Republican indifference, and worse, depicting undemocratic actions as merely a unique, harmless political strategy.
Instead of vivid portraits of a party abandoning any principles as GOP lawmakers obediently fall in line behind Trump’s nasty behavior, we get coverage about how savvy Republicans are for holding their tongues about Trump and refusing to hold him accountable. It’s more media normalizing in the age of Trump.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece and subscribe to PressRun Media.
The Rude Pundit: Relax. It’s Okay to Be Panicky About Trump’s Attempt to Steal the Election
I know how it is. You’re sitting there watching Trump refuse to concede, file lawsuits over nonexistent voting fraud, do weird shit with the military and intelligence leadership, and more, and you’re thinking, “What the fuck is he up to?” And then you read things that tell you to shit yourself in terror and other things telling you to chill the fuck out. And then you’re watching reports on how Bill Barr is telling the Justice Department to investigate even suspected “irregularities” in voting, not even those that are crimes, and you’re thinking, “Okay, now what the fuck is up with this?” And then you read things telling you to shit yourself in terror and other things telling you to chill the fuck out. And then you’re watching Republicans specifically refuse to say or outright deny that Joe Biden won the election. And then you read things that tell you to shit yourself in terror and other things telling you to chill the fuck out.
It’s like living inside a panic attack on meth.
Virus Cases Reach New Highs in U.S., Prompting Talk of More Lockdowns
The coronavirus pandemic is spreading with frightening speed throughout the United States, shattering records on a daily basis, stretching medical resources to breaking point and once again prompting states, counties and cities to consider economically devastating lockdowns.
On Thursday, public health officials recorded more than 150,000 new cases in a day for the first time — more than 160,000, in fact. It was only eight days earlier that the country had its first 100,000-case day. Six of the last nine days have set new records, and with colder weather driving people indoors, there is little reason to expect a respite soon.’
Election officials, including Dept. of Homeland Security, contradict Trump’s voter-fraud conspiracy theories
A group of national, state and private election officials said in a joint statement Thursday that there is no evidence of any voting system being compromised in the 2020 election despite President Donald Trump’s deluge of election fraud conspiracies.
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result,” the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees said.
The group, which includes federal employees working in the Trump administration, added in boldfaced type: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
President Trump’s GOP wall of support is cracking
As President Donald Trump’s lawyers cling to their far-fetched schemes to overturn the presidential election, it was increasingly clear Thursday that cracks are forming in Trump’s Republican wall of support, as more GOP members stepped forward to say that President-elect Joe Biden should receive national intelligence briefings and others began to acknowledge the long-shot nature of the President’s quest.
Biden Wins Arizona, Padding His Electoral College Margin Over Trump
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has narrowly won Arizona, capturing the state’s 11 electoral votes and strengthening his Electoral College margin as President Trump continues to make baseless attacks on the vote counts favoring Mr. Biden.
Mr. Biden, whose margin in Arizona is currently about 11,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage points, is the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since President Bill Clinton in 1996. Four years ago, Mr. Trump won the state by 3.5 percentage points.
These 5 States Just Set Records For COVID-19 Deaths
Virtually every state in the union is trending in the wrong direction in the pandemic, setting grim records by the day as Americans prepare to spend a winter battling a virus that thrives indoors.
At least five states ― Alaska, Missouri, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming ― set records for COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Simultaneously, at least five states — Colorado, Illinois, Montana, Ohio and Wyoming — surpassed single-day new caseload records Tuesday. (Wyoming appeared on both superlative lists.) Several other states, such as Pennsylvania, set records for new cases on Monday.
Trump’s Silent Public Veterans’ Day Outing Belies White House In Tumult
Donald Trump spent 10 minutes in public Wednesday honoring America’s war veterans — a veneer of normalcy for a White House that’s frozen by a defeated president mulling his options, mostly forgoing the mechanics of governing and blocking his inevitable successor.
Trump’s appearance at the annual Veterans Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery was his first public outing for official business in more than a week. He’s spent the past few days in private tweeting angry, unsupported claims of voter fraud.
The president has made no comments in person since Democrat Joe Biden clinched the 270 electoral votes on Saturday needed to win the presidency.
‘Devastating’: Top Pentagon leadership gutted as fears rise over national security
The firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper kicked off a rapid-fire series of high-level departures at the Pentagon on Tuesday, setting off alarms on Capitol Hill that the White House was installing loyalists to carry out President Donald Trump’s wishes during an already tense transition.
In quick succession, top officials overseeing policy, intelligence and the defense secretary’s staff all had resigned by the end of the day Tuesday, replaced by political operatives who are fiercely loyal to Trump and have trafficked in “deep state” conspiracy theories.
Fears continue to swirl over what these newly installed leaders will do as Trump fights the results of last week’s election, and after he has shown he is willing to use troops to solve political problems.
President-elect Biden picks longtime aide Ron Klain as chief of staff
President-elect Joe Biden named Ron Klain, a veteran of Capitol Hill, to be his White House chief of staff, the transition said in a news release.
Klain, 59, is a longtime Democratic operative who has strong ties to Biden, largely as his chief of staff during Biden’s first years as vice president. He also coordinated the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak, giving him both familiarity with Biden and important credentials as the Covid-19 response will consume Biden’s opening months.
U.S. Hits All-Time High For COVID-19 Hospitalizations, New Cases Hit All Time High
The number of hospitalizations linked to COVID-19 has hit an all-time high after medical facilities across the U.S. reported that 61,964 patients were hospitalized on Tuesday with serious cases of the virus, the latest sign that the worst of the pandemic may lie ahead.
The figure was tallied by the COVID Tracking Project, an organization affiliated with The Atlantic. Hospitals have once again issued dire warnings about running out of bed space amid an influx of patients with severe symptoms. Some states have already said the most recent surge is the worst since the pandemic began.
Pompeo Says There Will Be Smooth Transition To ‘Second Trump Administration’
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared to completely dismiss the results of the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, saying “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
The secretary of state initially smirked while answering and kept the rest of his remarks vague.
Trump loyalists given top Pentagon roles after several officials resign following Esper’s ouster
Several loyalists to President Donald Trump were promoted to top roles in the Defense Department on Tuesday after officials resigned following the unceremonious ouster of Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
The Pentagon confirmed the resignations of the department’s top officials for policy and intelligence in a statement. The resignations include those of James Anderson, the acting undersecretary for policy; Joseph Kernan, the undersecretary for intelligence; and Jen Stewart, Esper’s chief of staff. The release said Kernan’s resignation had been “planned for several months.”
Retired Army Gen. Anthony Tata, a frequent Fox News guest, will replace Anderson. Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who works in the Defense Department and was an aide to the disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, will replace Kernan. Kash Patel, a former National Security Council official and former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who worked on the controversial House investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, will replace Stewart.
President-elect Joe Biden calls Trump’s failure to concede ‘an embarrassment’
President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday called President Donald Trump’s failure to concede the election “an embarrassment,” but said neither that nor the Trump administration’s stonewalling would stop him from getting to work.
Asked for his thoughts on the anxiety some Americans feel over the president’s refusal to publicly admit defeat, Biden said, “I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly.”
“It will not help the president’s legacy,” Biden said, before adding that he didn’t think Trump’s resistance would wind up mattering.
Bob Cesca: It’s Biden’s job to act like a grownup. But “unity” and “civility” are a long way off
If there’s one thing President-elect Joe Biden understands it’s that chief executives lead by example. Presidents set the tone for the nation. In that regard, there’s nothing wrong with the next president “going high” in the face of a soon-to-be ex-president whose entire business model is going low — underground septic-tank low. In fact, Biden’s sentiments about healing a deeply divided nation are commendable, even if he only ends up reducing the fever by one or two degrees. Irrespective of the outcome, Biden will have to balance noble outreach, reconciliation and, yes, political hardball. We all have our roles to play in the discourse, and this is his.
Charlie Pierce: Biden’s Commitment to Competence Is an Automatic Reproach to the Current Administration*
Serendipity: The Transition Team’s Friend. Monday morning, the president-elect named the members of his pandemic task force and, by comparison to the hacks and quacks to whom we’ve been treated over the past several months, this one looks like the A-Team. From the New York Times:
On Monday morning, the president-elect announced the leadership of his coronavirus task force — the first public step in what aides say will be a focus on confronting the pandemic that has claimed almost a quarter of a million American lives. It will be led by Dr. Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general under former President Barack Obama, who has been a key Biden adviser for months and is expected to take a major public role; David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration for the first President George Bush and President Bill Clinton; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.
