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DON JONES INDEX… |
GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED |
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DOW JONES INDEX: 12/16/20…30,199.31; 12/9/20…30,173.88; 6/27/13…15,000.00) copy of filing at https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/162953/20201207234611533_TX-v-State-Motion-2020-12-07%20FINAL.pdf LESSON
for December 16, 2020 – “IF THIS BE TREASON?” |
12/16/20… 13,722.40 w/vax bonus 13,822.40 212/9/20… 13,704.94 6/27/13… 15,000.00 |
While the pundits, the pirates and politicians hummed,
slummed and shambled their way through the Peach State as runoffs for two
Georgia Senate seats and control of that body thereof stumbles into its final
three weeks, trouble for the President-elect and, indeed, for the nation was
brewing in Texas.
Uncertified Lone Star wingnut, Texas Attorney General
Ken Paxton had filed what the Atlanta Journal Constitution (see Attachment One)
called “a brazen lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme court to toss out Georgia’s
election results.”
And not only Georgia… as might be attributed to his
consumption of a bad pulled pork sandwich atop a lttre of peach brandy.
Paxton also sued the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania -
seeking to nullify their elections.
Permanently. No do overs. Nada.
These four states have a combined electoral vote total
of 62 electors, all of which would otherwise go to Joe Biden. By Paxton’s reasoning, that would have given
President-Reject Donald Trump (who also lost the popular vote by seven million)
the re-election he so fervently seeks – to the extent of having filed as many
as 58 lawsuits (the numbers are a little hazy as new litigations arise almost
hourly) in State and Federal courts, to date.
How convenient!
“Most democratic nations on earth elect their
presidents by direct popular vote, but that was never the American system and
still is not,” James W. Ceaser and Rep. Jamin Raskin (D-Md) of constitutioncenter.org wrote. “We use the so-called “Electoral College”
system to choose our president, which today means that 538 Electors drawn from
the states and the District of Columbia speak for the rest of us. This is a
complex and non-uniform state-based process, designed - like the U.S. Senate,
which was originally composed of Members chosen by state legislatures, not the
people—to filter public opinion through a “deliberative” intermediate
institution. But the Electoral College has produced recurring political
controversy over the centuries and also experienced significant constitutional,
legislative, and political upheaval and revision.” (See Attachment Two).
Said Constitutional quirk seemed, to the Trump empire, a way to steal back the election he claimed to
believe had been stolen from him, sincerely or not.
If greenlighted by SCOTUS, with its three
Trump-appointed members who accepted said offer they couldn’t refuse likely
facing the dilemma of either overturning the election and re-installing Djonald Unconstitutioned or risking
“something happening to their families”, MAGA’s hoped-for 5-4 verdict (or even
6-3, should Chief Justice Roberts return to his senses) would also, presumably,
have nullifed the Constitution of the United States,
which provision Article II, Section 2.2 states:
Each State shall
appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of
Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which
the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or
person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States shall be
appointed an Elector.
The Congress may
determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the
Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same
throughout the United States.
Ceasar, Raskin and U.S.
Constitution (Attachment Two)
But SCOTUS, a week ago yesterday, threw a brick under
the wheels of the nullification, as follows…
Denied!
So Texas Attorney General Paxton filed another lawsuit. On Tuesday night, Trump asked Senator Ted Cruz,
a former Texas solicitor general, agreed - to argue the state of Texas'
long-shot lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results if/when this case reached the Supreme Court, a
spokesperson for Cruz confirmed to The Texas Tribune
The litigation ran into choppy waters almost
immediately. Even the conservative
Heritage Foundation expressed doubts about the future of the litigation. “While the questions raised are serious ones,
it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will address them at this time.” (See
Attachment Three)
(Meanwhile, the plague was having its way among
Americans and in other societies, worldwide.
Then across the Atlantic, Pfizer began dispatching token doses of its
antiviral serum back to Kalamazoo so as to begin manufacture as soon as the FDA
approved the drug… token because President Trump had chosen not to pre-order
sufficient quantities of the vaccine to protect all but that handful of elites
who would benefit by the new technology.
It was a case… as often is the
case… of money before lives. And the
consequences would be costly in terms of both.)
Paxton’s ploy began gathering supporters a week ago. CBS News reported that Congressman Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, circulated
an email from his personal account to GOP members Wednesday that asked them to
join a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed in support of the effort
spearheaded by Paxton. (See Attachment
Four)
The President on Wednesday filed
a motion to intervene — basically a request to join the lawsuit, asking for the
same result. Seventeen GOP states chose to back the effort as well.
Reactions from the four defendant states were largely
variants of outrage but in Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp, Secretary of
State Brad Raffensperger and Elections Czar Gabriel
Sterling had all tweaked Trump’s ear, there could be found at least a few
friends of the plaintiffs.
“Every now and again,” opined the
Atlanta Journal Constitution, “the 19th century
raises its head in Georgia politics.”
(See, again, Attachment One)
An editorial in the Austin-American Statesman (in
Paxton’s own back yard!) called the lawsuit a “stunt” which “betrays Texans
(and) harms democracy.” (See Attachment
Five) Austin’s Rep. Chip Roy, who
served as the No. 2 lawyer in the Texas attorney general’s office for two
years, told the Dallas Morning News up the road a piece that the case was “a
dangerous violation of federalism” that could lead to a precedent allowing
states to ask “federal courts to police the voting procedures of another
state.”
Upon the filing, the Texas Tribune cited Michigan
Attorney General Dana Nessel’s dismissal of Paxton's
suit as "a publicity stunt, not a serious legal pleading."
"Mr. Paxton’s actions are beneath the dignity of
the office of Attorney General and the people of the great state of
Texas," she said.
Two days later, the paper’s Emma Platoff
brought up an FBI investigation into corruption that had placed Paxton in
jeopardy of jail time and speculated that the politician was doing this “favor”
for Djonald in order to solicit a pardon in
return. (See Attachments Six, A and B)
Busy as a bug beneath a magnifying glass, the
incumbent scurried to amend both the litigation and his own future and despoil
the security of the plague vaccine in the bargain. This action claimed that the
election in four swing states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin —
suffered from “unconstitutional irregularities” (not a far cry from the constipational irregularity TV doctors warn us about).
Djonald’s
laxative? Same old same old – overturn
those four states’ votes, nullify them and, thus, re-elect The President.
The financial journal Market Watch called this a “last-gasp
bid to subvert the results of the Nov. 3 election is demonstrating President
Donald Trump’s enduring political power even as his term is set to end.” (See Attachment Seven) And even though most of the signatories were
far-right conservatives who come from deep red districts, the filing meant that
roughly one-quarter of the U.S. House believed the Supreme Court should set
aside election results.
Seventeen Republican attorneys general backed the
unprecedented case that Trump was calling “the big one” despite the fact that
the President and his allies had lost dozens of times in courts across the
country and had no evidence of widespread fraud. And Thursday, Congressional
Republicans claimed the same “unconstitutional irregularities” had “cast doubt”
on the 2020 outcome and “the integrity of the American system of elections.”
The Republicans wanted, essentially, to swing the
election to Trump. They were asking for the court to block the electors from
Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, pushing Biden back under the
magic 270-vote total to win
CNN claimed that Texas’ reply to the Supreme Court,
defending its lawsuit against the four states that
voted for President-elect Joe Biden meant that the Justices could
act on the lawsuit at any time.
.The often-Trump-hostile network’s sleuths tracked
down several Republican senators on as expressed “concern” (to put it mildly)
about the lawsuit that sought
to overturn the results of the election.
More than 100 House GOP members signed on to an amicus
brief backing Texas. The signatories include several lawmakers from the four
states from which Trump and Texas are trying to throw out millions of votes:
four from Georgia, four from Michigan, seven from
Pennsylvania and one from Wisconsin.
The rest of the House now divided among, as well as
by, party shook off their shackles and stood up to defy the wrath of
Trump. (See Trump’s list of naughties… Biden’s nicies… in The
Hill, Attachment Eight)
Moderate GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she was
disappointed by the Texas lawsuit to overturn the election.
"I am really surprised and disappointed that 43
days before everything is to be certified that there would be an effort by
members, effort by states that are not even impacted in the sense of the
challenges," she said.
She added she would be surprised if she got a petition
sent to her office.
"I don't think they would send one to my office.
I would certainly hope not. Because that meant they haven't seen my statements
which I have clearly said President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris
are going to be beginning a new administration in January," she said.
Asked about his House GOP colleagues joining the
amicus brief, including Rep. Steve Scalise, Sen.
John Cornyn asked, "Did they read it?"
before laughing.
