James.galbraith

On Thursday, an office of the inspector general (OIG) report was released on a year-long investigation into Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie and his handling of sexual assault and harassment claims made by House aide and veteran Andrea Goldstein. In the report, the inspector general’s office said that while it could not substantiate claims that Wilkie did anything illegal during his handling of the situation, he very clearly spent most of his time trying to attack the integrity of the woman reporting the assault, as opposed to the perpetrator. “The tone set by Secretary Wilkie was at minimum unprofessional and at worst provided the basis for VA leaders’ attempts to undermine the veteran’s credibility.”

One of the things reaffirmed by the report was that “multiple witnesses” said that Wilkie told them Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas was the source of alleged “damaging information” against Goldstein. Crenshaw has denied that he has any link to a campaign to smear Goldstein’s credibility. In fact, he has, like all Republican cowards before him, blamed his shitty thoughts and feelings on a grand conspiracy created by the Democratic establishment. But the OIG’s report contradicts Crenshaw’s weak-sauce excuses.

As Newsweek reports, one of Crenshaw’s denials was that he never discussed Goldstein’s past or character with Wilkie during their brief meeting at a Dec. 4, 2019 fundraiser. However, shortly after the fundraiser—four minutes to be exact—Wilkie sent an email to his top two deputies, writing: “Ask me in the morning what Congressman Crenshaw said about the Takano staffer whose glamor shot was in The New York Times.”  Crenshaw told Newsweek that he never spoke with Wilkie about Goldstein and claimed that Wilkie probably stuck his name in the email by mistake because the two men just happened to have recently had lunch together.

However, the private lunch Crenshaw referred to did not occur until more than two weeks later on December 19, 2019, according to the OIG report.

Somebody’s lying—and all of them are conservatives.

Crenshaw, who enjoys pretending he isn’t just a run-of-the-mill conservative follower, is in a pickle here. The problem for Crenshaw is not simply the optics of being a cowardly misogynist but that in the unfolding of this investigation, the true nature of the misogyny is abjectly pathetic. For example, the information that Wilkie and his team ran with, and that Crenshaw was in part responsible for, was an idea that Goldstein had made similar accusations before the alleged incident Veterans Affairs was supposed to be investigating. The idea here was that Goldstein’s credibility was suspect because she had made a claim before. However, what is known for sure is that the contractor that Goldstein made the claim against “did not have credentials to enter the hospital and had been the subject of a previous sexual harassment complaint from a VA employee.”

And yet Wilkie and others just ran with the idea that Goldstein and Pelosi and Takano had made the whole thing up to hurt conservatives. Weird way to run an investigation.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw is a conservative publicity machine creation, not a leader. A few weeks ago Sen. Ed Markey reminded the world that Crenshaw owes his position as an elected official to one of the most transparently tortured and racist riggings of a district map in the whole of Christendom. 

Jon Ossoff makes things crystal clear for Georgians in this new ad: Any help coming from this Senate is not going to be for the people who are hurting the most. "When this pandemic hit, millions of Georgians like me had to file for unemployment," the Georgia worker on camera says. "We needed our senator's help. But for David Perdue we weren't the priority. Senator Perdue voted to give hundreds of millions to big corporations, even if if they lay people off. But he fought against the $1,200 stimulus check for workers and supported cutting our unemployment benefits. Even at a moment like this, David Perdue is there for his donors but not for us."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with the full backing of Perdue, is blocking a COVID relief deal that had support from Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, and even the White House. Without his majority, he can't hold the nation hostage. If you want help, if you want a $1,200 or $2,000 check, make sure Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff get elected. If McConnell stays in charge, no money, no help. If Democrats take the Senate, money.

Ready to reach voters in Georgia, whether by phonebanking or textbanking, for the Jan. 5 runoff? Click to sign up for a training with Fair Fight—the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams—and they will set you up with what you need to start effectively reaching out to Georgia voters.

We've got one last shot at taking McConnell's Senate Republican majority away in January. Please give $3 right now to send the GOP packing.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit in the Supreme Court asking that the outcome of the federal election in four states—states that voted for Joe Biden—be overturned. Not recounted. Not investigated. But overthrown, eliminated, reversed. By any definition, what Texas asked of the court was for an immediate end to democracy in America and its replacement by single party rule. Then seventeen more Republican-controlled states signed on to this overt act of sedition. 

On Thursday, 106 Republican members of the U.S. House added their names to this declaration that they’re done with the whole concept of representative government. If politics is war by other means, then Republicans are levying that war against the people, institutions, and foundations of the United States. 

This is not a partisan dispute. There is no coming back from this. Certainly it should never be forgotten. Neither should there be any forgiveness. Republicans have launched a second civil war in the courts, and it should be treated no more kindly than any launched on the battlefield.

The Washington Post provides a list of the Republicans who, while technically not guilty of treason—perhaps, are none the less proud to put down their names as traitors, along with a 107th Republican who whined on Twitter that she was omitted from the official list due to a “clerical error.” The names you might expect are there … Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Greg Gianforte, Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Steve Scalise. So is a long list of GOP backbenchers both so odious and pitiful that the opportunity to put their name on this infamy is the “highlight” of their careers.

The statement pulls no punches in what it requests. As the secretary of state for Pennsylvania wrote, "Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees. Its request for this Court to exercise its original jurisdiction and then anoint Texas's preferred candidate for President is legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy," wrote Shapiro. "Texas's effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated."

For the attorney generals who have signed their names to this blatant effort to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, the Supreme Court should send a powerful rebuke. It’s not clear what punishment the court might mete out to the complainants … but it should seek the harshest available. 

Then every bar association should seek the disbarment of every one of these attorneys general for an act that involves signing on in support of statements they know to be false. This is an illegal, immoral, amoral, and insupportable attempt to break the nation. It should be treated as such.

And then every member of the House of Representatives who put their name to this document should be expelled. So 106, or 107. Republicans might have signed on to this atrocity. But there are 233 Democratic members, and 89 Republicans who did not rush to anoint themselves Traitors for Trump. Let the House put their integrity to the test by calling for the expulsion, one at a time, of every member who attempted to destroy the nation’s most foundational institution. And let them start with Minority Whip Steve Scalise.

It does not matter that the text and assertions of the Texas suit are ludicrous. It does not matter that they’re certain to fail. In many ways, that only makes things worse. If it were possible to plow the posts of these men under and salt the earth above them, that should be done. Failing that, every one of them should be made absolutely certain that this is a mistake that will ruin their reputations for a lifetime.

The only thing more ridiculous than the suit issued by Texas, is the idea that these people might take this action and then carry on as if it never happened.

Democratic National Committee meddling, combined with missteps by the state Democratic Party, were the primary drivers of the chaos that torpedoed the Iowa caucuses earlier this year, according to a new audit commissioned by the state party.

The report, which was distributed to the Iowa Democratic Party State Central Committee at a meeting Saturday morning and obtained by POLITICO, identified a series of errors made by the DNC, IDP and the technology company contracted by the state party to build a reporting app to collect caucus results.

The February caucuses were overrun by foul-ups: The state party was unable to report a winner on caucus night, the mobile app to report results failed to work for many precinct chairs, the back-up telephone systems were jammed and some precincts had initial reporting errors. The state party chair, Troy Price, resigned in the wake of the debacle, which put Iowa’s status as the first in the nation nominating contest in serious jeopardy.

But the report pins the blame squarely on the DNC for the heart of the problem on caucus night — the delay in the reporting of the results. According to the report, the DNC demanded the technology company, Shadow, build a conversion tool just weeks before the caucuses to allow the DNC to have real-time access to the raw numbers because the national party feared the app would miscalculate results. The DNC’s data system used a different database format than Shadow’s reporting app, which caused multiple problems.

“Attempting to graft an entirely new software element onto the back-end reporting system at the proverbial eleventh hour is likely always going to be problematic, and it was ultimately the cause of a major problem on caucus night,” the report concludes. “Furthermore, the IDP was not involved in the development of this tool. The IDP simply permitted the DNC to direct the IDP’s vendor.”

The audit states the conversion tool had coding errors that spit out inaccurate numbers and caused confusion about the accuracy of the results, eventually leading to delays in reporting. But the state party’s app never malfunctioned nor was hacked, the report concludes.