After Baseless Trump Claims, Barr Says DOJ Can Investigate Voter Fraud Allegations
As high-ranking Republicans refuse to speak out against President Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of mass voter fraud, Attorney General William Barr sent top federal prosecutors a memo that will further feed the narrative that there are questions about last week’s election of President-elect Joe Biden.
Barr’s memo, sent to U.S. attorneys across the country, authorizes an exception to Justice Department guidelines, telling top federal prosecutors they could “pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases.” Barr wrote that he’d already done so in specific instances.
HUD’s Ben Carson, Trump adviser Bossie test positive for coronavirus
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and David Bossie, an outside White House adviser, have both tested positive for Covid-19, becoming the latest figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit to contract the virus.
Bossie, a longtime Trump ally who was tapped to lead the effort to contest the presidential election, tested positive Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation. Bossie did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Carson went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for a test Monday morning after experiencing symptoms, according to a HUD official, who declined to discuss details of the symptoms.
Trump campaign adviser: Conceding ‘is not even in our vocabulary right now’
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump’s reelection effort, said Monday that the campaign was not remotely considering conceding to President-elect Joe Biden after the Democratic nominee was declared the winner of the 2020 White House race.
“That word is not even in our vocabulary right now,” Miller said in an interviewon Fox Business.
“We’re going to go and pursue all these legal means, all the recount methods,” he said. “We’re going to continue exposing and investigating all these instances of fraud or abuse, and make sure … [that] the American public can have full confidence in these elections.”
Pandemic Reaches Grim Milestone as Biden Moves to Take Charge
Coronavirus cases surged to a new record on Monday, with the United States now averaging 111,000 cases each day for the past week, a grim milestone amid rising hospitalizations and deaths that cast a shadow on positive news about the effectiveness of a potential vaccine.
As the number of infected Americans passed 10 million and governors struggled to manage the pandemic, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. tried on Monday to use his bully pulpit — the only tool at his disposal until he replaces President Trump in 72 days — to plead for Americans to set aside the bitterness of the 2020 election and wear a mask.
President-Elect Biden Names COVID-19 Advisory Board Stacked With Experts
President-elect Joe Biden announced Monday the members of a COVID-19 advisory board as he transitions into the White House. The roster of experts and doctors will help guide his administration as it confronts a rapidly worsening crisis that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and infected millions more.
The board will be co-chaired by three public health heavyweights: Dr. David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Bill Clinton, Dr. Vivek Murthy, who served as surgeon general under President Barack Obama, and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.
The board will also include a slate of global health experts, infectious disease researchers and doctors.
A little-known Trump appointee is in charge of handing transition resources to Biden — and she isn’t budging
A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden’s victory and could disrupt the transfer of power.
The administrator of the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency in charge of federal buildings, has a little-known role when a new president is elected: to sign paperwork officially turning over millions of dollars, as well as give access to government officials, office space in agencies and equipment authorized for the taxpayer-funded transition teams of the winner.
Biden plans to move fast on the pandemic and the economy
President-elect Joe Biden and his advisers plan this week to demonstrate a far more assertive strategy against the coronavirus than President Trump’s, and Biden may take a more proactive role in coming weeks in congressional negotiations over an economic stimulus package.
Biden’s proposals, some of which were posted on his new transition website, include aiming to secure funds for ramping up coronavirus testing, acquiring additional protective equipment such as masks and gowns, and investing $25 billion in vaccine manufacturing and distribution.
Op-Ed: Adam Schiff: Biden has his work cut out for him
Under unprecedented circumstances, and amid the worst pandemic in a century, Americans voted in record numbers and delivered a clear result: On Jan. 20, 2021, Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden will take office with a mandate to address a range of urgent issues. He will need to quickly work to bring the pandemic that is ravaging our nation under control, and restore the country’s struggling economy, ensuring shared prosperity and growth. He will have to ensure that every American has affordable healthcare, confront systemic racism and attack climate change. And he will have to contend with the damage from Donald Trump’s presidency, which is vast and only likely to grow over the next two months.
Read the rest of Rep. Adam Schiff’s op-ed at The Los Angeles Times.
Eric Boehlert: Indecision 2020 — TV networks lose their nerve
For a news industry traditionally obsessed with being first to land a big story, it’s disorienting to watch TV networks look like they don’t want to be the one to call the 2020 presidential election winner. Stuck in neutral since Friday morning (“Biden on the verge of winning”), when it appeared it would be just a matter of minutes or hours before one of the major news outlets’ Decision Desks declared that Trump had no mathematical path to victory and would announce Joe Biden the winner, the race has remained stuck in an animated state of suspension.
Not because the contest has become a nail biting, back-and-forth affair with wild swings in tallies, and that the winner truly remains in doubt. It’s not, and the coverage reflects that as analysts go over the votes, the math, the projections and essentially tell voters that Trump can’t win. The race is stuck in neutral because nobody will do the obvious and declare Biden the winner.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece and subscribe to his newsletter at PressRun Media.
The Rude Pundit: Trump to America Today… Democracy Is for Suckers and Losers
I gotta tell you: I watched Trump’s appearance today in the White House press room with enough burning schadenfreude to power a small city. As much as I wanted to be appalled and saddened and enraged, mostly what I thought was “Suffer, motherfucker.” If Biden ends up winning, as almost everyone seems to believe he will, this excruciating ballot count will have been worth it because Donald Fucking Trump was dragged down into the shit he created, watching it all fall apart. Sure, a swift ending would have been preferable, but this is so obviously tearing his tiny brain and his titanic ego to shreds that I’ll take it.
Kamala Harris, daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, elected nation’s first female vice president
Harris’s victory comes 55 years after the Voting Rights Act abolished laws that disenfranchised Black Americans, 36 years after the first woman ran on a presidential ticket and four years after Democrats were devastated by the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the only woman to win the presidential nomination of a major party.
Joe Biden triumphs over Trump, prompting celebration across the U.S. but no concession from the president
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was elected the nation’s 46th president Saturday in a repudiation of President Trump powered by legions of women and minority voters who rejected his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his divisive, bullying conduct in office.
Biden’s victory was the culmination of four years of struggle for Democrats and others who resisted Trump, and was celebrated by an emotional outpouring in cities coast to coast. The election took four days to be resolved after the former vice president was projected to win a series of battleground states, and was clinched by the state where he was born, Pennsylvania. Later Saturday, Biden was projected the winner of Nevada’s six electoral votes.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump aide test positive for Covid-19
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tested positive for Covid-19, a source familiar with the diagnosis told NBC News on Friday.
The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes as the U.S. recorded the third straight day of more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases, breaking previous records.
It also comes as President Donald Trump and some of his allies are mounting election-related lawsuits and making baseless claims of voter fraud to fight off the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency.
Biden Confident About Victory: ‘The Numbers Tell Us It’s Clear… We’re Going to Win This Race
Joe Biden addressed the nation from Wilmington, DE late Friday evening, and with the votes in the remaining states continuing to trend in his direction but the networks yet to call the election, he was confident about his eventual victory, saying “we’re going to win this race with a clear majority.”
“We don’t have a final declaration, a victory, yet,” Biden began, “but the numbers tell us it’s clear. It’s a clear and convincing story — we are going to win this race.”
“Just look at what has happened since yesterday,” he continued, describing how he had been behind President Donald Trump in Georgia and Pennsylvania, but was now “going to win” those states, as well as Arizona and Nevada. “In fact, our lead just doubled in Nevada.”
Covid-19 cases break record for second day in a row, topping 120,000
A record number of coronavirus cases were reported Thursday, breaking a record set Wednesday of more than 100,000 cases in a single day.
A total of 120,048 people tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, nearly 16,000 more than on Wednesday, according to an NBC News tally.
The United States has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world. More than 236,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the U.S., according to NBC News data.
‘This is getting insane’: Republicans push back against Trump’s false election claims
Republican lawmakers and officials are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s series of false claims Thursday night about the presidential election, although many did not mention him by name.