The Democrats dreamed, some Republicans schemed and the healthcare
workers and vax researchers were working late into Thursday night and early
Friday morning when, in the interest of saving lies, the FDA kissed the
President’s uh… ring… following an extraordinary
sequence of events on Friday morning when the White House chief of staff, Mark
Meadows, told the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, to consider looking
for his next job if he didn’t get the emergency approval done on Friday (see this),
according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. Like a good doggie, Dr. Hahn then ordered
vaccine regulators at the agency to do it by the end of the day.
Mr. Trump (the lyin’ Times had refused to recognize Djonald’s
incumbency, even before 1/20/20) had repeatedly accused the F.D.A. and the drugmakers themselves of slow-walking the approval process
“in order to harm him politically”. Allies of Dr. Hahn had been on tenterhooks
for weeks, expecting him to be fired any day.
The president
bragged that with “my pushing,” the administration had shaved years off the
development of vaccines. “Get the dam vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn,” he ordered,
misspelling the expletive.
While
Saturday’s conspirators against the conspiracy were busy conspiring against the
government, the government was juggling vaccines, lockdowns, masks and other
remedies to thwart the plague.
Reducing the spread of Covid-19 over the next several
months — while vaccines are being distributed — has the potential to save more
than 100,000 American lives, proclaimed NYTimes
reporter David Leonhardt, who asked: “How
can we reduce the spread?”
Some of the ways are well-known: consistent messages
from national leaders; mask wearing; hand washing; and fewer indoor gatherings.
But, bellowed Leonhardt, (See Attachment Nine) there
is at least one other promising strategy, many experts believe:
Much more testing,
especially tests that return results almost immediately, rather than a day or
two later.
These tests, often known as antigen tests, could
sharply cut the number of new infections by causing many more people who have
the virus to enter quarantine. Germany and Italy have used antigen tests
recently to reduce new cases. Several U.S. colleges have also used blanket
testing — including slower-turnaround tests — to minimize outbreaks.
“There’s clear evidence that test-and-isolate
works,” Paul Romer, a Nobel
Prize-winning economist at N.Y.U., told the Times. As Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, said, “It can make a
big difference, provided it’s coupled with other things.”
Some “other things” noted by our Managing Editor…
Virtually
ignored by the doctors and politicians and the media is a far simpler and less
expensive method of taming the pandemic… vastly increasing the supply of the
N95 model masks, which have been shown to both prevent transmission of the
plague and to protect the wearer against inhaling the Covid
droplets engendered by an infectee’s coughing or
sneezing or just talking.
Apparently,
the largely liberal crowd of credentialed and self-appointed authorities are so
besotted with their own sparkling, gleaming virtue that they repeatedly,
insistently hector the ignorant public about avoiding holiday celebrations,
washing their hands and… above all… wearing the common blue three-for-a-dollar
face coverings which do prevent much (though not all) of the oral and nasal
ejecta. This sort of scolding cannot
help but to have contributed to the politicization of the masks, inasmuch as
tired Americans… mostly devotees of the now-ex President Donald Trump.
Oozing
with arrogance and contempt, the maskers… not excluding President-elect Biden
and Dr. Anthony Fauci… have reduced a complex and
communicable disease to a juvenile battle of wits between Big Mommy (demanding
“wash your hands”, “eat your vegetables”, “wear the mask”) and tantrummy toddlers whose instantaneous response to anybody
who tells them what to do is to turn read, stomp their feet and scream “No!”
The
tantrum-throwers are adults, and idiots into the bargain, but they believe
that… at best… the government has no right to tell them what to wear, where to
go, and who to have contact with or… at worst… that the masks, like the
vaccines, are a conspiracy masterminded by Bill Gates or George Soros or
Hillary Clinton – one of “them”, somebody! – to trick
or compel patriotic Americans to inhale or inject vile substances into their
precious bodily fluids: nanoparticles, alien DNA, whatever fevered minds heated
up by an insane Proud President can convince them of.
That they
are wrong, however, and that they are stupid matters less than there are lots
of them… perhaps a third of the country… and they can transmit the plague just
as effectively and efficiently as the “good” people who wear their masks and
eat their vegetables. They have grown
sick and tired of hearing people far better and far better off then themselves
give lectures on the virtues of virtue… of self-sacrifice and playing for the
team and more of the childish pablum that the people
in power have been spooning out, a situation that will only worsen as more Biddhists take over key bulwarks of authority.
And
meanwhile, even the front line doctors, nurses and first responders can’t
scrounge up enough of the proven two-way effective N95 masks and have to make
do with the cheap stuff that may prevent them from infecting their already
infected patients, but won’t make a whit of difference in saving their lives.
Among the
cold, hard facts of life is this truism: people, even good people, respond more
positively to orders or suggestions that will benefit themselves than they will
to altruistic entreaties of self-sacrifice that will help others.
Its human
nature, dammit!
So, if
the same effort or even a fraction of it were put into producing and
distributing N95 masks, the 40 percent of Trump-loving mask-hating Americans
would have a new thought to go along with their new President… this thing might
save ME! Now maybe half the
anti-mask, anti-vaxxers are so alien or so alienated
that they would never comply, but if half of them do, that means that 80
percent of the Don Joneses would don the masks, to go along with the 80 to 85
percent who would submit to vaccination… albeit many of them waiting to see if
others who get the procedure don’t develop unpleasant side effects like tails
or cancers or cannibalism. And that’s
what the doctors would call the beginnings of herd immunity.
If the
Defense Production Act can be invoked to speed up the manufacture of complex
and expensive respirators and intubation units, it can certainly be applied to
churn out a billion or so N95s, enough for every American plus either a spare
or a surplus that can be sold off to other nations, unlike the vaccines that we
are having to beg the Belgians for access.
The
SCOTUS rejection would have disheartened, even destroyed, less combative
combatants, but Paxton, Djonald Unliked and the cancel
club had another Hail Mary hope… holding faith that “faithless electors” might,
of their own accord, swing the tally back to Trump.
Faithlessness (suddenly a Republican virtue) fought
with faith (See Attachment Ten)… sometimes in superspreader
megachurches like that of Rev. Guillen Maldonado – enemy of masks and the Devil
- and football as the flavor of the day
throughout Sunday, as witness these gems of Constitutional doublespeak plucked
from the papers and the talkshows…
The Dallas Morning News hinted at one potential Hail Mary… a post
- Electoral College challenge votes, if at least one member of the Senate and
at least one member of the House object to the vote returns on Jan. 6.
Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks has been telling colleagues and allies he
plans to do just that, according to Politico. But so far, he does not have the
public support of a senator.
If Brooks is successful in getting that one brave senator to join
him in objecting to the Electoral College votes, it will be up to Congress to
overturn the election results or not. Considering the makeup of Congress, it’s
unlikely that will happen. (See
Attachment Eleven)
USA Today’s “Fact Check” app determined that the claim that Republican state legislatures have
final say on electors per the Constitution and should be ready to
perform their "constitutional duty" was rated as PARTLY FALSE. “It is true the Constitution grants
state legislatures the power to choose electors for the Electoral College.
But it is false to suggest, as Levin does, that legislatures retain this
authority after a popular vote on Election Day.” (See Attachment Twelve)
And, from over the
pond, the Daily Mail UK noted that Trump had “…ranted that he’d 'won' in
Pennsylvania - and the other swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia -
at a White House event, saying that he wanted the Supreme Court justices to
have 'the courage' to agree with him.” (See Attachment
Thirteen)
And then dawned D-Day, Monday, December 14th. “D” for Dose Day and Democrats’ Day (and also
for the most prominent grade given millions of floundering online students with
merciful teachers knowing that “F”ailures,
plague-related or not, would remain on the children’s permanent records… well,
permanently… and destroy their hopes of ever getting into college, finding a
job or dreaming the American Dream (not to mention the mental anguish that
they… and, especially, their parents… would carry on forever, leading to mental
illnesses, crime and, in some cases, suicide).
It could also have been called Death Day… American
fatalities cracked through the glass ceiling of 300,000 and toxic shards were
falling all around.
But happy thoughts, now, were also floating into the cosmosphere like hydrogen balloons… grateful nurses taking
the needle, centenarians coming home from the hospital, and holiday sales
sprouting like toadstools; even the normally-cynical “Simpsons” aired an
episode praising even the worst holiday movies.
For our part, the imminence of what should be a significant, if not
conclusive, vaccine impelled us to knock a hundred points off the negative
plague stats.
From
“Bob’s Burgers” after the Simpsons…
“I’m not just used to… uh… good stuff
happening… “
What
comes next?
Despite political pressure, Idaho’s Republican attorney
general chose not to join the Texas suit. Lawrence Wasden
told Market Watch he had concerns about “supporting a legal argument that could
result in other states litigating against legal decisions made by Idaho’s
legislature and governor.” Idaho’s two congressmen, Republicans Mike Simpson
and Russ Fulcher, however, joined the legal brief from GOP House members
supporting Paxton’s effort.