“When the DNC’s database conversion tool failed to work correctly, it caused the DNC to wrongly stop the IDP from reporting its results, and the IDP’s entire planned reporting process was thrown into disarray,” the report says. “The DNC’s interjection was the catalyst for the resulting chaos in the boiler room and in the IDP’s attempts to manually collect and confirm caucus results by hand. If the DNC had not interjected itself into the results reporting process based on its erroneous data conversion, caucus night could conceivably have proceeded according to the IDP’s initial plan.”

The audit was conducted by Bonnie Campbell, the former attorney general of Iowa, and Faegre Drinker, an international law firm. The team conducted dozens of interviews with top IDP staffers, employees of Shadow and representatives from the Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg campaigns.

The DNC refused to participate in interviews by the lawyers who conducted the audit.

"Evaluating the nominating process always happens following the election so that DNC staff can remain focused on winning the general election, and this cycle that work helped contribute to President-Elect Biden's historic victory,” David Bergstein, a spokesman for the DNC, said in a statement.

The DNC said it offered to provide written answers so staff could remain focused on the work of the general election. The authors of the report declined that request, the DNC said.

Bergstein also defended the need for a “quality control check,” pointing to errors that were discovered in the initial caucus results. He also said Shadow was responsible for the technical issues.

Since 1972, Iowans have held the nation’s first presidential nominating contest, a position that has come under attack from Democrats who argue the state’s overwhelmingly white population is not representative of the country and therefore should not play an outsize role in picking the party’s nominee. Even before the botched caucuses, Democrats were calling on the party to reshuffle the nominating order and replace Iowa with more representative states.

Biden’s emergence as the Democratic nominee, after finishing in a dismal fourth place in the caucuses, served to ding the state’s reputation for picking presidents even more. Now, as the DNC and the IDP elect new leaders, the fight over the nominating calendar is likely to intensify in the coming months.

The audit also faults the IDP for waiting too long to develop the reporting application, which resulted in inadequate training and use. Many precinct chairs were unable to log into the app or faced other technical challenges, leading them to call-in their results.

The report notes the DNC contributed in part to the delay of the original app, saying the organization “aggressively interjected itself in all of the IDP’s technology endeavors,” primarily for cybersecurity reasons. The DNC was particularly worried about cybersecurity after foreign election interference in 2016.

But the report also blames the IDP for poor boiler room set-up and execution on caucus night, saying the party failed to train its volunteers on how to input data that was reported via phone and provide enough phone lines to handle the influx of calls after precinct chairs abandoned the application. Only 439 of the 1,765 precincts successfully submitted results on caucus night through the app.

The report says new requirements for caucus contests — passed by the DNC in order to improve transparency and accessibility, such as the mandatory reporting of the first and second alignments of caucusgoers — contributed to problems. In particular, the audit points to the difficulties the state party faced in increasing participation while avoiding any processes that were similar to primary voting because of New Hampshire’s insistence on being the first primary state in the nation.

“The DNC has certainly taken the position that there should no longer be caucuses in any state and has imposed requirements that make it even more difficult to carry out caucus,” the report concludes.

Bergstein, the DNC spokesperson, said the organization’s reforms were successful in increasing transparency and participation, and the DNC will go through another review process in the coming months.

“Every four years, the DNC looks back at what worked and what didn’t work and the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee will continue to evaluate all areas of our nominating process and make recommendations for any changes,” he said in a statement.

The state party and its leadership also failed to communicate effectively with the media, the report says, exacerbating the reporting problems. News organizations were given a clear indication that results would be out on caucus night — the delayed release of data simply created more chaos and confusion.

Sen. Mike Lee blocked bipartisan legislation Thursday that would establish national museums dedicated to the histories of Latino Americans and American women, arguing the museums would create further division.

In an exchange with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who sought to pass the National Museum of the American Latino Act by voice vote, Lee said that the history of Latino Americans and women should be a part of the National Museum of American History, rather than in a separate museum.

“The last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation within an array of separate but equal museums of hyphenated identity groups,” Lee said. “At this moment, in the history of our diverse nation, we need our federal government and the Smithsonian Institution itself to pull us closer together and not further apart.”

Menendez shot back at Lee, saying that he was standing “in the way of the hopes and dreams and aspirations of seeing Americans of Latino descent having their dreams fulfilled and recognized.”

“I don’t know if these arguments were made against the Native Americans. I don’t know if these arguments were made against African Americans, but I don’t see them as being separate and apart,” Menendez said. “I see them as part of the collective history mosaic that is coming together under the Smithsonian.”

Earlier this year, the House for the first time passed legislation that would create a Smithsonian museum devoted to Latino Americans. The Senate Rules Committee also approved the legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), unanimously. The House also voted overwhelmingly in February to pass legislation to create a women’s history museum. But Lee's move drastically reduces the likelihood the bills will pass Congress this session.

Following Menendez, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) attempted to pass the Smithsonian Women’s History Museum Act in the Senate by voice vote. In her floor remarks, Collins highlighted the popularity of the Smithsonian’s African American and Native American history museums and noted that a bipartisan commission recommended the creation of a museum “showcasing the historic experiences and the impact of women” in the United States.

But Lee again blocked the measure.

The Utah Republican said that while “all racial, ethnic, religious groups in America are worthy of celebration, even to the extent of having their own museums,” he argued that in “many instances” those museums do not take federal dollars.

“There is a brand that comes along with the Smithsonian Institution and a lot of money that’s taken from the American people in the form of tax revenue,” Lee said. “And so as a result of that, the Smithsonian Institution has a unique role.”

Collins described Lee’s actions as a “sad moment.”

“I had hoped that we could proceed with both of these bills and pass them before the end of this year,” Collins said. “Surely in a year where we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, this is the time. ... I regret that that will not occur this evening, but we will not give up the fight.”

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[The four defendant states in Texas v. Pennsylvania file their briefs in opposition.]

A rash of additional briefs have been submitted in Texas v. Pennsylvania, the audacious effort by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to prevent Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin from selecting presidential electors based upon the results of the November election. All of the briefs are available on the Supreme Court's website here.

In two prior posts (here and here) I discussed some of the briefs filed in support and in opposition to the Texas filing. Although quite a few interesting and noteworthy filings were submitted this afternoon (and not always noteworthy in a good way), in this brief post I want to highlight a few portions from the briefs of the defendant states.

The briefs from the four defendant states raise a wide range of objections to the Texas filing. These include jurisdictional arguments, such as that Texas lacks standing and that the case raises a nonjusticiable political question, prudential arguments such as laches, and substantive arguments rejecting Texas's claims that any constitutional violation occurred. The briefs also point out how many of the claims Texas makes about specific events in each of their states have been rejected by state and federal courts, and are often based upon faulty factual claims.

On the question of the Court's jurisdiction, the Pennsylvania filing makes a powerful argument that Texas lacks Article III standing to bring its claims.

First, Texas cannot establish it suffered an injury in fact. An injury in fact requires a plaintiff to show the "invasion of a legally protected interest"; that the injury is both "concrete and particularized"; and that the injury is "actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical." Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1548 (2016). According to Texas, the alleged violations of Pennsylvania's Election Code undermined the authority granted to the Pennsylvania General Assembly under the Electors Clause. Motion at 3, 10-11, 13-15. But as the text of the Electors Clause itself makes clear, the injury caused by the alleged usurpation of the General Assembly's constitutional authority belongs to that institution. AIRC, 576 U.S. at 800 (legislature claimed that it was stripped of its responsibility for redistricting vested in it by the Elections Clause). The State of Texas is not the Pennsylvania General Assembly. See Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, __ U.S. __, 139 S.Ct. 1945, 1953 (2019) (noting the "mismatch between the body seeking to litigate [the Virginia House of Delegates] and the body to which the relevant constitutional provision allegedly assigned exclusive redistricting authority [the General Assembly]").

Second, Texas's claimed injury is not fairly traceable to a violation of the Electors Clause. As discussed above, each of Texas's allegations of violations of Pennsylvania law has been rejected by state and federal courts.

Third, Texas fares no better in relying on parens patriae for standing. It is settled law that "a State has standing to sue only when its sovereign or quasi-sovereign interests are implicated and it is not merely litigating as a volunteer the personal claims of its citizens." Pennsylvania, 426 U.S. at 665. The state, thus, must "articulate an interest apart from the interests of particular private parties." Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico, ex rel., Baez, 458 U.S. 592, 607 (1982). In other words, "the State must be more than a nominal party." Ibid. That, however, is exactly what Texas is here. Texas seeks to "assert parens patriae standing for [its] citizens who are Presidential Electors." Motion at 15. Even if, as Texas claims, the presidential electors its citizens have selected suffered a purported injury akin to the personal injury allegedly sustained by the 20-legislator bloc in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 438 (1939), which they did not, that does not somehow metastasize into a claim by the state rather than those presidential electors. The 20-person bloc of legislatures in Coleman sued in their own right without the involvement of the State of Kansas. Ibid. Texas has no sovereign or quasi-sovereign interest at stake. It is a nominal party, at best.