Shortly before Trump made baseless claims at a news conference about massive voter fraud in Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said in a statement that once the state’s final election count is “reached and certified, all parties involved must accept the outcome of the election regardless of whether they won or lost.”
Toomey also called for patience as the votes are counted, despite Trump’s having tweeting earlier in the day that officials should “stop the count!” Speaking about the mail-in vote count, Trump also told reporters, “There has been a lot of shenanigans, and we can’t stand for that in our country.”
Biden predicts victory in 2020 race: ‘When the count is finished, we will be the winners’
Joe Biden predicted Wednesday that he would win the 2020 election over President Donald Trump when the final votes were counted.
“After a long night of counting, it’s clear we’re winning enough statesto win 270 electoral votes to win the presidency,” Biden told a small group of reporters at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington, Delaware.
“When the count is finished, we will be the winners,” Biden said.
Biden erases Trump lead in Georgia, margin shrinks in Pennsylvania
As an anxious nation watched into the wee hours of the morning Friday, Joe Biden took a slim lead in Georgia with the fate of the presidency remaining unknown and five closely watchedstates continuing to count ballots almost two days after polls closed.
The unresolved election stoked tensions as voters — who turned out in record numbers — seek resolution of a campaign marked by intensifying polarization and a global pandemic that counts the president among its stricken.
President Donald Trump continues to fight for his re-election by trying to generate unfounded fears about the tabulation process. His campaign filed multiple lawsuits, several of which have already been thrown out, and more are expected. Trump fired off all-capital-letter tweets demanding that officials halt counting and leave ballots uncounted in places where analysts think the remaining votes favor Democrats.
Joe Biden Receives Most Votes In Presidential Election History
There’s no clear winner yet in the 2020 presidential election, but Democratic nominee Joe Biden has already made history by winning the most votes a presidential candidate has ever received in a U.S. election.
The former vice president has amassed more than 70 million votes so far, breaking the record Barack Obama nabbed in 2008 when he secured 69,498,516 votes in his presidential race against Republican Sen. John McCain.
Biden sets the record in an election that could very well have the highest voter turnout in 120 years. Democrats have been incredibly motivated to unseat President Donald Trump, one of the most polarizing presidents in American history, and led a dedicated campaign the past four years to increase voter accessibility and turnout.
Trump eyes Supreme Court, but campaign takes election fight to state courts
When President Donald Trump vowed to ask the Supreme Court to halt ballot counting, he wasn’t actually outlining his campaign’s plan. In fact, some Republicans say, Trump didn’t even understand what he was calling for.
But buried in Trump’s confusing claim was the seed of his campaign’s actual legal strategy, one they have been building for more than a year with the help of thousands of lawyers and that finally took shape this week, according to Republicans familiar with the situation.
Trump’s campaign on Wednesday filed lawsuits to halt the counting of ballots in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia — all key swing states. It’s contesting ballots in a Democratic stronghold in Nevada. And it could appeal a decision to permit late-arriving absentee ballots in North Carolina, as long as they were mailed before the election deadline.
Republican allies break with Trump, say take time to count all the votes
Some Republicans are not falling in line behind President Donald Trump’s attempts to falsely declare victory and seek to halt some vote-counting in the presidential race, with several GOP leaders expressing rare public rebukes of the president.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a Trump ally who usually avoids criticizing the president in public, told reportersWednesday that “claiming you’ve won the election is different from finishing the counting.”
BATTLEGROUNDS HANG IN BALANCE AS FINAL COUNTS GO ON
The presidential election remained undecided Wednesday evening, turning the nation’s attention to a handful of battleground states that continue to tabulate the crush of mail-in ballots that will decide whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be victorious.
NBC News has projected the outcome in 44 states, giving Biden a narrow but growing lead over Trump in the Electoral College count. But both remain shy of the 270 electors needed to win, with many critical battleground states still too early or too close to call.
Biden is the projected winner in Michigan, picking up the state’s 16 electoral votes in a state Trump carried in 2016. He is also the apparent winner in Wisconsin, NBC News projected, but the results are close enough that there could be a recount.
Joe Biden Urges Supporters To ‘Keep The Faith’ Amid Slow Election Results
Democratic challenger Joe Biden urged his supporters to “keep the faith” amid slow results from a slate of battleground states in the presidential election, saying he believed he was on track to defeat President Donald Trump when all the votes are counted.
“We knew this was going to go long, but who knew we were going to go into tomorrow morning, maybe even longer,” Biden said in Delaware. “We feel good about where we are, we really do. I’m here to tell you tonight, we believe we’re on track to win this election.”
Results in several pivotal battleground states, namely Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, have been slow to arrive, with election officials saying the crush of mail-in ballots will take time to count. Georgia also said late in the evening it did not think it would have full results until at least Wednesday.
Dems keep House, GOP holds key Senate seats
Democrats will maintain control of the House of Representatives, NBC News projects, but their path to taking control in the Senate narrowed as numerous Republican incumbents fended off strong opposition.
Democrats, who were winning fewer House seats than they had hoped, failed to pick up some of the Senate seats they were banking on. Democratic hopes for a big night were dashed up and down the ballot, as President Donald Trump outperformed his polls against Joe Biden.
By 3 a.m. on Wednesday, 47 seats were projected to be controlled by Republicans and 46 by Democrats, including two independents who caucus with Democrats. Seven seats were still outstanding.
With nine states still counting millions of votes, Trump falsely claims he won
President Donald Trump made a series of false and misleading claims about the 2020 election and vote-counting processes early Wednesday morning, ranging from how he’s fared so far in the race to what will happen next.
Here’s a look at his claims, including the states he incorrectly claimed to have won and baseless allegations that his supporters were being disenfranchised.
Neither NBC News nor any other major news organization has declared a winner in the 2020 presidential race, and either candidate, Joe Biden or Trump, could still win. Here’s what the president said, and the facts.
TRUMP-BIDEN RACE REMAINS UNSETTLED AS LAST KEY STATES COUNT THEIR VOTES
President Donald Trump has won Florida and Ohio, NBC News projects, while Joe Biden picked up Minnesota and New Hampshire and leads in Arizona in Tuesday’s presidential election.
Trump had to win Florida to have any real shot at re-election, most analysts agree, while Biden has multiple paths to victory that do not include the state, such as winning back the Upper Midwest states like Wisconsin that Trump flipped four years ago.
With 89 percent of the expected vote counted in Wisconsin, Biden had 49.3 percent to Trump’s 49 percent, with much of the still-outstanding vote coming from Democratic-leaning areas like Green Bay and Kenosha.
Birx Internal Memo Reportedly Hits WH for Failing to Take ‘Aggressive Action’ Against Covid Third Wave: ‘This Is Not About Lockdowns’
Dr. Deborah Birx issued an internal report on Monday that took the White House to task for failing to take “much more aggressive action” as the country suffers from a massive resurgence in the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Washington Post, Birx, one of president’s key Covid-19 task force advisers repeatedly contradicted the president’s campaign “rounding the turn” narrative about the outbreak.
Undeterred by Pandemic, Americans Prepare to Deliver Verdict on Trump
Voters on both sides of the nation’s widening political divide prepared on Monday to render a verdict on President Trump’s four tumultuous years in the White House and, in particular, his management of the coronavirus pandemic that has upended American life for the past eight months.
As Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. raced across the most important battleground states in a frenzied final push for votes, the 2020 election was unfolding in a country with urgent problems: an uncontrolled public health crisis, a battered economy, deep ideological divisions, a national reckoning on race and uncertainty about whether the outcome of the vote will be disputed.
Nancy Pelosi: ‘We’re Ready For It All’ If Trump Tries To Create Election Chaos
On the eve of an election in which the president of the United States is signaling he’ll do anything to win, including promoting violence and cheating, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says she’s been methodically preparing for months for Donald Trump to try to steal the election and is confident Americans’ votes will be be fairly counted in the end.
“We’re ready for it all,” Pelosi told HuffPost in a Friday interview. “I would just like him to know it ain’t going to happen for him at the end of the day.”
The First Election Day Results Are Already In in Dixville Notch, Thanks To A Quirky Old Law
Two small rural communities in New Hampshire cast their ballots just after midnight on Tuesday ― and, thanks to a quirk in state election law, they’ve also tallied the vote and released the results.