“As is sometimes the case, the legally correct
decision may not be the politically convenient decision,” Wasden
said in a statement. “But my responsibility is to the state of Idaho and the
rule of law.”
Will the law, now, take its revenge on the
conspirators?
Post-ghosting of Paxton’s puffoonery, the Huffington Post dredged up Rep. Bill
Pascrell (D-N.J.), who called on House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bar the 126 GOP representatives from the House,
arguing that their support for the failed,
baseless Texas lawsuit seeking to hijack the presidential election violated
the Constitution. (See
Attachment Fourteen)
But it could get worse for Republicans.
The vocal and voluble conservative
Ann Coulter wrote a whole book in which she described fifty years of “Treason!”
(and more) as dating back to heroic Joe McCarthy and secret Commie agents like
Harry Truman and JFK, all the way to our treacherous alliance with the original
Uncle Joe during World War II, among the conniving of secret agent villains
like the serpentine and sonorously-named Alger Hiss.
“Fortunately for Hollywood liberals
and former Democratic presidents, the country discontinued prosecuting treason
long ago. When the country decided not
to prosecute Jane Fonda after the Vietnam War, the bar was raised.”
So we didn’t hang Barbra
Streisand. Damn!
Coulter, of course, was pointing the
finger at liberals and Democrats, but the shoe can be in the other
throwing-hand if a partisan majority be strong, if the incoming Attorney
General be of sufficiently vengeful a mien and if President Biden... once sworn
in... drops his pretense of decency and forgiving and
forgetfulness (they are not the same) and starts extracting payback.
This scenario is improbable, but not
impossible. Uncle Joe has beefed up his
profile as a loving, caring, forgiving Father of His Country who will work with
and even, on occasion, submit to Republican demands – no matter how ridiculous
or extreme. (See Attachment Fifteen) But if his own survival at stake, Biden may
just channel his own inner @RealUncleJoe and appoint…
oh… a gangsta rapper?
To appease the white folks, say… Eminem?
Jello Biafra?
If he appoints a kick-ass Attorney
General, Sleepy Joe could out-Trump Trumpy Trump Trump by holding
mass trials for treason (perhaps before a sympathetic DC jury) as would
return verdicts of guilty and sentence the traitors to death. Then, by Easter perhaps… or maybe even St.
Paddy’s Day (with the bars once again open), Americans could cheer on the
prospect of those over 100 politicians swinging from lampposts on both sides of
the street from Congress to the White House.
Otherwise?…
Must we fight Civil War II? (See Attachment Sixteen)
Back to Albert Camus’ “The Plague” as our guide (said
plague being bubonic, not viral, but with many similar characteristics) while
the first vaccines find their way into American arms. The French/Algerians, too, thought they had
weathered the bubonic storm once Dr. Casel’s serum
became widely available, but the plague proved a wily and tenacious foe. At the height of the distemper (the favoured term of that other chronicler of disease, Daniel DeFoe) the narrator, Dr. Rieux,
ponders the smallness of man in the Universe… but then, there is a surprise
(one might even say a miracle).
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Time (the magazine) may have called 2020
the worst year in history, but last week was hardly the worst week ever,
although the Social Indices were disappointing, sometimes contemptible. A slight rise in the Dow and a slight dropoff in unemployment turned the Index green – howsoever
unsettled and ominous the economic and political outlook might be, and how
“dire” national and worldwide health becomes.
It seems the Thanksgiving surge is trump-ing
the vaccine potential… and the news that our American President told the Pfizer
Pfolk in Belgium to sell their pills and shots
elsewhere took root. Congrats to the two
British vaccine pioneers… Mrs. Keenan and Mr. Shakespeare and good wishes
towards the medical mavens who will be meeting this week to determine whether
Americans can get vaccinated (even though there’s only enough lying around to
protect a million or so… and the likelihood of corruption is, to use some of
the favourite words of the mass media,) “grim”. Or, maybe, “dire”.
THE DON JONES INDEX
CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000
(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)
See a further explanation of categories here…
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ECONOMIC
INDICES (60%) |
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DON JONES’
PERSONAL ECONOMIC INDEX (45% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS) |
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BACK
See further indicators at The Economist – HERE!
See a copy of Mr. Paxton’s failed
filing here.
And a list of his first 106
signatories (a few more would also pawn their souls) here.
Attachment One – from the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
TEXAS CLAIMS SOVEREIGNTY OVER US, AND MANY GEORGIA
REPUBLICANS LIKE THE IDEA
Jim Galloway - The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionGreg Bluestein -
The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionTia Mitchell -
The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionPatricia Murphy -
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Every now and
again, the 19th century
raises its head in Georgia politics.
The last time may have been in 2009, when the state
Senate re-asserted its faith in the doctrine of states’ rights – including the
right to secede from the Union, and the right to nullify federal laws that
Georgia does not like.
Republicans jumped off that nostalgia train when David
Poythress, the former commander of the Georgia National Guard and then a
Democratic candidate for governor, showed up in uniform on a YouTube video – to
rebuke those talking of the dissolution of a nation when U.S. troops were dying
overseas.
We are there again, but with a twist. Last night,
certain Georgia Republicans have bought into a new theory of nullification – that one state can reach into another and declare the
latter’s policies null and void. From our AJC
colleague Mark Niesse:
The state of Texas sued Georgia and three other states
Tuesday in an effort to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out election
results that showed Democrat Joe Biden won the most votes.
The case is a longshot attempt to overturn Georgia’s elections
after counts and recounts showed that Biden defeated Trump by about 12,000
votes. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov.
Brian Kemp, both Republicans, certified Georgia’s election results Monday.
The lawsuit by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken
Paxton accuses Georgia election officials of illegally changing rules for voter
signature verification and early opening of absentee ballot envelopes.
-
But wait, there’s so much more. Only a few hours
later, much of the Georgia GOP agreed to Texas
sovereignty over the state of Georgia:
After the state of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
filed a brazen lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme court to toss out Georgia’s
election results, Republican Attorney General Chris Carr’s
office called it “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong.” He didn’t get
much backup from other senior Republicans.
Nearly half of the Georgia Senate’s GOP members issued
a statement siding with the Texas lawsuit that seeks to help President Donald
Trump undo his defeat here. So did U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler
and David Perdue, who said they both “fully support” the complaint filed by
Texas AyGee Paxton.
-
This follows a seven-point statement from the Senate
GOP caucus outlining plans to curtail absentee voting and ban ballot drop
boxes, citing false claims of Democratic “ballot harvesting.”
“As soon as we may constitutionally convene, we will
reform our election laws to secure our electoral process by eliminating at-will
absentee voting,” the statement read. “We will require photo identification for
absentee voting for cause, and we will crack down on ballot harvesting by outlawing
drop boxes.”
Only last year, it seemed that Gov. Brian Kemp might
have his hands full trying to deal with a Georgia House led by his frenemy
Speaker David Ralston. Now, though, it seems the faction in the GOP Senate
might be a bigger challenge.
And it’s not just Kemp who might be wrestling with
post-Trump angst.
***
Lt. Gov. Geoff
Duncan is sticking his Republican
neck out, too, with repeated calls for his party to move past the presidential
election. Here’s a taste of the op-ed he has in today’s AJC, drawing on his
pro baseball years:
Baseball pitchers dread being pulled from a game too
early. During my minor league career, I distinctly remember being pulled from
the Arizona Fall League championship game despite being only one out away from
clinching a victory for our team. I pleaded my case to the manager when he came
to the mound, but he and the coaching staff had decided that another pitcher
was better equipped to finish the game. I was furious. However — for the good
of the team — I handed over the ball and left the mound.
Pitching is nowhere near as important as a
presidential election, but I think the analogy is useful. President Trump, in
my opinion, is being pulled from the game too early. However, we must respect
the sanctity of the American electoral process. The people have decided to pull
him from the game. It is time — for the good of the country — to hand over the
ball rather than blame teammates, umpires, or the game itself.
-
***
Via Twitter,
congresswoman-elect Marjorie
Taylor Greene declared herself outraged by an absentee ballot application mailed to
the Habersham County jail, demanding that Gov. Brian Kemp and
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan stop such things.
Greene has embarked on a steep learning curve.
Ultimately, she will learn that the ballot application (a photo of which she
helpfully included) is from a private firm over which Georgia officialdom has
no control. And that a jail is often populated by people charged with crimes,
but not convicted. Which means they retain their right to cast a ballot.
***
Georgia is likely
to remain a swing state for at least
the next decade, according to a veteran watcher of state politics. From the Athens Banner-Herald:
“We will be a competitive state certainly for the rest
of this decade,” University of Georgia Professor Charles Bullock said. “The
trends indicate that the substantial Republican margins of a couple of years
ago have evaporated. Upon close examination, it’s clear that what Republicans
need to do is pick up voters in urban areas — they can’t just write them off.”