The Georgia brief, in particular, also makes clear how radical and wrong-headed AG Paxton's arguments are. Among other things, the Georgia brief highlights that if Texas's arguments were accepted, it would mean that state legislatures lack the power to authorize state agencies, such as a state Secretary of State, to issue election regulations or decisions regarding election administration, and state legislatures could not authorize state courts to adjudicate election disputes. The Georgia brief also explains how some of the factual claims Texas and others make are simply wrong.

Were the Texas theory to be accepted, any administrative or executive action taken to change election administration rules would render the state's selection of electors unlawful, even if such actions were authorized under state law. Such a rule would not only invalidate Georgia's selection of presidential electors. It would invalidate the selection of presidential electors in Texas too, given some of the actions Governor Abbott took this past fall. It is a radical argument that would make a mockery of Article II's delegation of power to state legislatures and upend core elements of our federal system. It is simply remarkable that any state official who purports to be a constitutional conservative could embrace such a claim. (And don't even get me started on the brief filed by members of Congress.)

The entire Georgia brief is quite good. The introduction gives a sense of the argument.

"None are more conscious of the vital limits on judicial authority than are the members of this Court, and none stand more in admiration of the Constitution's design to leave the selection of the President to the people, through their legislatures, and to the political sphere." Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 111 (2000) (per curiam). That is as it should be, given that the Constitution vests each State with the power to "appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors." U.S. Const. art. II, §1, cl. 2. And that reality requires that Texas's motions challenging the results of the presidential election in Georgia be denied.

Contrary to Texas's argument, Georgia has exercised its powers under the Electors Clause. Georgia's legislature enacted laws governing elections and election disputes, and the State and its officers have implemented and followed those laws. To ensure the accuracy of the results of that process, it has completed three total counts of the vote for its presidential electors, including a historic 100 percent manual recount—all in accordance with state law. It has, consistent with its authority under 3 U.S.C. § 5, authorized its courts to resolve election disputes. See Bush, 531 U.S. at 112 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring, with Scalia, J. and Thomas, J.) ("In most cases, comity and respect for federalism compel [this Court] to defer to the decisions of state courts on issues of state law"—a practice that "reflects [the Court's] understanding that the decisions of state courts are definitive pronouncements of the will of the States as sovereigns."). It has defended its election process in multiple lawsuits in the State. And the disputes that challengers have filed in the State have all resolved in Georgia's favor.

Texas nevertheless asks this Court to transfer Georgia's electoral powers to the federal judiciary. Respect for federalism and the constitutional design prohibits that transfer of power, but this Court should never even reach that issue because the Court's rules governing its original jurisdiction, constitutional limitations on standing, and principles of federalism all preclude the exercise of this Court's original jurisdiction over Texas's belated action.

The defendant states' briefs collectively make a powerful case against Texas. If any justices on the Court wish to address the underlying Electors Clause issue, they still have the opportunity to consider those claims in the pending Pennsylvania cases. Those petitions provide cleaner vehicles and do not implicate the outcome of this election. Whether the Court decides to hear those cases or not, it should put a quick end to this vexatious litigation.

Pennsylvania officials slammed the state of Texas for its effort to have the U.S. Supreme Court begin a coup by overthrowing the results of the presidential election. In the brief that the state filed at the Supreme Court, Pennsylvania officials wrote that Texas was using a "cacophony of bogus claims" to support a "seditious abuse of the judicial process." The Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, wrote in the brief that the filing from Texas rested on a "surreal alternate reality."

"Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees. Its request for this Court to exercise its original jurisdiction and then anoint Texas's preferred candidate for President is legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy," wrote Shapiro. "Texas's effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated." Sedition.

Also, it's nonsense. Whatever legal standard the Supreme Court might consider in this case, "Texas cannot meet it." Furthermore, "Nothing in the text, history, or structure of the Constitution supports Texas's view that it can dictate the manner in which four sister States run their elections, and Texas suffered no harm because it dislikes the results in those elections." Texas is, horrifyingly and dangerously, supported by 17 other Republican states. More horrifying and dangerous, 106 Republican House members—a large majority of the Republican caucus—have filed a brief in support of it. Members of Congress, who have all sworn an oath to the Constitution, are asking the Supreme Court to begin a coup, wipe out millions of votes in four states, and hand the election to Trump.

Twenty other states as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have filed in support of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and their voters, asking the court to "reject Texas's last-minute attempt to throw out the results of an election decided by the people and securely overseen and certified by its sister states." The states point to the fact that the "Court has long recognized that it will only exercise original jurisdiction based on a showing of 'the seriousness and dignity of the claim' and the lack of 'another forum where there is jurisdiction'" and point out that both are lacking in Texas's petition. "Here, the underlying legal claims Texas belatedly seeks to litigate in this Court can be, and indeed have been, litigated—and thus far lost—in alternate forums where facts can be developed and issues fully aired, subject to this Court’s ordinary certiorari review." They also point out the gravity and the danger of what Texas and the other states would do: "Texas's novel theory of the Electors Clause would overrule a century's worth of precedent, upend state election systems nationwide, and invert core principles of federalism."

They unfortunately didn't use the word “sedition,” but it's the undercurrent of their brief—that Texas and the 17 states are trying to wrest states' rights away from the four (and by extension, any state with election results they didn't like) to overturn a national election. Which 106 members of Congress have now endorsed.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new restrictions face backlash as ICU capacity dwindles.

Sheriffs of counties that represent nearly 40 percent of California’s population are refusing to enforce Gov. Gavin Newsom’s newest stay-at-home order aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19.

Sheriffs Alex Villanueva, Don Barnes, and Chad Bianco enforce the laws in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside counties, respectively. In response to Newsom’s announcement, Villanueva said he won’t “take part in enforcing stay at home orders at businesses,” Barnes called compliance “a matter of personal responsibility and not a matter of law enforcement,” and Bianco said he wouldn’t be “blackmailed, bullied or used as muscle” in carrying out the order.

The latest rules require regions where the adult ICU bed capacity falls below 15 percent to comply with a stay-at-home order for a minimum of three weeks. The order, once triggered, bans “all gatherings with members of other households” except in specific cases. KTTV Fox 11 in Los Angeles Fox reported that the order would also shut down all indoor and outdoor dining, limiting restaurants to takeout and delivery.

The Southern California region, which includes LA, Orange, and Riverside counties, dropped to 7.7 percent ICU capacity as of December 10.

Newsom’s order comes amid a nationwide spike in coronavirus cases. Almost no states are seeing anything close to meaningful suppression of the virus, and daily death tolls are reaching record highs.

America faces a dark few months until the vaccine arrives

The standoff is largely about the terrible trade-offs between public health and economic activity, made all but inevitable by Congress’s failure to pass more stimulus. By not providing the necessary financial assistance to individuals, businesses, and state and local governments, the federal government has put states in the unenviable position of mandating public health measures without the ability to compensate businesses and individuals suffering the consequences.

As Vox’s Li Zhou has reported, Congress is still arguing over major components of a potential stimulus package, including whether to include unemployment assistance, business liability protections, and aid to state and local governments. The latest competing proposals, neither of which currently have enough support to move forward, carry price tags of more than $900 billion. But, as Vox’s Emily Stewart recently noted, a new study has estimated that it will take between $3 and $4.5 trillion in near-term spending to “get the economy to reach its full potential.”

Meanwhile, states were already facing budget shortfalls numbering in the hundreds of billions before the Covid-19 crisis hit. They’re in no position to offer their residents and businesses the type of financial assistance that Congress could.

There is good news around the corner: The FDA appears on track to grant emergency approval of two separate vaccines in the coming days, with plans to vaccinate about 20 million people in high-risk groups by the end of 2020 and the rest of the US population over the next six months. But in the meantime, the country is exhausted, and residents are struggling to comply with public health guidance as the holiday season drives more people to gather with family and friends in person.