All five voters in Dixville Notch chose Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over President Donald Trump.
The first ballot was cast by lifelong Republican Les Otten, who voted for Biden.
Charlie Pierce: The Republican Party Went Around the Bend Before Trump, and It Will Stay There After
I am intrigued by this story in the New York Times, not necessarily for what it says, which is some prime Grade-A Both Sides ground beef, but for what it portends for the postgame analysis over the next several months. It’s all very ill-omened and it has made me doubt if, even now, anyone is ready to confront the simple fact that one of our two major political parties has gone completely around the fcking bend, and that it went completely around the fcking bend long before it lined itself up behind a vulgar talking yam.
Federal court hears last-minute Republican bid Monday morning to toss ballots in Texas
A federal court in Houston is holding an emergency hearing Monday morning over a last-ditch effort by Republicans in Texas to toss out nearly 127,000 ballots in a Democratic-leaning county.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen will hear arguments on the bid by a quartet of Texas Republicans — three candidates and a conservative activist — to invalidate all ballots cast in Harris County at drive-through polling places. The GOP contingent is arguing that the process was an illegal expansion of a limited provision for curbside voting in state law.
MAGA ‘Trump Trains’ Jam Roadways In Several States
Make America Great Again “Trump trains” jammed traffic on highways Sunday in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Texas, Indiana and Virginia in an effort to support President Donald Trump.
Trump supporters, several in pickup trucks and vans, shut down lanes on the busy Garden State Parkway near Lakeland, New Jersey, and clogged the nearby Marion Cuomo Bridge in New York.
Trump Suggests He Will Fire Anthony Fauci ‘A Little Bit After’ Election
President Donald Trump suggested Sunday he would fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a touchstone of scientific wisdom during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, shortly after the election.
Trump made the comments to a crowd of supporters in Florida late Sunday, the latest campaign stop in his frantic final push before Election Day. As Trump spoke about the coronavirus and derided his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, the crowd began chanting “Fire Fauci!”, a notion the president seemed to be on board with.
Biden Responds To Reports Trump Will Declare Early Victory: ‘Not Going To Steal This’
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Sunday President Donald Trump will not “steal” the election amid reports he planned to declare a premature victory on election night if early counts show him ahead, despite a mountain of mail-in votes that may take days or weeks to count.
The comments come amid theWhite House’s ongoing efforts to undermine an unprecedented level of absentee voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Polls have shown the president lagging behind Biden for months, and both Trump and top Republicans have spent the same time filing lawsuits to invalidate many ballots while sowing discord about what they claim is widespread electoral fraud (such claims are false, and there is no evidence to back them up).
Eric Boehlert: America turns on Trump — we’re not “polarized” after all
As Trump’s failed presidency limps into the final stages of its first term and he trails Joe Biden by historic margins, a key media myth is being burst right before our eyes. Instead of the deeply “polarized,” bitterly divided country the press insists we have become, where every hot-button issue divides the nation by a razor-thin 51-49 margin, we’re seeing swelling momentum of agreement. Poll after poll confirms the tide is moving away from Trump and away from the conservative agenda in America.
Picking up the electoral energy that was ignited during the 2018 midterm elections, a wide coalition of voters are not only opposing Trump, but are rejecting Republican initiatives across the board in large numbers. A silent majority of sorts, this partnership is often ignored by the press, which seems wed to the idea of portraying America as being impossibly divided in the age of Trump. In truth, Trump is helping to unite the country.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at and subscribe to PressRun Media
The Rude Pundit: Donald Trump, See You Next Tuesday
Donald Trump is a cunt. He has been a cunt for his entire worthless life. He might not be the most racist president, but he is certainly the cuntiest. He is campaigning by being as cunty as any human being has ever been, buoyed by the barbaric whoops of his crowds of cunts. He surrounds his cuntish self with as many cunts as can fit into whatever space he’s in, with his staff of cunts and his cunt family. He’s aided and abetted in his cuntiness by the cunt Republicans in Congress and the cunts in right-wing media who praise him as fulsomely as one might describe a lifeguard who rescued you from a shark. Except that lifeguard is not a cunt and Donald Trump is and he wouldn’t lift a finger to save you.
If you’ve voted already, you know that feeling of hope and anxiety and promise, a suppressed giddiness that is overwhelmed by our 2016 PTSD. You just felt good voting that cunt out of office. It was like you got to say, “Yeah, Donald Trump, you cunt, take that” as you dropped your ballot in the box or the mail. You allowed yourself to imagine how enraged and scared that cunt is gonna be when he loses. If he loses. No, when he loses.
Donald Trump Jr. dismisses coronavirus deaths: ‘The number is almost nothing’
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, falsely claimed on Thursday that the number of Americans dying from the coronavirus amounts to “almost nothing.”
More than 8.9 million people in the United States have been infected with Covid-19, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University, resulting in more than 228,000 deaths. The U.S. tallied a single-day record of more than 83,000 coronavirus cases last Friday and reported a new daily peak of more than 88,000 cases on Thursday. Deaths, an indicator that typically lags behind the number of cases, have also been on the rise.
More People Have Now Voted Early In Texas Than In All Of 2016
Texans have already cast more ballots in the presidential election than they did during all of 2016, an unprecedented surge of early voting in a state that was once the country’s most reliably Republican, but may now be drifting toward battleground status.
More than 9 million ballots have been cast as of Friday morning in the nation’s second most-populous state, exceeding the 8,969,226 cast in 2016, according to an Associated Press tally of early votes from data provided by Texas officials.
Texas is the first state to hit the milestone. This year’s numbers were aided by Democratic activists challenging in court for, and winning, the right to extend early voting by one week amid the coronavirus pandemic.
‘American fiasco’: House coronavirus oversight report rips Trump admin’s pandemic response
A House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis issued a report Friday blasting the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, calling it “among the worst failures of leadership in American history.”
“The virus is a global scourge, but it has been an American fiasco, killing more people in the United States than in any other country,” said the report, which the Democratic-run subcommittee of members of both parties released four days before Election Day.
U.S. records more than 90,000 Covid-19 cases in one day for the first time
The United States reached a daily record for coronavirus when more than 90,000 cases were reported on Thursday, according to the latest NBC News tally. More than 30 states reported more than 1,000 cases.
It was the first time the U.S. has crossed 90,000 cases in one day, almost 10,000 more than the previous high of 80,662 cases, which was set just a day before on Wednesday.
The record, of 90,456, also came after the U.S. logged 9 millionCovid-19 cases, only hours after reporting a single-day record crossing 80,000 cases for the first time.
‘Anonymous’ Author Behind Anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ Op-Ed And Book Identified
Miles Taylor has been identified as the author of a notorious anonymous op-ed in The New York Times in 2018 that claimed he was part of a secret “resistance” inside President Donald Trump’s administration.
Taylor revealed himself Wednesday in a tweet.
In a statement accompanying the announcement, Taylor observed that “Trump sees personal criticism as subversive,” adding, “I take a different view.”
Supreme Court won’t block mail ballots in North Carolina arriving up to six days after Election Day
The Supreme Court late Wednesday declined to block lower court rulings that allow six extra days for accepting ballots sent by mail in North Carolina. The justices left the later deadline in place, a victory for Democrats in a presidential battleground state.
Earlier in the day, in a defeat for Republicans, the court declined to take another look, on a fast track, at the issue of late arriving mail ballots in Pennsylvania, leaving intact a lower court ruling that said the state must count ballots that arrive up to three days after the election.
US may not be back to normal until 2022, Fauci says
As Covid-19 cases continue to jump during the fall surge, Dr. Anthony Fauci says there’s little chance of normalcy on the horizon.
The US will have a vaccine in the next few months, but there’s a chance a “substantial proportion of the people” won’t be vaccinated until the second or third quarter of 2021, Fauci said.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reiterated caution on the nation’s outlook.
Mission Accomplished? White House Science Office Credits Trump for ‘Ending the Covid-19 Pandemic’ as a First-Term Accomplishment
Fact-check: False…x 70,000 a day.
The White House Science Policy Office made an outrageously inaccurate claim on Tuesday, sending out a press release with a list of President Donald Trump’s first-term accomplishments. Among them: “ending the Covid-19 pandemic.”