Attachment Two – from Constitutioncenter.org
The Electoral College - Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3
By James W. Ceaser and Rep. Jamin Raskin (D-Md)
Most democratic nations on earth elect their presidents
by direct popular vote, but that was never the American system and still is
not. We use the so-called “Electoral College” system to choose our president,
which today means that 538 Electors drawn from the states and the District of
Columbia speak for the rest of us. This is a complex and non-uniform
state-based process, designed—like the U.S. Senate, which was originally
composed of Members chosen by state legislatures, not the people—to filter
public opinion through a “deliberative” intermediate institution. But the
Electoral College has produced recurring political controversy over the
centuries and also experienced significant constitutional, legislative, and
political upheaval and revision. Today few people would consider the Electoral
College to be a “deliberative” body as it was once imagined because the
Electors are appointed mechanistically to winners according to vote totals in
the states. Although the Electors meet in their state capitals at a December
date set by Congress to cast their ballots, in practice they simply follow the
election returns and never conduct substantive discussion or debate about who
should be president. Still, the Electors do possess the legal prerogative to
vote as they wish, and under extraordinary circumstances they might exercise
that prerogative to change the expected outcome dictated by popular election
returns.
The colloquially-named Electoral College arises from
Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3, which state that:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the
Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number
of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an Office of
Trust or Profit under the United States shall be appointed an Elector.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give
their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
Under the further original provisions of Article II,
Electors cast ballots not for one candidate for president but for two, with the
second-place finisher becoming vice-president. No one originally expected that
there would be national parties that nominated candidates and slated a ticket
for president and vice-president. The strange two-vote feature nevertheless led
almost immediately to a serious political crisis in the election of 1800 when
Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson defeated Federalist John Adams 73-65 in
the Electoral College but then tied his own nominal running mate, Aaron Burr,
73-73. The mischievous Burr refused to stand down in the face of this
embarrassing constitutional glitch, thus throwing the process into the U.S.
House of Representatives under the so-called “contingent election” procedures
in which each state’s U.S. House of Representatives delegation casts a single
vote for president and the winner of the majority becomes president. The
resulting contingent election in the House became a nightmare of its own when
the lame-duck Federalist-controlled Congress took an exhausting six days and 36
ballots to choose Jefferson, who the Federalists ultimately considered the
lesser of two evils.
The most glaring early bugs in the system—the real
possibility of ties, the fact that the president and vice-president could
represent different political parties as had happened when Adams and Jefferson
served together in 1796—were ironed out by the Twelfth Amendment in 1804. But our
unique Electoral College system has continued to shape the country’s politics
in fundamental ways that both supporters and critics would agree depart from
democratic norms.
Under Article II, the states are allotted a number of
Electors equal to their Congressional delegation, which is the number of
Representatives plus two for the Senators, but the actual Electors are
appointed according to rules set exclusively by the state legislatures
themselves. Today, 48 states appoint all of their Electors on a “winner
take all” basis from slates provided by the top vote-getter in their statewide
popular election for president. But two states—Maine and Nebraska—award the
Electors by Congressional District and give their remaining two electoral votes
to the statewide winner. Historically, there has been an even more dizzying
variety in the systems developed in each state. In the first presidential
election, five state legislatures—in Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New
Jersey, and South Carolina—themselves simply designated presidential Electors
without having any popular election at all. In four states, the voters elected
all of the Electors. In Virginia, which had ten congressional districts, the
General Assembly divided the Commonwealth into twelve presidential districts
and conducted a popular election. In subsequent elections, there have been
statewide elections, elections of Electors from single-member districts that
mirror Congressional districts, elections of Electors from specially designed
multi-member districts, elections in which only the Electors’ names appear on
the ballot but not the names of the presidential candidates, elections in which
the presidential candidates’ names appear on the ballot but not the names of
the Electors, and even elections where the state legislatures have chosen not
to appoint any Electors.
All of these variations are allowable under the
constitutional design. As the Supreme Court wrote in McPherson v.
Blacker (1892), which rejected a constitutional challenge
to a Michigan law providing for selection of Electors by a district system,
“the appointment and mode of appointment of Electors belong exclusively to the
states under the constitution of the United States.” We have no uniform
national system for appointing Electors, which means the legislatures do not
have to consult the public at all. When members of the Florida legislature in
2000 threatened to abandon the results of the statewide popular contest and
appoint Electors for a particular candidate, the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000)
appeared to endorse their power to do so by denying that citizens have a
constitutional right to vote in presidential elections. As the majority put it,
“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for
Electors for the President of the United States. . .” When it comes to
presidential elections, the voters are at the mercy of the state legislatures.
Although this lack of procedural uniformity has not
proven especially controversial, this fact has: the Electoral College has
periodically produced winners who clearly lost the national popular vote to an
opponent. In at least five presidential elections—1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and
2016—the presidential candidate who prevailed in the popular vote lost in the
Electoral College. For example, in the disputed election of 2000, Vice
President Al Gore received over 500,000 more votes than Governor George W. Bush
did nationally, but lost to Bush in the Electoral College by a vote of 266 to
271, after the Supreme Court intervened, on equal protection claims, to halt a
Florida Supreme Court order to recount ballots in some counties. Many people
believe that the ability to carry the whole election by capturing this or that
state—in our time it has been Florida and Ohio—increases the likelihood of
strategic mischief and corruption in the electoral process.
Supporters of the Electoral College credit it with
preserving an important dimension of state-based federalism in our presidential
elections and argue that it works to guarantee that our Presidents will have
nationwide support. Critics argue under current circumstances that it actually
consigns most states in the Union to “spectator” status in presidential
elections and drags down voter turnout in these states, reduces the real field
of play to fewer than a dozen “swing states,” and dramatically polarizes the
nation’s politics while reducing voter turnout. Proposed constitutional
amendments for different plans for a direct popular election—some with a
run-off provision in the event no candidate receives 40 percent in the first
round—have to date made little headway.
A recent and unusual plan to work around the amendment
process and address the problems of the Electoral College is the National
Popular Vote Plan, which began in Maryland in 2007 and has since won support
from a dozen other states. The idea is to form an interstate agreement for
states to appoint their Electors for the winner of the national popular
vote rather than the winner in each state. Champions of this plan assert that
it would guarantee that there would be no more “wrong winners” and that every
part of the Union would attract political investment and campaigning by the
parties which today quickly abandon large parts of the country to their
opponents while taking many other states for granted. Opponents say that the
National Popular Vote plan actually defeats the state-based design of the
Electoral College, could never be enforced if a state reneged on its promise,
and is unconstitutional. Given the continuing polarization of American
politics and background unhappiness with the Electoral College, it seems
certain that the National Popular Vote plan and other reform proposals will
continue to attract public attention and debate.
Attachment Three – from the Heritage Foundation
A 2020 Election
Redo in 4 States? Here Are the Details About Texas
Lawsuit
Dec 8th, 2020
Hans A. von Spakovsky@HvonSpakovsky,
Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow
The state of Texas has filed an unprecedented motion with
the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for leave to file a complaint with the court
against the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin over the
2020 presidential election. The motion alleges that changes made
in election rules governing absentee ballots in those states by
“non-legislative actors” violated the Constitution and “cumulatively preclude
knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future
elections.”
In a nutshell, Texas is saying these four states’
elections were unconstitutional—and therefore, invalid. The Lone Star State’s
complaint, filed by state Attorney General Ken Paxton, asks that Georgia,
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin conduct new elections to determine their
electors for the Electoral College.
The motion filed by Texas includes the 41-page
complaint and a 35-page brief making the legal arguments for why the Supreme
Court should grant approval of the filing of the lawsuit, since Article III,
Section 2 of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court—not lower federal
courts—original jurisdiction over “controversies between two or more States.”
The complaint goes into great detail describing what
happened in each state.
Pennsylvania: The complaint accuses Pennsylvania Secretary of State
Kathy Boockvar of, among other things, “without
legislative approval, unilaterally abrogating”
Pennsylvania statutes that require “signature verification for absentee or
mail-in ballots.” These changes were “not ratified” by the Pennsylvania
legislature.
Georgia: Similarly, the complaint describes how Georgia’s
Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, also “without legislative
approval, unilaterally abrogated Georgia’s statute governing the signature
verification process for absentee ballots.”
Michigan: The complaint states that Michigan Secretary of State
Jocelyn Benson “abrogated Michigan
election statutes related to absentee ballot applications and
signature verification.”
Wisconsin: Lastly, the Wisconsin’s elections commission made
similar changes in state laws without the
permission of the legislature that “weakened, or did away with,
established security procedures put in place by the Wisconsin legislature to
ensure absentee ballot integrity.”
The complaint catalogues these and numerous other
changes made in all four states by government officials, not the state
legislatures.