Julia Marcus, epidemiologist and professor at Harvard Medical School, recently argued in the Atlantic that “abstinence-only recommendations regarding social contact” are a bad policy choice when it comes to Covid-19 prevention. Instead, she writes, officials need to offer people “practical ways to reduce risk that go beyond ‘Just say no’” — especially if they’re going to dine indoors themselves in defiance of their own rules.

Sheriffs have long had a lot of leeway in deciding whether to enforce laws

The defiant sheriffs are expressing a very real frustration nearly a year into the Covid-19 pandemic. Though their elected positions are supposed to be nonpartisan, that’s often not the case, and it shows in their responses to the stay-at-home orders. Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano opined that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco sounded a lot more like an Infowars conspiracy theorist when he falsely claimed in a December 4 video that “the medical field is so split about this virus.” When Arellano pressed Bianco on this assertion, he doubled-down, arguing that “doctors and other medical professionals have differing opinions on benefits of masks, social distancing, and lockdowns.”

“Not everyone is going to get the virus, and 99.8[%] of those who do, will get over it,” Bianco added.

These sheriffs’ refusal to enforce the stay-at-home orders is part of a long tradition of sheriffs picking and choosing when and how to require their constituents to follow the law. From defying gun control orders to selective enforcement of traffic violations, our system has granted wide latitude to law enforcement. California’s current crisis is a feature, not a bug, of the system.

Following the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and Newton, Connecticut, in 2012, some states that passed new laws regarding gun ownership — including Colorado, New York, and Florida — saw similar protestations from law enforcement officers who refused to enforce them.

The nature of policing requires some level of discretion when it comes to enforcement. Traffic violations are so common that police have to decide which ones are worth ticketing and stopping (these decisions are rife with racial bias). However, outright refusal to uphold a law goes beyond that day-to-day discretion as sheriffs appoint themselves lawmakers and law enforcers in the same breath.

At the end of the day, the people who are most at risk — those facing eviction, job loss, the shuttering of their business, and isolation from their friends and families — deserve more from their government than theatrical showdowns and hypocritical scolding. But right now, it looks like that’s all they’re going to get.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was sabotaging coronavirus relief, the Congress was supposed to be going along with a regular procedure and a normal legislative process in passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the 60th year in a row, even under a veto threat from Donald Trump. Then Sen. Rand Paul happened, because he's constitutionally incapable of not making a bad situation 100 times worse. Thanks, Kentucky, for those two.

Paul is delaying passage of the NDAA, filibustering it over a provision that he says would prevent Trump from drawing down forces in Afghanistan. That's what he says his problem is, anyway. "That amendment alone is enough to make me object to it, as well as the amount of spending," he said. He also said he would drop his objection and let the Senate take their vote quickly if they would push the final vote back to Monday. What Paul is really doing, whether purposefully or not, is threatening a short government shutdown this weekend. He needs to relent before midnight Friday in order for the short-term government funding bill the House sent over Wednesday to be passed. Meanwhile the Senate, being the Senate and allergic to working on Fridays, just wants to get the hell out of town for the weekend and isn't sure how to get around to all the work they need to do.

"I don't know the answer to that but I'm hopeful that it's just a short-term thing. We'll probably be here tomorrow. But I don't know how much longer. I can't imagine anybody wants [a shutdown]," Sen. John Cornyn told Politico. Which makes you wonder if Cornyn actually knows Paul. "For the information of all senators, we should expect the potential for a late night tonight and the possibility of votes tomorrow," McConnell told members Thursday.

Meanwhile, the tough talk from Republicans about standing up to Trump and overriding his veto of the NDAA is starting to crumble, with spineless Republicans trying to have it both ways. Seriously, here's House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pretzeling himself, "formally" announcing "Tuesday evening that he was for the annual Pentagon policy bill, before he will turn against the measure that provides pay raises for troops and a list of critical new provisions with overwhelming bipartisan support." He wants that critical raise of the troops and all the new provisions, but he doesn't want Trump to be mean to him, so he voted for the bill but is going to vote against the bill when it comes back for a veto override.

"My point has always been, when I became a leader, I would not vote against the president's veto. I will hold up the president's veto," McCarthy told reporters. "We've always worked together to make bills better." That pits him against the Republican Senate. "It's the most important bill of the year. We're talking about the equipment we're gonna have, we're talking about the number of F-35s, we're talking about, anyway, it's all the things that our kids could get," Sen. James M. Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. So that's fun.

If you worked for Trump and didn't wind up in a fight with him, you may have damaged yourself too much to get another administration job.

Joel Hruska, writing at ExtremeTech: It's not just a question of whether top-end hardware is available, but whether midrange and last-gen hardware is selling at reasonable prices. If you want to go AMD, be aware that Ryzen 5000 CPUs are hard to find and the 6800 and 6800 XT are vanishingly rare. The upper-range Ryzen 3000 CPUs available on Amazon and Newegg are also selling for well above their prices six months ago. If you want to build an Intel system, the situation is a little different. A number of the 9th and 10th-gen chips are actually priced at MSRP and not too hard to find. The Core i7-9700K has fallen to $269, for example, and it's still one of Intel's fastest gaming CPUs. At that price, paired with a Z370 motherboard, you could build a gaming-focused system, so long as you don't actually need a new high-end GPU. The Core i7-10700K is $359, which isn't quite as competitive, but it squares off reasonably well against chips like the 3700X at $325. Amazon and Newegg both report the 3600X selling for more, at $400 and $345, respectively. But even if these prices are appealing, the current GPU market makes building a gaming system much above lower-midrange to midrange a non-starter. Radeon 6000 GPUs and RTX 3000 GPUs are both almost impossible to find, and the older, slower, and less feature-rich cards that you can buy are almost all selling for more today than they were six months ago. Not every GPU has been kicked into the stratosphere, but between the cards you can't buy and the cards you shouldn't buy, there's a limited number of deals currently on the market. Your best bet is to set up price alerts on specific SKUs you are watching with the vendor in question. There is some limited good news, though: DRAM and SSDs are both still reasonably priced. DRAM and SSD prices are both expected to decline 10-15 percent through Q4 2020 compared with the previous quarter, and there are good deals to be had on both. [...] Power supply prices look reasonable, too, and motherboard availability looks solid. If you don't need to buy a GPU right now and you're willing to or prefer to use Intel, there's a more reasonable case to be made for building a system. But if you need a high-end GPU and/or want a high-end Ryzen chip to go with it, you may be better off shopping prebuilt systems or waiting a few more months.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The runoff for Georgia’s Senate seat between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff has consisted mostly of David Perdue hiding out and ducking questions concerning how much of a swamp creature he is. The levels of corruption that Perdue has reportedly been involved in seem to be newly revealed every day. It makes sense that Perdue was too cowardly to appear against Ossoff at a recent debate.

Many of the questions Perdue faces these days are connected to his very prodigious stock trading activities and their proximity to the companies that he oversees in his Senate committees. His willingness to profit off of the misery of the American public and Georgians in particular is truly sociopathic. Now, ProPublica reports that the diversity of Sen. Perdue’s stock portfolio may only be rivaled by the diversity in his ability to leverage his position of power for personal profit.

Georgia’s runoff election date is Jan. 5. You can request an absentee ballot for the Georgia runoff here, and you can vote in person starting as early as Dec. 14.

Donate what you can to help keep Georgia blue and build the organizations that have worked and continue to work on the ground for Georgians.

According to the report, Perdue sold his D.C. home in 2019, to “a board governor for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a privately funded self-regulatory body for the securities industry.” The FINRA falls under the Senate Banking Committee on which Perdue sits. According to ProPublica, the buyer told them they bought the property at “slightly” under the market value; but at least four local real estate experts told the news outlet that the price tag was definitely above market cost. Over $100,000 more than what Perdue may have gotten it for if say, he was selling to regular folks.

Perdue’s spokesperson said the senator’s real estate agent “floated it off market first, and they would have put it on market, but got an offer at their asking price which was fair market value.”

Lucky them! According to the report, FINRA was lobbying the Senate right at the very same moment Perdue was making this sale. What were they lobbying for? They were trying to negotiate a bill, authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, that would have “required the organization to establish a relief fund to provide investors with arbitration awards that went unpaid by FINRA’s brokerage firms and brokers.” The bill didn’t pass and Perdue’s office “declined” to give his position on the bill to ProPublica. 