That is, of course, patently absurd. The nation is currently the throes of a third wave of the outbreak, in which positive tests, hospitalizations, and deaths are rising once again and the number of new cases is hitting record highs, now averaging more than 70,000 new infections per day.
In the first bullet of the statement, under “Highlights include,” the un-bylined Office of Science and Technology Policy memo proclaims in bold, all-capitalized letters: “ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.”
U.S. Early Voting Tops 70 Million, Continuing Historic Pace
More than 70 million Americans have cast ballots in the U.S. presidential election, more than half the total turnout of the 2016 election with one week to go until Election Day, according to a Tuesday tally from the U.S. Elections Project.
The tally, which shows a record-breaking pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in percentage terms in more than a century, is the latest sign of intense interest in the contest between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden. It also highlights voters’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to COVID-19 as the pandemic regathers strength heading into winter.
Obama slams Trump over coronavirus: ‘He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage’
Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday harshly criticized President Donald Trump‘s response to the coronavirus pandemic and faulted him for turning the White House into a “hot zone.”
“More than 225,000 people in this country are dead. More than 100,000 small businesses have closed. Half a million jobs are gone in Florida alone. Think about that,” Obama said, speaking from Orlando as he campaigned for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
He continued, “And what’s his closing argument? That people are too focused on Covid. He said this at one of his rallies. Covid, Covid, Covid, he’s complaining. He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage. If he had been focused on Covid from the beginning, cases wouldn’t be reaching new record highs across the country this week.”
Trump To Women: ‘We’re Getting Your Husbands Back To Work’
President Donald Trump might need a refresher on what century he’s living in.
In yet another appeal to female voters ahead of Election Day, Trump pledged on Tuesday that if reelected, he’d be sure to get their “husbands back to work.” He made the astonishing remark during a campaign rally in Lansing, Michigan, after falsely bragging that he “did great with women” in the 2016 election.
“And that’s going to happen again. Because women, suburban or otherwise, they want security, they want security, they want safety. They want law and order,” he said.
Bob Cesca: Time to dump the presidential dilettante — he’s a cruel and incompetent failure
In the earliest days of the Trump crisis, just about a month after the inauguration, I received the horrifying news that my best friend and podcast partner, Chez Pazienza, had died of a drug overdose.
It was the evening of Feb. 25, 2017, and the shock still hasn’t quite worn off. In fact, I ask myself nearly every day what Chez might’ve said about the most recent atrocity committed by the chief executive. I’ll never know for sure, but there’s something comforting in that exercise, imagining how he’d frame this dark ride with equal parts Gen-X angst, stinging Bourdain-ish erudition and artistically worded blue streaks that would’ve made George Carlin applaud.
President Trump falsely declares coronavirus is ‘ending’ as virus rates spike and financial markets dip
Financial markets fell as he spoke, with investors reacting to the growing infection rates and dwindling hope of a pre-election stimulus package. Vice President Pence canceled a planned appearance at the U.S. Senate for the expected confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court justice, after Democrats objected because he has been in close contact with at least one of the five staff members who tested positive for the disease in recent days.
Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.
Jared Kushner Mocks Black Lives Matter Activists: They ‘Go On Instagram And Cry’
Jared Kusher, a top aide and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, appeared to mock Black Lives Matter activists on Monday, claiming many people who spoke out against George Floyd’s death in May were simply “virtue signaling.”
“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade asked Kushner about working with rapper Ice Cube ― who has faced backlash for spreading baseless QAnon conspiracy theories on social media ― on the Trump administration’s “Platinum Plan” for Black communities.
“So, look, there’s been a lot of discussion about the issues that were needed in the Black community for the last year, but particularly it intensified after the George Floyd situation,” Kushner said. “And, you know, you saw a lot of people that were just virtue signaling.
Supreme Court won’t let late mail ballots count in Wisconsin
Wisconsin cannot count mail ballots that arrive well after the polls close under an order issued Monday by the Supreme Court, a defeat for Democrats in a battleground state.
By a vote of 5-3, the justices declined to lift a lower court ruling preventing the state from counting mail ballots that arrive as much as six days after Election Day. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they would have granted the request.
Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett, heralding new conservative era for Supreme Court
The Republican-led Senate voted narrowly Monday to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, ending an acrimonious confirmation process and handing President Donald Trump a political victory days before the election.
Barrett, 48, a federal appeals judge, will fill the seat left vacant by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon who died Sept. 18, and she is expected to propel a sharp ideological turn on the court. Democrats made numerous unsuccessful attempts to slow or derail the vote but ran headlong into a Republican Part determined to cement a 6-3 majority.
Charlie Pierce: Trump’s Executive Order on Federal Employees Would Be a Win for the Swamp
Last Wednesday, El Caudillo Del Mar-a-Lago gave us yet another very good reason to vote him toward his date with the federal courts next week, albeit an obscure one, and one that has been obscured by the campaign, the Amy Coney Barrett railroad in the Senate, and the pandemic.
Putin rejects Trump’s criticism of Hunter Biden’s business
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden’s past business ties with Ukraine or Russia, marking out his disagreement with one of Donald Trump’s attack lines in the U.S. presidential election.
Putin was responding to comments made by Trump during televised debates with Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
Trump, who is trailing in opinion polls, has used the debates to make accusations that Biden and his son Hunter engaged in unethical practices in Ukraine. No evidence has been verified to support the allegations, and Joe Biden has called them false and discredited.
Barrett nomination clears Senate hurdle, putting her on course to confirmation to Supreme Court
Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination broke through one more hurdle ahead of her all-but-assured installation to the Supreme Court as the coronavirus pandemic — which has inextricably been intertwined with the story of her nomination — once again intersected with her confirmation fight.
Senators voted about 1:30 p.m. in a rare Sunday session, 51 to 48, to advance her nomination to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The final confirmation vote for Barrett is expected Monday night, putting her in position for a first full day as a justice as early as Tuesday and as the court continues to hear election-related legal challenges ahead of Nov. 3.
White House signals defeat in pandemic as coronavirus outbreak roils Pence’s office
With the election a little over a week away, the new White House outbreak spotlighted the administration’s failure to contain the pandemic as hospitalizations surge across much of the United States and daily new cases hit all-time highs.
The outbreak around Pence, who chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, undermines the argument Trump has been making to voters that the country is “rounding the turn,” as the president put it at a rally Sunday in New Hampshire.
Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread.
The Rude Pundit: Biden Wipes Trump’s Cards Off the Table
Last night’s presidential debate at Christian institution Belmont University in Nashville, TN, was notable for President Donald Trump calmly lying and being an asshole for the whole thing. Sure, he wasn’t a bellowing shit-blower like he was in the first debate, where he desperately tried and failed through sheer belligerent motherfuckery to provoke Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden into a pique of confusion and alleged dementia. But just because you speak calmly when you lie and act assholish doesn’t mean you’re not still a lying asshole. Hannibal Lecter may sound erudite and even-tempered, but he’s still gonna gut you.
Eric Boehlert: Getting away with it — Trump’s debate lies greeted with media shrugs
Trump’s first sentence in the debate last night was a lie, when he claimed more than two million Americans were “expected” to die form the Covid-19 virus, therefore America’s current death toll of 220,000 isn’t so bad. From that point on, Trump lied without pause during the 90 minute debate. He lied about the Russia investigation, climate change, Hunter Biden, the pandemic, and on and on. He also spouted ugly conspiracy theories.
Yet when the sitting President of the United States could not answer a single debate question truthfully, that wasn’t the big news from the forum last night. For CNN’s Jake Tapper, the major take-away was that Trump didn’t “set himself on fire,” like he did during the first debate, when he hectored and interrupted Joe Biden and moderator Chris Wallace nonstop. Indeed, Trump’s decision to tone down his manic behavior seemed to be the media’s focus point on the debate. His nonstop lying, much less so.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece and subscribe to PressRun Media.
CDC warns of ‘distressing trend’ in Covid-19 cases as country heads into fall
The government’s top public health officials warned that the number of Covid-19 cases is rising across a majority of the country in a rare briefing Wednesday afternoon.
Dr. Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the agency has noted a “distressing trend” in which coronavirus case numbers are “increasing in nearly 75 percent of the country.”