According to Texas, these “amendments to States’ duly
enacted election laws” violated the Electors Clause of
the Constitution, Art. II, § 1, Cl. 2, which vests “state legislatures with
plenary authority regarding the appointment of presidential electors.”
In other words, while the state legislatures have the
authority to set the rules for presidential elections in their states—and thus
could have made all of these changes if they had wanted to—other government
officials in those states, including judges, did not have the constitutional
authority to make these changes.
Second, the complaint describes how voters in different
parts of these states were treated differently. For example, election officials
in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties in Pennsylvania set up a “cure process”
for voters in those jurisdictions whose absentee ballots did not comply with
state legal requirements. Those noncompliant ballots should have been rejected
because state law does not allow such a procedure.
As a result of this behavior and similar behavior in
other states, there was “more favorable treatment allotted to votes” in areas
“administered by local government under Democrat control.”
This differential treatment, says Texas, violates the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. It cites the Supreme Court’s 2000 decisions in Bush v. Gore,
which “prohibits the use of differential standards in the treatment and
tabulation of ballots within a state.”
Additionally, the one-person, one-vote principle
“requires counting valid votes and not counting invalid votes.” This damaged
Texas because in “the shared enterprise of the entire nation electing the
president and vice president, equal protection violations in one state can and
do adversely affect and diminish the weight of votes cast in states that
lawfully abide by the election structure set forth in the Constitution.”
Finally, Texas argues that these states violated
“substantive due process” requirements because their election practices—through
both “intentional failure to follow election law as
enacted by” their state legislatures as well as “unauthorized acts by state
election officials and their designees in local government”—reached “the point
of patent and fundamental unfairness.” The states “acted unconstitutionally to
lower their election standards… with the express intent to favor their
candidate for president.”
Texas argues that all of these unconstitutional
actions changed the outcome of the presidential election, citing the actual
vote totals in each state and the number of ballots affected. The state
is asking for a declaratory judgement that the administration of the election
by Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin violated the Constitution;
that their Electoral College votes cannot be counted; and to order that these
states “conduct a special election to appoint presidential electors.”
If the states have already appointed their presidential
electors, Texas asks that their legislatures be directed “to appoint a new set
of presidential electors in a manner that does not violate the Electors Clause
and the Fourteenth Amendment, or to appoint no presidential electors at all.”
This is an unprecedented lawsuit, and the Supreme
Court may be extremely leery and disinclined to take any actions regardless of
the merits that could upset the results of a presidential election. Texas does
a good job of describing what happened in each state and why the actions of
government officials making unauthorized, unilateral changes in the rules may
have violated the Constitution and affected the outcome of the election.
But by almost any measure, this is the legal
equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. While the questions raised are serious ones, it
is unlikely that the Supreme Court will address them at this time. As Texas
points out, these issues will likely be repeated in future elections. If the
Supreme Court does not take up these issues now, they may well have another
opportunity in the future.
This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal
Attachment Four – from CBS News
Washington — A Republican congressional ally of President Trump
solicited more than 100 of his fellow GOP lawmakers to sign on to a brief with
the Supreme Court in support of a long-shot lawsuit filed
by Texas seeking to delay certification of presidential electors in four
battleground states won by President-elect Joe Biden.
Congressman Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana,
circulated an email, obtained by CBS News, from his personal account to GOP
members Wednesday that asked them to join a friend-of-the-court brief to be
filed in support of the effort spearheaded by Texas Attorney General Ken
Paxton. Johnson was a vocal defender of Mr. Trump during impeachment
proceedings.
"The simple objective of our brief is to affirm
for the court (and our constituents back home) our serious concerns with the
integrity of our election system," Johnson wrote.
"We are not seeking to independently litigate the particular allegations
of fraud in our brief (this is not our place as amici). We will merely state
our belief that the broad scope of the various allegations and irregularities
in the subject states merits careful, timely review by the Supreme Court."
A total of 105 House Republicans joined Johnson in
his brief backing
Texas' case on Thursday, which argued governors, state courts and election
officials usurped the constitutional authority of state legislatures in
changing election rules.
"Due in large part to those usurpations, the
election of 2020 has been riddled with an unprecedented number of serious
allegations of fraud and irregularities," the Republicans said.
Johnson said Mr. Trump called him Wednesday morning
"to express his great appreciation for our effort" to file the brief.
"He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final
list to review," the Louisiana Republican said of the president.
Johnson said in a statement that most of his fellow
House Republicans and their constituents have "serious concerns with the
integrity of our election system."
"The purpose of our amicus brief will be to
articulate this concern and express our sincere belief that the great
importance of this issue merits a full and careful consideration by the
court," he said.
One House Republican, Congressman Chip Roy of Texas,
publicly denounced the effort and said he would not participate, calling the
case "a dangerous violation of federalism and sets a precedent to have one
state asking federal courts to police the voting procedures of other states."
"I cannot support an effort that will almost
certainly fail on grounds of standing and is inconsistent with my beliefs about
protecting Texas sovereignty from the meddling of other states," Roy said
in a series of tweets.
"Our remedy must be, from this day forward, to decline to allow the
usurpation of our authority as people — through our states — to govern
ourselves in all respects."
Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, filed his lawsuit
directly with the Supreme Court on Monday, alleging officials in Wisconsin,
Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan unlawfully changed their voting laws,
leading to election irregularities and skewing the results of the election.
He is asking the Supreme Court to delay the December
14 Electoral College vote and block the four states from casting their votes in
the Electoral College for Mr. Biden. The president-elect won the popular vote
in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan, and they all have certified
their election results, formalizing Mr. Biden's victory over Mr. Trump.
In a Supreme Court filing in
response to the suit, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro called the
efforts from Texas to overturn the election results "legally
indefensible" and "an afront to principles
of constitutional democracy."
"Texas's effort to get this Court to pick the
next President has no basis in law or fact," he wrote. "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."
Shapiro told the court Texas waited to request an injunction
to invalidate Pennsylvania's election results "because all of the other
political and litigation machinations of petitioner's preferred presidential
candidate have failed."
"The Trump campaign began with a series of
meritless litigations. When that failed, it turned to state legislatures to
overturn the clear election results. Upon that failure, Texas now turns to this
Court to overturn the election results of more than 10% of the country,"
he continued. "Texas literally seeks to decimate the electorate of the
United States."
Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan also filed
their respective responses to the suit and urged the Supreme Court to reject
Texas's requests.
"The novel and far-reaching claims that Texas
asserts, and the breathtaking remedies it seeks, are impossible to ground in
legal principles and unmanageable," Georgia officials wrote in their
filing. "This court has never allowed one state to co-opt the legislative
authority of another state, and there are no limiting or manageable principles
to cabin that kind of overreach."
A group of attorneys general from 17 states filed
their own friend-of-the-court brief in support of Texas, while the president
filed a motion with the Supreme Court asking the join the case. Six more states
— Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah —
requested Thursday to join Texas in the case, while the state of Ohio told the
Supreme Court it does not support Paxton's proposed relief.
Ordering state legislatures to appoint its own
electors would violate the Constitution, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a
Republican, and Solicitor General Benjamin Flowers told the court.
"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," they argued. "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."
Paxton's lawsuit was scorned by election officials
from the four states named as an unserious effort and waste of taxpayer
dollars. It has also been met with skepticism from some GOP lawmakers,
including from the very states that support Texas's attempt to block
certification of the Electoral College vote.
Republican Senator John Cornyn
of Texas told reporters Wednesday the lawsuit was "unprecedented" and
expressed skepticism the attempt by his state's attorney general would be
successful.
"States handle their own election laws and
voting, and you can make claims of constitutionality in that state in lawsuits.
But I've never seen something like this," he said. "So I don't know
what the Supreme Court is going to do."
GOP Senator Mitt Romney of Utah called the effort
"simply madness."
"The idea of supplanting the vote of the people
with partisan legislators is so completely out of our national character that
it's simply mad," he told reporters. "Of course the president has the
right to challenge results in court, to have recounts. But this effort to
subvert the vote of the people is dangerous and destructive of the cause of
democracy."
Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report.
Attachment Five – from the Austin-American Statesman
Attorney General Ken Paxton has embarked on his most
repugnant stunt to date — one that spends taxpayer dollars to fuel division,
one that uses state resources to curry political favor, one that flirts with dismantling
democracy to preserve his party's grip on power.
Experts expect the U.S. Supreme Court will summarily
reject the presidential election lawsuit Paxton filed this week.
Texas has no standing to challenge the voting procedures of other states.
Texas’ lawsuit offers nothing but unsubstantiated allegations of electoral impropriety
that lower courts have rightly rejected. Nonetheless, Paxton argues that
millions of votes from four key states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin — should be invalidated in order to hand the presidency to the man
who decisively lost the election.