To be clear, the problems and questions surrounding David Perdue are almost identical to the accusations and evidence of insider trading his fellow Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler appears to have participated in as well. And since the GOP has been unable to provide anything of substance to its constituents since taking control of our government, its platform has disappeared completely. The Republican Party promises nothing these days. They are the party of tax breaks for the rich and corruption. At this point in time the Grand Old Party only practices voter suppression with a heavy dose of racism, while lining their own pockets.

You may be wondering how long Senate Republicans intend to keep up the fiction that President-elect Joe Biden may not be the true next president of the United States. The answer appears to be: until the very day of the inauguration, and possibly for longer than that.

On Team Fascism, Sen. Ted Cruz suggested to Axios that the Senate simply won't be moving to confirm any of Biden's Cabinet picks, or even hold hearings on them, anytime in the near future. "As long as there's litigation ongoing, and the election result is disputed, I do not think you will see the Senate act to confirm any nominee," he told Axios. Given that noted delusionist Donald Trump will be "disputing" the results of the election from now until the day he is tucked into his mausoleum, we can presume from this that the Senate will refuse to hold confirmation hearings for Biden's nominees until at least Jan. 20—meaning that Biden will take office with no national security, intelligence, justice, or pandemic heads in place. It takes little imagination to suppose that corrupt Republicans will continue to cast doubt on the election results for weeks or months after that, meaning there is a nontrivial chance that Cruz and allies will claim the controversy nullifies Biden’s ability to appoint any Senate-confirmable government heads indefinitely.

In prior transitions, the Senate would begin the process of vetting nominees before the new president takes office. (Axios cites the Center for Presidential Transition on this, which says 95% of prior Cabinet nominees have been given hearings before the inauguration.) This is to ensure the stability of the transition, especially as it relates to foreign threats and other national security concerns. This is not a normal transition, because it comes in the context of numerous Republican elected officials attempting to Do A Treason, demanding that courts reinstall the Republicans by force rather than acknowledging their defeat. And, to be blunt, Senate Republicans have proven time and time again that national security concerns are negotiable, and public safety questions are absolutely irrelevant when it comes to protecting and expanding party power.

That's what fascism is. If anything, Senate Republicans have seized on the nonsensical conspiracy theories of Trump's fabulists as defense for what they intended to do anyway: Withhold support for pandemic aid, efforts to stabilize the economy, and other crisis measures so as to better paint the Biden administration as ineffective. It is the Great Recession playbook, but with 300,000 deaths attached and counting.

This is usually the point in the conversation where pedants and nonpedants bicker over the precise versus colloquial definitions of words like “treason” and “sedition.” Given that there will be no court that can force the Republican Party to act on behalf of their country, the debate is largely irrelevant. At present numerous Republican state attorney generals are demanding that the Supreme Court nullify the election based on transparently fabricated propaganda claims. Republican senators who have blocked nearly every move to grant emergency pandemic aid to citizens and who have kept their silence as charlatans goad their far-right base into death threats and violence against the movement’s latest enemies are united in a willingness to reinforce the notion that this nation's election was somehow illegitimate and, therefore, null and void. They’re saying nothing as their most violent supporters take to the streets based on their claims.

They are willing to do a great deal more than merely foot-drag on key government appointments.

Their intent appears to be to craft as many simultaneous crises as possible so that the most prolific liars of the party have better ammunition with which to attack the party's enemies. It is what Sen. Mitch McConnell, in particular, has specialized in for many years now. If Biden enters the White House with no top national security officials or Cabinet members in place, Republican senators will consider that a win. If further crisis strikes during that period, Cruz will be on television celebrating it.

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[17 states submitted a brief supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's effort to prevent the selection of electors in four states, but only 6 joined today's motion to intervene. [Update: Meanwhile, Ohio files a brief that's worth reading.]]

Six states attorneys general, led by Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, have moved to intervene in Texas v. Pennsylvania, the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that seeks to prevent the selection of presidential electors based upon the November election results in four states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan). Yesterday, 17 states, also led by Missouri AG Schmitt, filed an amicus brief in support of the Texas suit. I wrote about that filing here.

There are a few notable things about today's filing. First and foremost, it is notable than only six of the states that joined yesterday's amicus brief (Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah) were willing to join today's motion to intervene and join the Texas Bill of Complaint. This suggests that some of the state AGs who were willing to say that the claims raised by Texas are sufficiently serious to warrant the Court's attention were not willing to actually endorse the substance of those claims. Perhaps this indicates there is only so far they are willing to go to virtue-signal their support for the Trump tribe. (Yesterday's filing from Arizona can be viewed in a similar light.) In the alternative it could simply represent discomfort with some of the claims this new briefing supports, which leads to my next point.

In seeking to intervene, the states did not submit their own proposed Bill of Complaint. Rather, they seek to join the Bill of Complaint submitted by Texas, as modified by the Bill of Complaint submitted on behalf of Donald Trump. As their Bill of Complaint in Intervention states:

The Intervening State Plaintiffs adopt by reference and join in the Bill of Complaint submitted by Plaintiff State of Texas as modified by President Trump's Bill of Complaint in Intervention in all aspects, including the statements of Jurisdiction, the Parties, Additional Facts, Count I (alleging a violation of the Elector's Clause) and the Prayer for Relief.

In other words, these six states are endorsing everything in the Texas and Trump Bills of Complaint, including the absurdly stupid statistical claims, the misrepresentation of what occurred in other Supreme Court litigation concerning absentee ballots in Pennsylvania, and the Trump's briefs uncited claims about Georgia absentee ballot rejection rates that are directly refuted by the data released by the (Republican) Georgia Secretary of State, in addition to the underlying legal theory that states can sue to challenge the lawfulness of election rules and their administration in other states.

All in all, it is a sad showing from the attorneys general of these six states.

UPDATE: As I was composing this post, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a brief in support of neither party that endorses the principle that state legislatures are uniquely authorized to control the manner of selecting presidential electors, but opposing the relief sought by Texas. It is definitely worth a read.

To be crystal clear about the Ohio brief, it does not support the Texas filing, but it does support the claim that state legislatures set the rules governing the manner in which presidential electors are selected, and this does place some limits on the extent to which state courts or executive branch officials may make unauthorized changes to state election rules in presidential elections. Moreover (and this is a key point), it limits the sort of relief that federal courts can offer as well.

From the Ohio brief:

Ohio has previously argued that this Court has mandatory jurisdiction in original actions, and that it therefore lacks authority to deny leave to file bills of complaint. See Arizona v. Sackler, No. 22O151, Br. of Ohio and amici States (Sept. 26, 2019). Its amicus brief in this case will address something else: the proper understanding of the Electors Clause, U.S. Const. art. II, §1, cl.2; the incompatibility of the Clause and the remedy that Texas seeks; and the need for a Supreme Court ruling, at the earliest available opportunity, on the proper application of the Clause to cases in which state courts or state executive officers alter election rules in presidential elections. . . .

Article II of the Constitution directs that "[e]ach State shall appoint" presidential electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." Art. II, §1, cl.2. Whatever "the Legislature thereof" means, it does not mean "the courts thereof." Thus, when state election codes dictate the manner for appointing presidential electors, state courts must respect the legislature's work: they may not change the rules by which electors are chosen through judge-made doctrines or by rewriting statutes in the guise of interpretation. See Democratic Nat'l Comm. v. Wis. State Legislature, 592 U.S. __, slip op. 9 n.1 (2020) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring); Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 120 (2000)
(Rehnquist, C.J., concurring); see also Republican Party of Pa. v. Boockvar, 592 U.S. __, slip op. 1 (2020) (Statement of Alito, J.). This does not mean that state-court interpretations of state law are entitled to no deference. But at some point, a purported  interpretation" becomes "not a construction" of the relevant text, "but a rewriting of it." State Bd. of Equalization of Cal. v. Young's Market Co., 299 U.S. 59, 62 (1936).
The Electors Clause prohibits such rewritings in the context of presidential elections.

Precisely because Ohio holds this view about the meaning of the Electors Clause, it cannot support Texas's plea for relief. Texas seeks a "remand to the State legislatures to allocate electors in a manner consistent with the Constitution." Br. in Support of Motion for Leave to File 16. Such an order would violate, not honor, the Electors Clause. Federal courts, just like state courts, lack authority to change the legislatively chosen method for appointing presidential electors. And so federal courts, just like state courts, lack authority to order legislatures to appoint electors without regard to the results of an already-completed election.