“This past week, we’ve seen nearly 60,000 cases a day on average, as well as 700 deaths,” he said.
Pence chief of staff, senior political adviser both test positive for Covid-19
Two of Vice President Mike Pence’s closest political advisers have tested positive for Covid-19.
Pence’s office said in a statement Saturday night that his chief of staff, Marc Short, “began quarantine” after learning of the diagnosis and was cooperating with a contact-tracing effort.
“Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence both tested negative for COVID-19 today, and remain in good health,” vice presidential spokesman Devin O’Malley said in the statement.
GOP to high court: Halt longer N. Carolina absentee deadline
President Donald Trump’s campaign and North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to return the state to a shorter deadline for accepting late-arriving absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day.
The legislative leaders argue in their appeal that the longer deadline, which was extended after early voting had begun, will result in unequal treatment of voters and dilute the value of ballots cast before the rule was changed.
More Than 47 Million Ballots Cast In U.S. Election, Eclipsing 2016 Early Turnout
U.S. voters have cast more than 47 million votes for the Nov. 3 presidential election, eclipsing total early voting from the 2016 election with 12 days to go, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project.
Some 47.5 million Americans have turned in ballots, roughly eight times the number of early votes cast at about same point before the 2016 presidential contest, and above the 47.2 million early votes that were cast before Election Day in 2016.
Man with van full of guns had checklist to ‘execute’ Joe Biden, authorities say
A man who was arrested in North Carolina on child pornography charges this year had a van full of guns and drove within 4 miles of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s home with a checklist to “execute” him, authorities alleged.
The allegations against the man, Alexander Treisman, were in a detention order filed this month in U.S. District Court in Durham, North Carolina.
According to the documents, Treisman’s white van was reported abandoned in the parking lot of a bank in Kannapolis, northeast of Charlotte, on May 28. Inside, responding officers found four rifles, including an AR-style Sig Sauer, a 9 mm handgun and $500,000 in cash that was believed to be his inheritance, the order states.
4 takeaways from the last presidential debate of 2020
It was probably as normal as things could get this election cycle.
After the last faceoff turned into a name-calling shouting match, Thursday night’s presidential debate, moderated by NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker, resembled a much more traditional matchup and provided one the clearest contrasts yet between President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, on everything from race to the environment.
While Trump went into the final debate signaling that he was looking for theatrics — baselessly accusing Welker of being biased and bringing as his debate guest a former business partner of Biden’s son — the candidates stuck mostly to the topics at hand and allowed each other their allotted time to speak.
Pope Francis becomes 1st pope to endorse same-sex civil unions
Pope Francis became the first pontiff to endorse same-sex civil unions in comments for a documentary that premiered Wednesday, sparking cheers from gay Catholics and demands for clarification from conservatives, given the Vatican’s official teaching on the issue.
The papal thumbs-up came midway through the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. The film, which features fresh interviews with the pope, delves into issues Francis cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination.
Russia, Iran have obtained voter data in election interference campaign, according to the DNI
Senior national security officials alerted the American public Wednesday that Iran and Russia have both obtained voter data in their efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election.
“This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos, and undermine your confidence in American democracy,” Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in a surprise news conferenceWednesday evening.
In rare gloves-off moment, Obama calls on voters to hand Trump a clear defeat
Former President Barack Obama tore into President Donald Trumpin a fiery speech Wednesday as being unable to take “the job seriously,” faulting him for lacking a plan to address the coronavirus, emboldening racism, working to rip away health care protections without an alternative, tweeting conspiracy theories and engaging regularly in lies and indecent behavior.
It was a rare gloves-off moment for Obama in going after his successor — who trails Democratic nominee Joe Biden in polls less than two weeks before Election Day — in both personal and policy terms.
Rudy Giuliani denies inappropriate behavior in upcoming ‘Borat’ movie
Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday denied touching himself inappropriately in the upcoming “Borat” movie, insisting that a reported clip from the film was taken out of context.
“The Borat video is a complete fabrication,” Giuliani wrote on Twitter. “I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar.”
Trump Records Shed New Light on Chinese Business Pursuits
President Trump and his allies have tried to paint the Democratic nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as soft on China, in part by pointing to his son’s business dealings there.
Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”
But Mr. Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.
With coronavirus concerns a factor, it’s all tied up in North Carolina: Poll
Coronavirus concerns lift former Vice President Joe Biden in North Carolina while the state’s sizable evangelical and rural populations pull for President Donald Trump, producing a dead-heat contest in a state that’s backed Democratic presidential candidates just twice in the last half century.
Biden has 49% support among likely voters in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll in the state, with 48% for Trump. The U.S. Senate race, potentially critical for control of the chamber, is similar, with 49% support for Democrat Cal Cunningham, despite revelations of an extramarital relationship, and 47% for incumbent Republican Thom Tillis.
McConnell signals Senate Republicans don’t want bigger Covid-19 relief bill before election
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his fellow Republican members in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that he is “encouraging” the White House to wait until after the Nov. 3 election to reach an agreement on a Covid-19 relief package with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to three sources familiar with the conversation.
McConnell, R-Ky., was responding to a question from a Republican senator facing re-election who pressed the need to go home to campaign after next Monday’s full Senate vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump abruptly ends ’60 Minutes’ interview, taunts CBS’ Lesley Stahl
President Donald Trump abruptly ended a taped interview at the White House with “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl on Tuesday then taunted the veteran CBS News journalist in tweets.
“I am pleased to inform you that, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, I am considering posting my interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, PRIOR TO AIRTIME! This will be done so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about,” the president tweeted. He also called the interview a ” terrible Electoral Intrusion” in another tweet.
He then posted a short video making light of Stahl not wearing a mask while talking with producers for the show while at the White House, which a spokesman for CBS News was taken immediately after the interview. She previously had been wearing a mask when she entered the building and up to the start of the interview.
Bob Cesca: Let’s imagine the unimaginable… A second term for Donald Trump
With the high-water mark of the election just 14 days away, the tragedy of Nov. 8, 2016, haunts me more and more.
Four years ago, nearly everyone, including Donald Trump himself, was convinced Hillary Clinton was all but guaranteed a resounding victory. I remember articles predicting that Clinton would win the entire East Coast, including South Carolina. Later, following the third debate of that campaign season, I distinctly recall watching Steve Schmidt on MSNBC announcing in his dramatic monotone, “Hillary Clinton will be the 45th president of the United States.” Election forecasters from Nate Silver to Sabato’s Crystal Ball agreed.
Esquire Politics Zoom Meeting with Charlie Pierce!! Subscribe and Register Here!
Election discussion with Charlie Pierce of Esquire Magazine! This Friday, October 23rd. Register and subscribe at the link below!
U.S. charges Russian intelligence officers in several high-profile cyberattacks
The United States on Monday unsealed criminal charges against six Russian intelligence officers in connection with some of the world’s most damaging cyberattacks, including disruption of Ukraine’s power grid and the release of a mock ransomware virus that infected computers globally and caused billions of dollars in damage.
That group, authorities alleged, also hacked computers supporting the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, hacked and leaked emails of individuals involved in Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 campaign for president of France, and targeted the organizations investigating the poisoning of former Russian operative Sergei Skripal two years ago in Britain.
Trump calls Fauci a ‘disaster’ and says it would be a ‘bomb’ if he fired him
President Donald Trump on Monday attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci during a phone call with campaign staff, calling the infectious disease specialist a “disaster” and saying every time he goes on television there is a “bomb,” but there would be “a bigger bomb if you fire him,” according to a recording of the call obtained by NBC News.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots — these people, these people that have gotten it wrong,” Trump said. “Fauci’s a nice guy. He’s been here for 500 years. He called every one of them wrong. And he’s like this wonderful guy, a wonderful sage telling us how” to respond to the pandemic.
Supreme Court Tie Blocks GOP Effort To Limit Mail-In Voting In Pennsylvania
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to Republicans on Monday with a split vote that effectively allows Pennsylvania to keep its extended mail-in voting period.
The justices’ 4-4 tie leaves in place a lower court ruling that will let state officials count ballots received after Election Day unless there’s evidence they were sent after the deadline. Election officials have three days to count those votes, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court determined last month.