Regardless of which candidate you backed for
president, we all should be offended by a gambit to invalidate millions of
votes and spurn the will of the people. We should be deeply troubled that
attorneys general from 17 other states, plus Sen. Ted Cruz and a dozen Texans
in the U.S. House, have signed on to this naked attempt to overturn an
election. And we should not accept the use of a taxpayer-funded agency — our
state's top law enforcement office — in this dangerously anti-democratic ploy.
The election is over. Several recounts and dozens of
lawsuits have run their course. States have certified their electors. It is
time for our nation to move forward.
We expected Paxton, undeterred by his own 2015
indictment for securities fraud, to play some role in
litigating election challenges. Paxton is co-chair of Lawyers for Trump,
a coalition of GOP attorneys who offered to bring legal challenges to aid
President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. That’s fine if Paxton wants to do
so in his personal time. With this week's lawsuit, however, Paxton crossed the
line, using the public resources and clout of the Texas attorney general’s
office to serve the political aim of Lawyers for Trump.
Why take this route?
Because campaign lawyers have struck out at the lower
courts, but one state suing another can bring its complaint directly to the
conservative-leaning Supreme Court, where Trump hopes to prevail.
Because fighting over the election rallies Trump’s
base, a potent source of campaign cash and political support.
Because Paxton, now under FBI investigation for allegedly abusing his office to
help an influential campaign donor, could use a friend with pardoning powers.
All of those factors help explain our current
situation — and none of them align with the interests of Texas taxpayers.
In fact, the lawsuit has all the marks of a political errand: Paxton, who
rarely handles litigation personally, is listed as the lead attorney, and
records suggest outside counsel was hired to
help. Neither the solicitor general, who typically represents Texas before the
Supreme Court, nor any of the agency’s appellate
lawyers are listed on the case.
A few Texas Republicans have acknowledged that
Paxton’s effort is legally barren. Sen. John Cornyn,
who once served as attorney general, told CNN that states simply don’t have a
say in how other states run their elections. “I frankly struggle to understand
the legal theory of it,” Cornyn said. And U.S. Rep.
Chip Roy, whose district includes Hays County, noted the case “is inconsistent with my
beliefs about protecting Texas sovereignty from the meddling of other
states.”
Indeed, imagine the righteous “Come and take it” fury
if, say, California or New York sued to invalidate an election in Texas.
By extending the early voting period this
fall by nearly a week, Gov. Greg Abbott did the same thing Paxton
accuses other states of doing: Revising voting procedures during the pandemic
without the blessing of state legislators.
Unlikely as it is to change the outcome of the
presidential election, Paxton’s lawsuit pours gasoline on the conspiratorial
fires sparked by Trump’s campaign. Untethered to fact, it fuels partisan
resentments that make it harder to find common ground as Americans, to
recognize a legitimate leader in President-elect Joe Biden. It undermines
our ability to address the challenges our nation faces: A pandemic that,
for the first time, killed more than 3,000 Americans a
day this week. A massive vaccination campaign to hopefully end
this viral scourge. A rebuilding effort to get our economy and its workers back
on their feet.
These are the trials of our moment, and Paxton instead
uses the Texas attorney general’s office to sow doubts and division. He
does this with our tax dollars, but not our support. He does this for his
political interests, not the good of Texas.
Attachment Six (A) – from the Texas Tribune
IN NEW LAWSUIT,
TEXAS CONTESTS ELECTION RESULTS IN GEORGIA, WISCONSIN, MICHIGAN, PENNSYLVANIA
BY EMMA PLATOFF DEC.
8, 2020 UPDATED:
DEC. 9, 2020
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing four battleground
states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — whose election results
handed the White House to President-elect Joe Biden.
In the suit, he claims
that pandemic-era changes to election procedures in those states violated
federal law and asks the U.S. Supreme Court to block the states from voting in
the Electoral College.
The last-minute bid, which legal experts have already characterized as
a long shot, comes alongside dozens of similar attempts by President
Donald Trump and his political allies. The majority of those lawsuits
have already failed..
There is no evidence of
widespread fraud in the 2020 election, officials in most states and U.S.
Attorney General Bill Barr have said. Biden won in
all four states where Paxton is challenging the results.
In a filing to the high court Tuesday, Paxton claims
the four battleground states broke the law by instituting pandemic-related
changes to election policies, whether “through executive fiat or friendly
lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.”
Paxton claimed that these changes allowed for voter
fraud to occur — a conclusion experts and election officials have rejected —
and said the court should push back a Dec. 14 deadline by which states must
appoint their presidential electors.
“That deadline, however, should not cement a
potentially illegitimate election result in the middle of this storm,”
attorneys for Texas wrote.
In an interview late Tuesday with Fox News, Paxton reiterated
his argument that if those states acted out of accordance with the
Constitution, Texans would also be affected.
“Our job is to make sure that the Constitution is
followed and that every vote counts,” he said. “In this case I am not sure
every vote was counted, not in the right way.”
Officials in Georgia — where Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recertified the
state's election results again Monday after a recount — were quick to dismiss
Paxton's allegations, as were leaders in the other three states named in the
lawsuit.
"The allegations in the lawsuit are false and
irresponsible," Georgia's deputy secretary of state, Jordan Fuchs, said in
a statement Tuesday. "Texas alleges that there are 80,000 forged
signatures on absentee ballots in Georgia, but they don’t bring forward a
single person who this happened to. That’s because it didn’t happen."
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel
dismissed Paxton's suit as "a publicity stunt, not a serious legal
pleading."
"Mr. Paxton’s actions are beneath the dignity of
the office of Attorney General and the people of the great state of
Texas," she said.
Paxton and Trump are political allies whose interests
often line up in court, as with Texas’ challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
Paxton, in public appearances, often characterizes their relationship as a
friendly one, sharing the story of the
time the president called while Paxton was in the shower.
On Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted his approval of
the lawsuit, suggesting his legal team may get involved.
The high court set a Thursday deadline for
the four battleground states to respond to Texas' claims.
Paxton, who has been under indictment since 2015 for felony
securities fraud charges, is facing fresh criminal allegations from eight of
his top deputies, who said they believe he broke the law by using the agency to
do favors for a political donor. The FBI is investigating Paxton over those
claims, according to the Associated Press. Paxton has denied wrongdoing.
Notably, Paxton himself is listed as the agency's lead
attorney on the case — a highly unusual role for the state official, who rarely
plays a hands-on role even in the state's major cases. Paxton's new chief
deputy, Brent Webster, signed on to the filing, but conspicuously absent is the
agency's top lawyer for appellate work, Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins,
who typically
argues the state's cases before the Supreme Court and did so as recently as last
month. None of Hawkins' deputies is listed as contributing to the
case, nor are any of the agency's hundreds of other attorneys.
The agency instead appears to have hired an outside
attorney, Lawrence Joseph, to contribute to the case.
The agency did not answer questions about its staffing
choices for the lawsuit, nor did Hawkins himself.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a
former Texas attorney general, signaled support for the
lawsuit, telling a reporter the case "tries to accelerate the
process, providing certainty and clarity about the entire election process. The
United States of America needs that."
Julián Aguilar contributed reporting.
AND
Attachment Six (B) – from
the Texas Tribune
WITH ELECTION
LAWSUIT, KEN PAXTON — LIKE DONALD TRUMP — MAKES A HAIL MARY PLAY
BY EMMA PLATOFF DEC.
10, 2020
If Texas’ audacious new lawsuit challenging the 2020
election results looks like a Hail Mary play for President Donald Trump, it
might prove just as do-or-die for the attorney general who filed it.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had
fallen into political peril this fall, facing another set of criminal
allegations after eight of his top aides said they believed he broke the law by
using the agency’s resources to do favors for a political donor. The
allegations have reportedly sparked an FBI investigation that
escalated this week when FBI agents served at
least one subpoena at the attorney general’s office. Texas Republicans have
called the allegations concerning and begun to distance themselves from Paxton.
But even as the investigation deepens, Paxton’s
political star looks to be rising, at least on the right. In contesting the
results of the election in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, he
has catapulted himself into the country’s biggest political news story — a
settled election that the president continues to contest, now relying heavily
on an unprecedented lawsuit that has drawn the involvement of nearly every
state. On Wednesday, Paxton joined Lou
Dobbs and Glenn Beck to
talk about the case, which conservatives have cheered; on Thursday, he joined
Trump for lunch at the White House.
It wouldn’t be the first comeback
for the attorney general. He managed to hold on politically after a
failed bid for Texas House speaker 10 years ago. And he was reelected as
attorney general in 2018 despite the felony indictment that has dogged him for
years.
In fact, the long-shot election case — which has
become yet another high-stakes test of loyalty to the president — has played so
well for Paxton that some are accusing him of filing it for his own benefit.
“It looks like a fella begging for a pardon filed a PR
stunt rather than a lawsuit — as all of its assertions have already been
rejected by federal courts and Texas’ own solicitor general isn’t signing on,”
U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said.