What is more, the relief that Texas seeks would undermine a foundational premise of our federalist system: the idea that the States are sovereigns, free to govern themselves. The federal government has only those powers that the Constitution gives to it. And
nothing in the Constitution empowers courts to issue orders affirmatively directing the States how to exercise their constitutional authority. . . .

Imagine that! A state AG filing that actually shows an understanding of federalism!

The brief makes another important point:

Although Ohio does not endorse Texas's proposed relief, it does endorse its call for a ruling on the meaning of the Electors Clause. More precisely, Ohio urges the Court to decide, at the earliest available opportunity, whether state courts and state executive actors violate the Electors Clause when they change the rules by which presidential elections are run.

Of course, this issue need not be resolved in this case. There are multiple pending cases from Pennsylvania that raise this issue more cleanly (see, e.g., here, here, and here). These other cases would provide the Court with the opportunity to clarify the law so as to help avoid these sorts of controversies in future years. While some might argue the Pennsylvania case are moot, because they cannot affect the selection of Pennsylvania's electors, let along the result of the presidential election, I would argue that the current controversy shows they raise questions capable of repetition, yet evading review.

Biden has signaled a more welcoming era for immigrants — but Trump is making a last-ditch effort to push through his policy agenda.

With less than 50 days left in office, President Donald Trump appears to be rushing to implement immigration changes. The Biden administration could unravel many of them — but the latest developments add to what will already be a monumental task of reversing Trump’s nativist policy agenda.

Since the election, the Trump administration has made the citizenship test harder. It’s on track to reach its stated goal of constructing 450 miles of border wall by the end of the year, a physical reminder of Trump’s efforts to keep out asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants. And on Thursday, it finalized a regulation that would gut the asylum system, going into effect just nine days before President-elect Joe Biden assumes office, unless anticipated legal challenges succeed in blocking it.

Other proposals could still be finalized before Inauguration Day, including regulations that would impose additional burdens on asylum seekers and foreign workers. Trump is also reportedly mulling a potential executive action aiming to put an end to birthright citizenship.

With White House senior adviser and noted immigration restrictionist Stephen Miller at his side, Trump has imposed unprecedented barriers to asylum, slashed legal immigration, vastly expanded immigration detention, and carried out wide-scale raids on unauthorized immigrants living in the US.

In the aftermath of Trump’s election loss, which he still refuses to acknowledge, his last-minute push to enact the remaining items on his policy wish list no longer appears to be about rallying his base, but rather securing a legacy. Whether he will succeed is a question of the little time he has left to leave his mark and how easily the next administration can erase it.

“Even if they publish these [proposals], which are being used as scare tactics, it doesn’t change anything unless it’s actually a final rule that has taken effect,” Shev Dalal-Dheini, the director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said. “I think a lot of people are nervous when they see things. But if they don’t have effect, it doesn’t change anything.”

Trump has made applying for citizenship harder

Immigrants have applied to become US citizens in increasing numbers since Trump took office, which some policy analysts say is the effect of the president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. But the path hasn’t been easy. They’re facing ballooning processing times, higher fees, more intensive vetting, and the possibility of later losing their citizenship at the hands of the Justice Department’s “denaturalization section.”

As of December 1, they also have to pass an updated, more difficult citizenship test. And on November 18, the Trump administration also updated its policy guidance to advise officials at US Citizenship and Immigration Services to scrutinize citizenship applicants about how they obtained their green cards, among other factors, changes that immigration advocates argue will result in longer processing times and more denials.

Both changes represent additional barriers to citizenship for the roughly 9.2 million immigrants living in the US who are eligible to naturalize.

The new citizenship test is derived from 128 possible questions, and to pass, applicants must answer 12 of 20 questions correctly. By comparison, the previous iteration of the test featured 100 possible questions, and a passing score was six out of 10.

The administration also changed the wording of certain questions in a way that immigrant advocates see as a means of making it harder for immigrants of limited English proficiency to pass, Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans, said in a statement.

One such question asks, “Who does a US senator represent?” The answer used to be “all people of the state,” but the new answer, which has drawn criticism, is just the “citizens” in the state. Immigrant advocates have consequently urged the Biden administration to abandon the new test in favor of restoring its previous iteration.

Trump is trying to drastically narrow asylum eligibility

The Trump administration has pursued a vast regulatory agenda aimed at curbing asylum and other humanitarian protections for migrants arriving on the southern border.

As part of a last-minute push, it issued a death blow to the system on Thursday with a sweeping final regulation that would bar huge swaths of asylum seekers from obtaining protection, including those who face persecution on the basis of gender and resistance to gang recruitment, and as victims of criminal coercion. Those targeted by international criminal gangs like MS-13 will therefore likely face a much narrower path to asylum under the rule.

The regulation would allow immigration officials to discard asylum seekers’ applications as “frivolous” without so much as a hearing or even a chance to respond to concerns about their applications. It would also refuse asylum to anyone coming from a country other than Canada or Mexico, who does not arrive on a direct flight to the US, who has resided in the US for more than one year, or who has failed to pay taxes, among other provisions.

First proposed in June, the regulation drew about 80,000 comments in response, the majority in opposition. Yet the administration only made five changes to it, keeping the vast majority of the original proposal intact.

“The Death to Asylum regulation will often become death to asylees,” David Bier, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, tweeted about the policy.

Other asylum-related regulations could still be finalized and implemented before Inauguration Day.

That includes a proposed regulation to expand immigration officials’ ability to turn away asylum seekers on public health grounds, classifying anyone coming from a place where a contagious or infectious disease is prevalent as a threat to US national security. While that could certainly include Covid-19, the rule allows the departments of Homeland Security and Justice — not just the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — to have input as to whether any one disease poses an international threat.

The Biden administration would have to issue new regulations to rescind any of the regulations Trump has finalized, including likely going through the burdensome process of giving the public notice and the opportunity to comment. It could also try to revise any regulations subject to ongoing litigation through a court settlement.

The Biden administration could also invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to reverse regulations that were enacted in the last 60 working days of Congress, which extends back to March. However, using the act requires passing a joint resolution in both chambers of Congress, which could be difficult if Democrats don’t have control of the Senate.

If the regulations have yet to go into effect, the Biden administration could also delay their effective date by 60 days and then work to rescind them in the meantime.

Trump is continuing to target immigrant workers

Though Trump has often claimed that he supports legal immigration, he has put up substantial barriers to foreign workers and is continuing to do so in his final days in office.

Trump issued an executive order earlier this year that froze the issuance of visas for most foreign workers applying from outside the US through the end of the year on account of Covid-19, and he is expected to extend that order. President-elect Joe Biden has criticized the policy, calling it a “yet another attempt to distract” from his administration’s “failure to lead an effective response to COVID-19.” He told NBC News in June that the policy “will not be in my administration.”

The Trump administration is also pursuing regulations that would hamstring the health care industry, universities, nonprofits, and businesses that rely on foreign talent.

One top-priority regulation for the Trump administration would alter the way that H-1B skilled worker visas are distributed: Rather than being distributed at random through a lottery process, visas would go to the applicants with the highest salaries, making it difficult for employers in specialized fields to fill entry-level jobs. Another would limit the length of time that noncitizens can stay in the US as students, exchange visitors, and journalists.

Other pending regulations would impose additional burdens on those applying for immigration benefits, requiring more evidence from US citizens or permanent residents who sponsor immigrants for green cards and additional biometrics screening, including DNA collection and voice prints.

Trump is rushing to finish the border wall

The border wall has represented a major political flashpoint of the Trump administration. The president invoked the wall as a rallying cry on the campaign trail in 2016, and he proved intent in bringing that vision to fruition while in office, waiving environmental and contracting laws and seizing private land to do it.

Now he’s racing to finish the 450 miles of border wall he promised by the end of the year. About 415 miles of wall had been completed as of November 27, though most of that construction was to replace old, existing barriers, CNN reported. Despite what he promised in 2016, Mexico never paid for it; instead, the $15 billion burden fell on taxpayers and was partially transferred from the Pentagon’s budget without congressional approval.

Biden has promised to halt wall construction once he assumes office, though that might be easier said than done. There remain questions as to whether he could terminate existing construction contracts and what will be done with the unspent funds that were transferred from the Pentagon for the purposes of building the wall.

But despite Biden’s vow that “there will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration,” the hundreds of miles of wall that has already been constructed will serve as a physical testament to Trump’s restrictionist immigration policy framework. The Biden administration will likely be tasked with maintaining it.