Presidential Debate Commission Adopts New Rules To Mute Microphones
President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden will have their microphones cut off in Thursday’s debate while their rival delivers their opening two-minute answer to each of the debate topics.
The 90-minute debate is divided into six 15-minute segments, with each candidate granted two minutes to deliver uninterrupted remarks before proceeding to an open debate. The open discussion portion of the debate will not feature a mute button, but interruptions by either candidate will count toward their time in the second and final debate Thursday.
The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced the rule changes Monday, three weeks after a chaotic opening faceoff between the two presidential contenders that featured frequent interruptions — most by Trump.
Fauci admits administration has restricted his media appearances, says he’s not surprised Trump got COVID
This weekend, Americans face another surge in the COVID-19 pandemic. Infections have passed the 8 million mark and are rising rapidly. There are more than 218,000 dead. During the course of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the physician most Americans have relied upon for their information. But now, instead of worrying soley about developing vaccines or therapeutics, Dr. Fauci finds himself unhappily caught up in presidential politics, under protection from death threats, and forced to defend science itself.
Read the rest of the story at CBS News
More than 27 million ballots have already been cast. Here’s where early voting opens this week
Election Day is still 16 days away and more than 27 million ballots have already been cast, according to a survey of election officials by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.
Voters in the 45 states and the District of Columbia that make pre-Election Day data available are already setting records. The ballots cast so far represent almost 20% of the more than 136 million total ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election.
Nancy Pelosi: Pandemic Relief Needs A Deal By Tuesday To Pass By Election Day
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that the U.S. House and the Trump administration would need to come to an agreement on the next phase of pandemic-related economic stimulus by Tuesday for a coronavirus relief package to have any chance of passing before Election Day.
“We have to freeze the design on some of these things,” Pelosi said on ABC’s ”This Week.” “Are we going with it or not?”
Eric Boehlert: Enablers — NBC rewards Trump for blowing up Biden debate
One week after refusing to participate in the officially sanctioned presidential debate, an unprecedented move in modern American politics, NBC News has rewarded Trump by clearing its Thursday primetime schedule to air a last-minute town hall with the previously Covid-19-infected president. As Trump stumbles to the end of his re-election campaign and denounces the press at every turn, the brazen move by NBC highlights the dysfunctional and abusive relationship that has defined the Trump presidency.
He’s spent four years maligning the free press as “enemies of the people,” while corporate media outlets have granted him unheard of access. No president has been given as much free TV airtime as Trump — it’s not even close. Every briefing and virtually every utterance has been carried live and in full.
The Rude Pundit: Trump Has Faced Less Punishment Than Three Women in Mississippi Arrested for Getting Health Care for Their Kids
I can’t stop thinking about this story. The Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration announced last month that law enforcement had arrested and charged three separate women for committing fraud against the state’s health insurance system, which falls under its TennCare program. Two of the women, Nikki Carr and Nakina Brooks, face 24 years in prison for defrauding Tennessee for under $10,000 by using TennCare. The third, Nancy Smith, faces 27 years in prison because her fraud cost $24,000. They were charged with multiple felonies, including theft of property through TennCare, and held on between $20-30,000 in bail.
Michigan Gov. Lashes Trump For Endangering Her Life After Rally ‘Lock Her Up’ Chant
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer demanded an end to President Donald Trump inciting violence against her after she accused him of doing it yet again at his latest rally in her state on Saturday.
Whitmer, the target of an alleged kidnap plot by Trump-supporting militia members, called out at the president after he attacked her at the rally in Muskegon, working the crowd into a frenzy and triggering a chant of “Lock her up.”
“You gotta get your governor to open up your state,” Trump told the crowd. “And get your schools open, get your schools open. The schools have to be open, right?” added Trump, whose own son Baron attends a school that will not fully open through the fall.
Global Coronavirus Cases Rise By One-Day Record Of 400,000
Global coronavirus cases rose by more than 400,000 for the first time late on Friday, a record one-day increase as much of Europe enacts new restrictions to curb the outbreak.
Europe, which successfully tamped down the first surge of infections, has emerged as the new coronavirus epicentre in recent weeks and is reporting on average 140,000 cases a day over the past week.
As a region, Europe is reporting more daily cases than India, Brazil and the United States combined.
Biden routs Trump in September fundraising, $383M to $248M
President Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee and affiliated joint fundraising committees raised $247.8 million in September, Trump’s campaign announced, leaving him at a significant cash deficit to former Vice President Joe Biden entering the final stretch of the 2020 election.
Biden’s campaign and affiliated committees raised a record $383 million in September, and they had $432 million in reserves at the end of the month, his campaign announced Wednesday.
Chris Christie, out of hospital after battling Covid, urges Trump to go further on masks
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, newly recovered from the coronavirus, urged President Donald Trump on Friday to encourage the wearing of face masks among Americans.
In his first TV interview since contracting Covid-19 earlier this month, Christie — a close ally of the White House who served as the president’s debate coach last month — said it was not enough for Trump to merely express approval of masks, as he did at a town hall event the previous evening.
In Town Halls, Trump Defends Dangerous Theories As Biden Paints Vision For Future
President Donald Trump refused to denounce dangerous conspiracy theories and undercut efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 as former Vice President Joe Biden called for a national strategy to combat the pandemic and painted his vision for America as the two held dueling town halls Thursday night that forced viewers to choose whom to watch in prime time.
The separate events took place after the second presidential debate was scrapped amid infighting between the Trump campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates following the president’s positive COVID-19 diagnosis and his refusal to participate in a virtual event.
Kamala Harris suspends travel after staffer tests COVID-19 positive
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign said Thursday that vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris will suspend in-person events until Monday after two people associated with the campaign tested positive for coronavirus. The campaign said Biden had no exposure, though he and Harris spent several hours campaigning together in Arizona on Oct. 8.
Harris was scheduled to travel Thursday to North Carolina for events encouraging voters to cast early ballots.
Senate Judiciary Sets Oct. 22 Vote On Amy Coney Barrett’s Nomination
The Senate Judiciary Committee convened on Thursday set an Oct. 22 vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination as Republicans race to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick before the Nov. 3 election.
The session is without Barrett after two long days of public testimony in which she stressed that she would be her own judge and sought to create distance between herself and past positions critical of abortion, the Affordable Care Act and other issues.
Her confirmation to take the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems inevitable, as even some Senate Democrats acknowledged.
Anthony Fauci Urges Americans To Reconsider Thanksgiving Gatherings Amid Pandemic
Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday revealed that his family’s Thanksgiving “is going to look very different this year” and said Americans “may have to bite the bullet” and rethink holiday gatherings as the coronavirus pandemic continues raging.
Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, told “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell that his children, who live in three different states, would not be visiting him over the holidays “because of their concern for me and my age.” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is 79 and therefore at high risk of severe symptoms if he contracts COVID-19.
Trump ‘not happy’ with Barr, won’t commit to keeping AG in potential second term
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is “not happy” with Attorney General William Barr after the Justice Department’s investigation of the Obama administration found no wrongdoing and quietly concluded with no criminal charges.
Trump made the comments to Newsmax TV. He also declined to say whether he would keep Barr on as attorney general for a potential second term.
“Can’t comment on that. It’s too early. I’m not happy, with all of the evidence I had, I can tell you that. I am not happy,” Trump said in the interview.
Biden continues to hold double-digit national lead over Trump in NBC News/WSJ poll
Less than three weeks before Election Day, Joe Biden maintains a double-digit national lead over President Donald Trump, with 6 in 10 voters saying that the country is on the wrong track and that it is worse off than it was four years ago.
What’s more, a majority of voters say they have major concerns that Trump will divide the country rather than unite it — the largest concern for either presidential candidate.
Those are the results of a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll — conducted after Trump returned to the White House from his hospitalization for the coronavirus — which finds Biden ahead of Trump by 11 points among registered voters, 53 percent to 42 percent.