A spokesperson for Paxton dismissed the pardon
speculation as “an absurdly laughable conspiracy theory” and said “this lawsuit
is about preserving the integrity of our elections.”
Paxton has claimed the case probes “unlawful and
constitutionally tainted votes” in four battleground states that handed the
White House to Joe Biden. Experts, state officials and U.S. Attorney General
Bill Barr have all said there is no evidence of voter fraud on a scale that
could change the election results. In the suit, Paxton claims
that pandemic-era changes to election procedures in the four targeted states
violated federal law and asks the U.S. Supreme Court to block the states from
voting in the Electoral College.
If it succeeds, the lawsuit would radically alter the
high court’s standard for hearing cases directly from states, critics and many
legal experts say, and set a dangerous precedent that judges have the power to
alter election results. “Dangerous garbage, but garbage,” said elections law
expert Rick Hasen.
“The idea of supplanting the vote of the people with
partisan legislators is so completely out of our national character that it’s
simply mad,” U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said. “This effort to subvert the
vote of the people is dangerous and destructive of the cause of democracy.”.
It’s not hard to imagine Paxton filing such a lawsuit
even under better personal circumstances. He has made himself a staunch Trump
ally who plays up their relationship in public appearances and often greets Air
Force One when it touches down in Texas. The two often line up in legal fights,
and Paxton is frequently the first — or at least loudest — state attorney
general to support a controversial Trump move, like a ban on travel from
Muslim-majority nations.
Whatever Paxton’s intentions, the lawsuit has already
had helped bring him back into the good graces of some prominent conservatives,
and back into the spotlight — to tout his pro-Trump message, not to defend
himself against serious criminal accusations. State officials who distanced
themselves from Paxton or avoided speaking about the attorney general entirely
have now emerged as cheerleaders for the lawsuit.
On his radio show this week, Beck asked Paxton about
criticism that the attorney general filed the lawsuit to distract from his
personal political problems — or in a bid for a presidential pardon.
“Look, for six years I’ve been fighting for what I
thought was right,” Paxton responded. “I’m not gonna
stop just because people have assaulted me. … No matter what they accuse me of,
no matter what they want to do to me — I’m here to do my job.”
Paxton, who was indicted in 2015 on
felony securities fraud charges but has yet to stand trial, has dismissed that
case as politically motivated and denied wrongdoing. The more recent allegations come
from eight of his hand-picked senior staff members, including some with
conservative bona fides to rival Paxton’s own. Paxton has dismissed his former
top aides as “rogue employees,” fired five of them and decried their “false
allegations.” He now faces a lawsuit for wrongful termination that could cost the
state hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Austin American-Statesman reported that
FBI agents served at least one subpoena at the attorney general’s office
Wednesday.
It is possible, though rare, for a president to issue
preemptive pardons, but pardons do not provide protection against state or
local crimes. Paxton’s 2015 indictment was for crimes under state law. He has
not been charged in connection with the latest allegations, but some of the
crimes top aides say he committed — including bribery and abuse of office —
could potentially be brought under Texas law instead of through a federal case.
Top Texas Republicans have expressed concerns over the
allegations against Paxton, including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt.
Gov. Dan Patrick and
state GOP Chairman Allen West.
“It would be really good to have an attorney general’s
office that is not concerned about their own personal legal matters and they
can be concerned about the matters of the people of Texas,” West said last month.
Now, all three are praising his work in the case. This
week, West said the state GOP “strongly supports” Paxton’s lawsuit.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who has been quiet about the
allegations against Paxton, even agreed to argue the case should the high court
hear it. And more than 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives,
including a number of Texas Republicans, have signed on to
the case as friends of the court.
The lawsuit has drawn support from Trump voters across
the country, many of whom believe the president’s false claims that he was
robbed of a rightful victory.
Julie McCarty, who leads the vocal conservative group
the True Texas Project, said “anything we can do to push back against a
fraudulent election is a good thing, regardless of who it comes from.” But she
declined to answer questions about whether she would support Paxton
politically.
State Rep. James White, a Hillister Republican who has praised the lawsuit’s aims,
said “it has nothing to do with Ken Paxton or James White or some senator from
Nebraska — it involves how you lay this out in front of the court. And if it
gets there, they’ll make a ball or strike call and we’ll all move on.”
For Paxton, “it looks like it’s
good politics, but this is all politics,” White said. “If Ken Paxton or James
White wants good politics, it’s politics. But when people do ‘Russia collusion’
and all this other stuff, ‘well, it’s for the good of the country.’”
Not all Republicans have embraced Paxton’s lawsuit.
Legal experts say it is a long shot, likely to trip over numerous procedural
and substantive challenges. Republican officials in Georgia have dismissed the
case as “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong.”
Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn,
a former Texas attorney general and Texas Supreme Court justice, said he is
“not convinced” by Texas’ legal arguments. Cornyn has not been shy about
criticizing the way Paxton runs his former office, saying in October that “I’ve
been troubled from the beginning, from his first indictment that hasn’t been
resolved in five years.” Republican U.S. Rep Kay Granger said
she is not supporting the lawsuit, which she called “a
distraction.”
And U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican who once served as
Paxton’s top deputy in the attorney general’s office and has called on him to resign,
called the lawsuit “a dangerous violation of federalism.”
“I cannot support an effort that will almost certainly
fail on grounds of standing,” Roy said.
In their responses to the Supreme Court on Thursday,
the battleground states that Texas sued scoffed at the lawsuit.
“Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next
President has no basis in law or fact,” the response from Pennsylvania
reads. “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.”
The court is likely to move on the case in the coming
days, and legal experts expect Texas to lose. Still, in making the attempt,
Paxton has succeeded in changing the conversation.
In an interview with the conservative Youtuber Steven Crowder, Paxton spoke about the existential
stakes of the lawsuit, but he might well have been talking about himself.
“I’m thankful that this case has created enough
interest that now we’ve got people focused on it,” he said. “This really is
crunch time. It’s a threshold issue of survival for our democracy.”
Attachment Seven – from market
watch
106 congressional Republicans join 17 state attorneys general in
support of Texas suit to overturn election results in Ga., Mich., Pa., Wis.
Last Updated:
Dec. 11, 2020 at 1:31 p.m. ETFirst Published: Dec.
10, 2020 at 10:52 p.m. ET
7
LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST MICHIGAN, GEORGIA,
PENNSYLVANIA AND WISCONSIN REPEATS FALSE, DISPROVEN AND UNSUBSTANTIATED
ACCUSATIONS ABOUT THE VOTING IN FOUR STATES THAT WENT FOR TRUMP’S SUCCESSFUL
DEMOCRATIC CHALLENGER JOE BIDEN
HOUSTON
(AP) — The Texas lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate
President-elect Joe Biden’s victory has quickly become a conservative litmus
test, as 106 members of Congress and multiple state attorneys general signed
onto the case even as some have predicted it will fail.
The
last-gasp bid to subvert the results of the Nov. 3 election is demonstrating
President Donald Trump’s enduring political power even as his term is set to end.
And even though most of the signatories are far-right conservatives who come
from deep red districts, the filing meant that roughly one-quarter of the U.S.
House believes the Supreme Court should set aside election results.
Seventeen
Republican attorneys general are backing the unprecedented case that Trump is
calling “the big one” despite the fact that the president and his allies have
lost dozens of times in courts across the country and have no evidence of
widespread fraud. And in a filing Thursday, the Congressional Republicans
claimed “unconstitutional irregularities” have “cast doubt” on the 2020 outcome
and “the integrity of the American system of elections.”
The case demands that the high court
invalidate the four states’ aggregate 62 total Electoral College votes —
sufficient to overturn Joe Biden’s election to the presidency.
To
be clear, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud and Trump has been
seeking to subvert the will of the voters. Election law experts think the
lawsuit will never last.
“The
Supreme Court is not going to overturn the election in the Texas case, as the
President has told them to do,” tweeted Rick Hasen, a
law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “But we are in bad shape
as a country that 17 states could support this shameful, anti-American filing”
by Texas and its attorney general, Ken Paxton, he said.
The
lawsuit filed against Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin repeats
false, disproven and unsubstantiated accusations about the voting in four
states that went for Trump’s Democratic challenger. The case demands that the
high court invalidate the states’ 62 total Electoral College votes. That’s an
unprecedented remedy in American history: setting aside the votes of tens of
millions of people, under the baseless claim the Republican incumbent lost a
chance at a second term due to widespread fraud.
Two
days after Paxton sued, 17 states filed a motion supporting the lawsuit, and on
Thursday six of those states asked to join the case themselves. Trump has acted
to join the case, tweeting Thursday that “the Supreme Court has a chance to
save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United
States.” Hours later, Trump held a meeting at the White House, scheduled before
the suit was filed, with a dozen Republican attorneys general, including Paxton
and several others who are backing the effort.