Trump is reportedly weighing an executive order to end birthright citizenship

Over the course of his presidency, Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to end birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee to all children born in America, regardless of their parents’ nationality, which he sees as a factor that draws unauthorized immigrants to come live in the US. The Hill reported that he is again weighing an executive action that would achieve just that in the final weeks before Inauguration Day, and that the Justice Department has been consulted on the matter.

Any such executive action would be swiftly challenged in court. Legal experts say it has little likelihood of survival given that it would require overturning a century-old interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Courts have long taken that to mean that children of noncitizens are “born in the United States and subject to its laws” and are therefore citizens. But immigration restrictionists from organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for American Immigration Reform — groups founded by the white nationalist John Tanton that have influenced Trump’s immigration policy — have argued that the 14th Amendment had a much narrower purpose of ensuring that emancipated enslaved people would be recognized as US citizens and was never meant to confer citizenship on the children of unauthorized immigrants.

While any such executive action may be swiftly blocked in court or revoked by the incoming Biden administration, its potential chilling effect cannot be underestimated.

“They want to issue policies that scare people off because their primary objective is to deter illegal immigration,” Dalal-Dheini said. The executive action “would serve that purpose.”

Trump forced the GOP to choose between him and their country, and they chose him.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield instructed staff to delete an email from a Trump political appointee seeking control over the agency’s scientific reports on the pandemic, a senior CDC official told congressional investigators this week.

Redfield’s apparent instruction was revealed in a Monday closed-door interview with the House subcommittee probing the White House's coronavirus response, which includes the Trump administration’s interference at the federal public health agency. It came following an Aug. 8 email sent by Paul Alexander, who was then the scientific adviser to Health and Human Services spokesperson Michael Caputo, aiming to water down the CDC’s famed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports to align with President Donald Trump’s efforts to downplay the virus.

"I was instructed to delete the email," MMWR editor Charlotte Kent told investigators. Kent, who was on vacation when Alexander sent the email, said that she was informed of the request by a colleague who filled in for her, and that she understood the request to be from Redfield. Kent said that she never saw the email herself. "I went to look for it after I had been told to delete it, and it was already gone," she told investigators on Monday.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, who chairs the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, on Thursday raised concern the episode may be among "deliberate efforts by the Trump Administration to conceal and destroy evidence" of political meddling in the pandemic response. In a letter to Redfield and HHS Secretary Alex Azar, he said that instructing staff to delete documents is unethical and possibly a violation of federal record-keeping requirements, according to a copy shared with POLITICO.

"Federal employees have affirmative obligations to preserve documents, and destruction of federal records is potentially illegal," Clyburn warned in the letter. "Federal law also provides for up to three years of imprisonment for willful destruction of federal records."

Redfield in a Thursday afternoon statement didn't deny telling staff to delete the email, though he said he instructed them to "ignore Dr. Alexander's comments."

"As I testified before Congress, I am fully committed to maintaining the independence of the MMWR, and I stand by that statement," Redfield said.

POLITICO first reported on Sept. 11 that Alexander had demanded — and received — the right to review the CDC's reports, with the approval of top HHS officials. The agency’s MMWR reports, authored by career scientists, are typically free of political interference, and revelations that Trump officials had sought to alter their findings alarmed public health experts who depend on them. Democrats later announced a probe into the Trump administration’s interactions with the federal science agencies.

An HHS spokesperson, while ignoring questions about whether Redfield had asked staff to delete the email, said the House subcommittee had wrongly characterized Kent's remarks — a complaint echoed by the panel's top Republican.

"We urge the Subcommittee to release the transcript in full which will show that during her testimony Dr. Kent repeatedly said there was no political interference in the MMWR process," the HHS spokesperson said.

Kent did not respond to a request for comment.

She also told investigators that the CDC, in an earlier incident, delayed the publication of a July report on coronavirus spread at a Georgia summer camp following a "requested delay by Dr. Redfield and HHS." The report was held for two days and instead released about 15 minutes after Redfield concluded testimony to Clyburn's panel.

Clyburn said the subcommittee is still waiting for documents that it requested on Sept. 14. In his letter, he also threatened to subpoena HHS and CDC if they didn’t comply with his subcommittee’s ongoing probe.

Following Kent's interview with investigators on Monday, HHS canceled four interviews that had been scheduled with top CDC staff, including CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, Acting Chief of Staff Nina Witkofsky, Acting Deputy Chief of Staff Trey Moeller and communications official Kate Galatas. According to the oversight committee, HHS complained that the panel overstepped the bounds of its investigation during Kent’s interview.

The HHS spokesperson, who requested anonymity, said the subcommittee was "not operating in good faith." House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Lousiana, the top Republican on the coronavirus subcommittee, said the Democrats' investigation has turned up "zero evidence of actual interference in CDC scientific reports."

Alexander, who has since left HHS, spent months pushing career scientific officials to align their messages with Trump's downplaying of the virus. In September, he tried to prevent infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci from speaking about the risks the coronavirus posed to children. In a Sept. 11 email previously obtained by POLITICO, Alexander also urged CDC officials to alter a report on the virus' risks to young Americans, complicating the agency's own efforts to review that report.

In Alexander's Aug. 8 email, which was previously obtained by POLITICO, he insisted on an "immediate stop on all CDC MMWR reports due to the incompleteness of reporting."

"Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how the CDC wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete,'" Alexander added, in a breach of the scientific firewall that CDC has maintained for decades.

In the lengthy email, which switches between red and black font and yellow and blue highlighted text, Alexander laid out demands for retroactive changes to the CDC's reports and insisted that the agency's career scientists were trying to subvert Trump's reelection bid.

HHS announced Sept. 16 that Alexander would exit the department, the same day that Caputo took leave.

Announcing the new GIFT BOOK PACKAGE: Send the two new Tom the Dancing Bug books, Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse, and The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader, to a liked/loved one this holiday season. Signed, sketched, inscribed, etc. Order this week for Christmas delivery here.

"This fine collection of work by Mr. Bolling provides ample evidence as to why he is unanimously considered one of the greatest cartoonists in the known universe. How he would rank in that other part of the universe is, of course, a matter that's still being hotly debated within the scientific community." -"Weird Al" Yankovic

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Adobe has released the final scheduled update to its Flash Player plugin, weeks before Flash's official retirement. The Verge reports: As noted on Adobe's site, yesterday marked the last update for Flash outside mainland China, which has a separate version of the software. Adobe will stop supporting Flash on December 31st, 2020, and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021. Adobe offered a brief farewell in its release notes. "We want to take a moment to thank all of our customers and developers who have used and created amazing Flash Player content over the last two decades," the note says. "We are proud that Flash had a crucial role in evolving web content across animation, interactivity, audio, and video. We are excited to help lead the next era of digital experiences."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Voters in parts of Georgia waited up to 10 hours to vote in the initial days of early voting for the presidential election, Newsweek reported. Now Georgia election officials are all but assuring another round of lengthy waits for the state’s upcoming runoff election.

Early voting starts Saturday, and just days earlier, officials decided to cut the number of voting precincts by more than half in the state’s third-largest county, local nonprofit and advocacy groups reported. Where 11 precincts once served Cobb County, which is just west of the state’s most populous county Fulton, now Cobb County residents will only have five places to vote early if all goes as planned. Voting rights advocates are doing everything in their power to make sure all does not go as planned. 

The Georgia runoff is Jan. 5. Click here to request an absentee ballot. Early in-person voting starts Dec. 14. 

The Georgia NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and four other nonprofit and advocacy organizations sent a letter to both elected and county elections officials in Cobb County informing them that the planned closure could potentially suppress the Black and Latino vote in the county. “While these closures are likely to adversely affect many Cobb County voters, we are especially concerned that these closures will be harmful to Cobb County’s Black and Latinx voters because many of the locations are in Black and Latinx communities,” the organizations said in the letter.

They went on to state:

“Advance voting opportunities are vital to ensuring voters can safely, securely, and freely participate in our democracy. The COVID-19 pandemic, which is ravaging the nation, has had extremely harsh effects in Black and Latinx communities and makes in-person voting on Election Day an untenable option for many voters. Moreover, due to widespread concerns with the reliability of the United States Postal Service, many voters are not comfortable requesting or casting absentee ballots by mail. As demonstrated by the record turnout during the advance voting period for the 2020 general election, advance voting is the only acceptable option for safe and secure voting for many voters.”