Dr. Irwin Redlener: It’s Time for Trump’s Top Doctors to Step Down and Speak Up
Dear Colleagues, I certainly don’t need to tell any of you how unprecedented and difficult these past eight months have been. As I write this, more than 7.5 million Americans have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The tragedy of what the country has been through is what you all have been living non-stop. Most tragic, of course, are the 215,000 deaths of our fellow citizens from this scourge. I am sure that not a day goes by without you hoping, wishing you could have done more—and could do more—to totally shut down the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read the rest of Dr. Irwin Redlener’s piece at The Daily Beast
Trump’s Probe Into ‘Unmasking’ Conspiracy Ends With No Wrongdoing Found: Report
A federal investigation meant to target Obama administration officials for “unmasking” the names of individuals in classified intelligence reports ended recently without finding any wrongdoing that the Trump administration could use as political ammunition, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Attorney General William Barr appointed Texas U.S. Attorney John Bash in May to look into the unmasking requests from late 2016 and early 2017, which involved intercepted conversations between Michael Flynn — President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser — and Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. during the 2016 election.
Obama to hit the campaign trail for Biden ‘soon’ as race enters final weeks
Former President Barack Obama is expected to hit the campaign trail “soon” for Joe Biden, his former vice president — a move that could help animate Democrats as the presidential race enters its pivotal final weeks.
“President Obama plans to hit the trail soon, in addition to all the other activities he’s undertaken all year in support of electing VP Biden – as he’s said, we all have to do everything we can to win on November 3,” an aide to the former president told ABC News.
Obama has participated in several fundraisers on behalf of Biden’s campaign and gave a primetime speech during the Democratic National Convention in which he excoriated President Donald Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and extolled Biden’s leadership.
Key takeaways from the 2nd day of the SCOTUS nomination hearing
The Senate Judiciary Committee spent Tuesday questioning Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, in a marathon session that featured exchanges about judicial independence, the future of the Affordable Care Act and any election-related cases that could come before the Supreme Court later this year.
Here are the key takeaways from the second day of the hearings:
Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end census count early
The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively allowed the government to stop the census count immediately, blocking a lower court order that would have required the Trump administration to continue gathering census information in the field until the end of October.
The Census Bureau said it wanted to stop the count so that it could start processing the data to meet a Dec. 31 deadline, set in federal law, for reporting the results to the president. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the government to keep going with its field work until Oct. 31, concluding that a longer time in the field would increase accuracy.
In a brief unsigned order, the Supreme Court stayed the appeals court order.
Bob Cesca: Why the Democrats must fight to stop Barrett… With her on the court, the ACA is toast
Donald Trump and his henchmen keep promising to protect health insurance coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions. They’re lying to you, probably because it’s what they do best and also because the president has no idea how to spell “ACA,” much less describe what’s in the law.
The truth is that Trump’s entire agenda circulates around re-election and erasing the Obama legacy because he’s all about revenge — petty, self-serving Mafia-cosplay — and he doesn’t really care if his own supporters aren’t able to buy affordable health insurance due to his nincompoopery. This is why the president and his sidekick, Attorney General Bill Barr, are refusing to defend the ACA in court after a ludicrous ruling by a Trump-supporting Texas judge who also doesn’t understand how the law works.
White House doctor says Trump tested negative for coronavirus ‘on consecutive days’
Sean P. Conley, Trump’s doctor, said Monday that the president recently tested negative for the coronavirus on “consecutive days,” although he did not specify which days.
Conley added that the negative tests were one of several factors contributing to the conclusion by Trump’s medical team that the president “is not infectious to others.”
“In response to your inquiry regarding the President’s most recent COVID-19 tests, I can share with you that he has tested NEGATIVE, on consecutive days, using the Abbott BinaxNOW antigen card,” Conley said in a letter shared on Twitter by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Two Parties Offer Dueling Views of Amy Coney Barrett as Confirmation Fight Begins
Republicans and Democrats offered sharply divergent arguments on Monday in a Supreme Court confirmation fight whose outcome is likely to steer the court to the right for years, vying to define Judge Amy Coney Barrett and frame the political stakes of President Trump’s rush to install her before he faces voters.
In a marathon day of opening statements, Democrats assailed Judge Barrett as a conservative ideologue who would overturn the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights, and whose nomination amounted to an illegitimate power grab by a president in the last days before the election.
Johnson & Johnson pauses clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine over participant’s illness
Johnson & Johnson has paused its clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine candidate after a participant fell ill, just weeks after it announced that trials were in their final stage.
A pause is not entirely unexpected in vaccine trials. When another vaccine trial was temporarily stopped last month, experts hailed the move as an example of the scientific rigor that is being maintained despite the understandably intense public interest in a Covid-19 vaccine.
Trump tells Florida rally he feels ‘powerful’ and wants to ‘kiss’ everyone after Covid-19 battle
President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Monday, his first since he was hospitalized for Covid-19, taking familiar hits at his Democratic rival Joe Biden and urging his supporters in the crucial battleground state to vote .
At Trump’s Florida rally, the president was also cavalier about his battle with Covid-19, telling the crowd — estimated at 7,000 people — in a state that has been hit hard by the virus that he felt strong and better than before. The president took a myriad of treatments when he was hospitalized and told the crowd he wanted to make his treatment plan available to everyone.
Charlie Pierce: Amy Coney Barrett’s Nomination Is the Culmination of Various Long-Term Right-Wing Projects
If the Senate Judiciary Committee were to eliminate the roundelay involving opening statements and get right to the questioning of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, I, for one, would not be sad about that. I realize they’re aimed at the greater world outside the hearing room, and I realize that the historic basis for having a Senate at all is in large part to have a place where virtually unlimited bloviating can be safely indulged, but I don’t see much value in them beyond that.
On Day One, all the Democrats hit the theme of repealing the Affordable Care Act, with most of them telling stories about children whose lives have been saved because of it. On day one, the Republicans set a number of straw people aflame; Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who apparently was cutting B-roll for his 2024 presidential campaign ad, said that wondering about the judge’s attitude towards Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark Supreme Court decision establishing a right to privacy, was anti-Catholic because Griswold was about birth control.
Poll: Lead among women fuels Biden’s 12-point edge
A huge edge among likely female voters is fueling a 12-point national lead for Democratic nominee Joe Biden over President Donald Trump, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday.
The Post/ABC poll showed Biden leading Trump among likely voters, 54 percent to 42 percent. The lead is consistent with other national polls conducted in recent weeks.
Anthony Fauci Says He Didn’t Consent To Trump Ad That Takes His Words Out Of Context
A campaign ad that appears to show Dr. Anthony Fauci endorsing President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic used a clip taken out of context and was not approved by Fauci before it aired, the doctor told media outlets Sunday.
“They did this without my permission and my comments were taken out of context,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert who’s a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said in a statement to NBC News and CNN.
“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate. The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials,” his statement continued.
Eric Trump Says Nonexistent COVID-19 Vaccine His Dad ‘Took’ Worked Really ‘Well’
Eric Trump on Sunday touted a nonexistent “vaccine” that he claimed dramatically helped his father, President Donald Trump, recover from COVID-19 after the president “worked” hard to get it developed.
The president didn’t get a vaccine, nor has he developed one, nor is it clear he’s recovered.
In fact, doctors administered a steroid, an antiviral drug and an antibody cocktail to the president after he tested positive for COVID-19. There is no authorized COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Hearings Begin Today. Here’s What to Watch For.
A deeply divided Senate Judiciary Committee will kick off four days of contentious confirmation hearings on Monday for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, drawing battle lines that could reverberate through the election.
Democrats will arrive ready to go on the offensive, portraying Judge Barrett’s nomination as an election-season power grab by Mr. Trump and Republicans. They will characterize her as a conservative ideologue who would overturn the Affordable Care Act, invalidate abortion rights and side with the president in any legal disputes arising from the Nov. 3 election.
Debate Commission Cancels 2nd Trump-Biden Debate After Campaign Disputes Over Covid Safety Protocols
The Commission on Presidential Debates officially canceled its second candidate forum between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, scheduled for next Thursday, October 15th.
According to a statement from the CPD, the bipartisan group has scrapped next week’s town hall after Trump refused to participate after the commission insisted on holding the debate virtually.
“For the health and safety of all involved, the second presidential debate, scheduled for October 15 in Miami, would be conducted virtually,” the statement read. “Subsequently, the campaigns of the two candidates who qualified for participation in the debate made a series of statement concerning their respective positions regarding their willingness to participate in a virtual debate.”