Cobb Elections Director Janine Eveler said during a county legislative delegation meeting on December 1 her department has struggled to staff polling sites during the winter holiday, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which initially reported the news. “We just could only staff the five locations,” Eveler said.

So local voting rights workers offered to help. "These concerns can be easily addressed and our organizations stand ready to provide you with any assistance you require, including help recruiting and training poll workers or poll managers," activists said in the letter. It was signed by representatives from the state NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, All Voting is Local Georgia, the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, Black Voters Matter Fund, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. 

LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said she predicted that election officials would start closing polls in Georgia when she appeared on MSNBC over the weekend. She said to viewers on her Twitter timeline Tuesday that it’s not that she’s psychic. “It’s just that the Republicans are quite consistent about two things—racism and voter suppression,” she said. Brown told viewers to “pay attention” because “these folks are literally trying to steal, really and undermine democracy.”

RELATED: Voter suppression: Cobb County cuts more than half of early voting sites for January 5 GA runoff

Let’s give GOP Leader Mitch McConnell the boot! Give $4 right now so McConnell can suffer the next six years in the minority.

According to The Robot Report, citing The Korea Economic Daily, Hyndai will finalize its acquisition of Boston Dynamics on December 10th. A source familiar with the deal said the acquisition is for about $1 billion. From the report: Robotics has become a bigger focus for Hyundai since Chung Euisun was named chairman in October. The company has since said robotics will account for 20% of its future business. Hyundai Robotics was founded in 2017, but it officially launched earlier in 2020. The company's automotive group invested in autonomous vehicle startup 42dot and Realtime Robotics in 2019. Hyundai has also created a $4 billion autonomous vehicle joint venture with Aptiv. It is not yet clear how Boston Dynamics will fit into Hyundai, which becomes the third owner of Boston Dynamics in seven years. It was acquired by Google in 2013 and sold to Softbank Group in 2017. The RBR50 company has mainly operated as an R&D organization since it was founded. But a new emphasis on commercialization was evident after it was acquired by Softbank.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Texas and 17 other red states are asking the Supreme Court to block Biden’s win. The problem is their utter lack of strong arguments.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday proclaimed on Twitter that the federal government “will be INTERVENING” in a long-shot Texas lawsuit challenging the results of the presidential election he lost to Joe Biden, adding that the case — which comes as Trump and his allies are on a historic streak of losing legal challenges — is “the big one.”

“Our Country needs a victory!” Trump wrote.

The case is the handiwork of staunch Trump ally Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (who is under federal investigation and hence could benefit from a potential presidential pardon). Paxton’s lawsuit asks the Supreme Court to block four states where Biden won the popular vote — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia — from casting electoral votes for Biden.

It’s not exactly clear what Trump meant in promising to “intervene” in the lawsuit, which has the support of 17 other Republican state attorneys general who on Wednesday filed an amicus brief rife with flawed arguments.

If the Texas lawsuit succeeds and the four states in question are prevented from casting electoral votes for Biden, it would mean that Biden would no longer have the 270 electoral votes he needs to become president. That would obviously be a very big deal, and could perhaps signal the end of democratic presidential elections in the United States. But there’s no reason to believe the Supreme Court will insert itself into an election that Biden very clearly won.

The Texas lawsuit is a slapdash effort

As Amy Howe explains for SCOTUSblog, Paxton’s lawsuit argues that Texas voters were disenfranchised in a national election by lax mail voting standards in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia:

The filing by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses government officials in the four states of using the COVID-19 pandemic to make changes to their states’ election laws through “executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.” The state officials, Paxton writes, “flooded” their states with absentee ballots and “weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote-signature verification and witness requirements.” As a result, Paxton contends, the 2020 election “suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities in those four states” – for example, treating voters in Democratic areas more favorably than in other areas. When taken together, Paxton asserts, these flaws make it impossible to know who “legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections.”

During a Fox & Friends appearance on Wednesday, Paxton argued that the four states in question “did not follow their own state law,” so the remedy should be to “transfer this to the legislature ... and let them decide the outcome of the election.” (All four states in question have legislatures that are controlled by Republicans.)

But the problem Paxton faces is the same one that has dogged all the legal challenges filed so far by Trump allies: There’s simply no evidence of significant irregularities. Elections officials in dozens of states spanning the red-to-blue spectrum have found no evidence of significant voter fraud marring the results. And they’ve looked.

“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” wrote Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas while rejecting a Trump legal challenge to Pennsylvania’s results. That sentiment was echoed by a conservative justice on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, Brian Hagedorn, who wrote in response to another failed Trump legal challenge, “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election.”

Unsurprisingly, elections officials and lawyers active in the states being sued by Paxton are responding to his effort by mocking and ridiculing it.

Marc Elias, chair of the Perkins Coie Political Law group, which represents the Biden campaign, tweeted of the lawsuit, “No, I am not worried. No, this won’t succeed.”

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, who chairs the Republican Attorneys General Association, said through a spokesperson that “with all due respect, the Texas Attorney General is constitutionally, legally and factually wrong about Georgia.” Along similar lines, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, tweeted, “This lawsuit seems to suggest that the voters of Michigan messed with Texas. They didn’t. Case closed.”

While Trump hasn’t been shy about indicating publicly that he thinks the three Supreme Court justices he successfully nominated owe him something, the court’s quick one-sentence dismissal on Tuesday of Rep. Mike Kelly’s (R-PA) effort to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying Biden’s victory in the state indicated that the court’s conservative majority isn’t keen to involve themselves in Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss.

For Trump, however, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Trump isn’t even really pretending anymore

The backdrop for Trump’s embrace of the Texas gambit is his increasing brazenness about what he’s trying to do, which is overturn the results of an election he lost.

On Wednesday alone, the president posted a tweet exclaiming “RIGGED ELECTION,” another claiming (falsely) that “I received hundreds of thousands of legal votes more, in all of the Swing States, than did my opponent,” and a third lamenting that “If somebody cheated in the Election, which the Democrats did, why wouldn’t the Election be immediately overturned? How can a Country be run like this?”

These tweets came a day after Trump used a coronavirus vaccine event at the White House as an opportunity to undermine US elections while suggesting Biden might not be inaugurated as president next month.

While Trump wants people to believe his loss to Biden was tainted, his legal team hasn’t been able to produce any evidence. In fact, there have been more coronavirus cases among Trump’s top campaign lawyers (two — Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis recently tested positive) than successful legal challenges brought by Trump’s allies (one).

Experts say Paxton’s lawsuit recycles flimsy allegations of irregularities from challenges that have already failed. For instance, University of Washington School of Law professor Lisa Marshall Manheim argued in the Washington Post of Paxton’s case that “it is an uninspired retread of the many state-level claims that already have imploded since Nov. 3. Texas has simply delivered these defective claims in an even worse package.”

Uninspired as it may be, Trump is clearly unable to discern good evidence from nonsense. On Wednesday, for instance, he cited the fact that betting sites briefly upgraded his odds of winning on election night — before many of the mail votes that Biden unsurprisingly dominated were tallied — as apparent evidence that he was the victim of a conspiracy. (Trump’s tweet is factually incorrect. His odds were never as high as he claimed.)

While it’s unlikely that the Texas lawsuit gains traction, Trump’s refusal to concede has produced a fundraising bonanza for him and given his hardcore fans a reason to hold on to hope for at least a little bit longer.

In the likely event that the Texas gambit fails, the result will feed into the “rigged election” narrative Trump has been pushing — one that could become his platform for a 2024 run. And if staying true to that story requires Trump to denigrate the Supreme Court as part of the “deep state,” then there’s little reason to believe he won’t go there.

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We're already moving toward violence. What happens when Trump leaves office and they decide all is lost?

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Trump's hold over Republicans prevents them from taking this simple step.

Jason Selvig and Davram Steifler (aka The Good Liars), who “create videos, signs and just about anything that sticks it to the people who’re hurting America,” interviewed a pair of Trump supporters why they don’t wear masks.

“We don’t have the vibrational frequency to host that virus,” claims one of the MAGA fans.

We asked these Trump supporters why they don’t wear masks. pic.twitter.com/GgZ4HJz6lf

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) December 8, 2020

The post Anti-Mask Trump Supporters Claim ‘Vibrational Frequencies’ Will Protect Them from COVID-19: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.