And Also: Supreme Court rebuff of Pennsylvania case has Trump looking
elsewhere to overturn election result
Still,
some of the top state Republican prosecutors urging the Supreme Court to hear
the case have acknowledged that the effort is a long shot and are seeking to
distance themselves from Trump’s baseless allegations of fraud. North Dakota’s
Wayne Stenehjem, among the 17 attorneys general
supporting the case, said North Dakota is not alleging voter fraud in the four
states at issue.
“We’re
careful on that,” said Stenehjem, who noted that his
office has received thousands of calls and emails from constituents asking the
state to support the suit. “But it’s worth it for the Supreme Court to weigh in
and settle it once and for all,” he said.
Montana
Attorney General Tim Fox called the lawsuit “belated” and said its chances “are
slim at best.” But Fox supported Texas because he said the case raised
“important constitutional questions about the separation of powers and the
integrity of mail-in ballots in those defendant states.”
Suits
brought by Trump and his allies have failed repeatedly across the country, and
the Supreme Court this week rejected a Republican bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s
certification of Biden’s victory.
Trump
looked straight past the high court loss, claiming it didn’t matter because his
campaign wasn’t involved in the case, though it would have benefited if the case
had continued. He has spent the week relentlessly tweeting about the Texas case
with the hashtag “overturn” and claiming, falsely, that he had won the election
but was robbed.
Many
of the attorneys general supporting the case have shown greater political
ambitions.
In
Kansas, Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who is considering a bid for
governor in 2022, said the Texas case presented “important and potentially
recurring constitutional questions.” Schmidt’s announcement that Kansas would
back the effort came hours after former Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer — another potential candidate for governor — tweeted
that Schmidt’s office should join the Texas litigation.
The
case has stirred Republican infighting in Utah, where GOP Gov. Gary Herbert and
Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, who will become governor in January, blasted Attorney
General Sean Reyes for deciding to join the suit.
“The
Attorney General did not consult us before signing on to this brief, so we
don’t know what his motivation is,” they said in a joint statement. “Just as we
would not want other states challenging Utah’s election results, we do not
think we should intervene in other states’ elections.”
Officials
in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin say the suit is a publicity
stunt. More than 20 other attorneys general from states including California
and Virginia also filed a brief Thursday urging the court to reject the case.
“Since
Election Day, State and Federal courts throughout the country have been flooded
with frivolous lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising large swaths of voters and
undermining the legitimacy of the election. The State of Texas has now added
its voice to the cacophony of bogus claims,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh
Shapiro, a Democrat, wrote in the state’s brief. He called the effort a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.”
Dana
Nessel, the Democratic attorney general of Michigan,
told MSNBC early Friday that she takes comfort from the fact that, to this
point, courts faced with post-election challenges by or on behalf of the Trump
campaign have done the right thing and “summarily dismissed” the lawsuits.
“I
think the members of the United States Supreme Court recognize that were they
to grant the relief that Texas is requesting, it would essentially mean the end
of democracy in the United States of America. And that is not hyperbole. That
is the undermining of four states in our country that constitute 39 million
people. Once you disregard the will of the people in those four states, I think
we’ve not just eroded democracy but we’ve ended it.”
Nessel resisted guessing at
Paxton’s motivation — other than to take note of speculation that he might be
seeking a presidential pardon — or whether this lawsuit represented the final
legal obstacle to Biden’s becoming president.
As
to the attorney generals and members of Congress who have effectively co-signed
Paxton’s effort, she said: “Quite honestly at this point I believe that these
individuals have sold their souls” and “will have to reckon with what they have
done for the rest of their careers.”
“This
will be part of their personal histories, but unfortunately it will also be
part of the history of our country.”
Ohio
Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, filed a brief reminding Paxton and those supporting the suit that
the Constitution “means today what it meant a month ago.”
Sen.
Mitt Romney of Utah went so far as to label the Texas suit “madness,” and fellow
Senate Republican John Cornyn, who hails from
Paxton’s state, averred that he would not want to see other states asking the
Supreme Court to allow them change Texas’s laws, as Paxton and company
effectively are doing.
Cornyn, a former judge, said he didn’t expect the Supreme Court to see matters Paxton’s
way.
Tennessee’s
Lamar Alexander, another Republican senator, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that
one state’s challenge of another state’s — or four other states’ — electoral
processes did not strike him as aligned with Republican Party ideals. Alexander
did not run for re-election and leaves Congress in January.
Despite
political pressure, Idaho’s Republican attorney general chose not to join the
Texas suit. Lawrence Wasden told Market Watch he had
concerns about “supporting a legal argument that could result in other states
litigating against legal decisions made by Idaho’s legislature and governor.”
Idaho’s two congressmen, Republicans Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher, however,
joined the legal brief from GOP House members supporting Paxton’s effort.
“As
is sometimes the case, the legally correct decision may not be the politically
convenient decision,” Wasden said in a statement.
“But my responsibility is to the state of Idaho and the rule of law.”
Read on: Aides allege Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton engaged in bribery
and other potential crimes
Attachment Eight – from “The Hill”
HOUSE REPUBLICANS WHO DIDN'T SIGN ONTO THE TEXAS LAWSUIT
BY JULIEGRACE BRUFKE - 12/11/20
06:45 PM EST
Dozens of House Republicans opted not to join 126 of their GOP colleagues in signing onto an amicus
brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results
in four key states that were key to securing President-elect Joe Biden's (D) win.
The brief, which was filed on Thursday, states that it "presents [our]
concern as Members of Congress, shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities
involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the
integrity of the American system of elections."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) filed the lawsuit to the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The
suit targeted results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,
claiming the states' mail-in voting efforts during the pandemic were
unconstitutional. Attorneys general from 18 other red states also joined the effort, which the Supreme Court rejected Friday.
Rep. Mike Johnson (La.) —
a top ally of President Trump who
serves as chair of the Republican Study Committee and will soon join House GOP
leadership — helped lead the push for support among Republican lawmakers.
Johnson said with more time he believes additional members would have signed
onto the brief.
"As I mentioned to the president on a phone call
last night, the names on the brief itself is not necessarily an indication of a
complete list of House Republicans who are supportive of the legal efforts and
the overall importance of ensuring the integrity of our election system,"
he told The Hill in an interview on Friday.
"It was merely a function of the clock, and that
I ran out of time to address some of the kind of detailed, really minor
concerns that some of the members had about just particular lines or arguments
in the brief. And we did at one point just simply have to cut it off and
file."
While the majority of House Republicans signed on,
some critics close to Trump argued they thought the move set a bad precedent moving forward.
Here are the House Republicans who didn't sign on:
Mark Amodei (Nev.)
Kelly
Armstrong (N.D.)
Don
Bacon (Neb.)
Troy
Balderson (Ohio)
Andy Barr (Ky.)
Rob Bishop (Utah), retiring
Susan Brooks (Ind.), retiring
Vern Buchanan (Fla.)
Larry Bucshon (Ind.)
John Carter (Texas)
Steve Chabot (Ohio)
Liz Cheney (Wyo.)
Tom Cole (Okla.)
James Comer (Ky.)
Paul Cook (Calif.)
John
Curtis (Utah)
Warren Davidson (Ohio)
Rodney Davis (Ill.)
Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.)
Mike Gallagher (Wis.)
Mike
Garcia (Calif.)
Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio)
Paul Gosar (Ariz.)
Kay Granger (Texas)
Garret Graves (La.)
Glenn Grothman (Wis.)
Brett Guthrie (Ky.)
Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.)
French Hill (Ark.)
George Holding (N.C.), retiring
Will Hurd (Texas), retiring
Dusty
Johnson (S.D.)
David Joyce (Ohio)
John Katko (N.Y.)
Peter
King (N.Y.), retiring
Adam Kinzinger (Ill.)
Frank Lucas (Okla.)
Thomas Massie (Ky.)
Brian Mast (Fla.)
Michael McCaul (Texas)
Patrick McHenry (N.C.)
David McKinley
(W.Va.)
Paul Mitchell (Mich.), retiring
Devin Nunes (Calif.)
Pete Olson (Texas), retiring
Tom Reed (N.Y.)
Denver Riggleman (Va.), lost
reelection
Martha Roby (Ala.), retiring
Phil Roe (Tenn.), retiring
Hal Rogers (Ky.)
Francis Rooney (Fla.)
Chip Roy (Texas)
David Schweikert (Ariz.)
Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.), retiring
John Shimkus (Ill.),
retiring
Christopher
Smith (N.J.)
Lloyd Smucker (Pa.)
Bryan
Steil (Wis.)
Chris Stewart (Utah)
Steve Stivers (Ohio)
Van Taylor (Texas)
Mac Thornberry (Texas), retiring
Scott Tipton (Colo.), lost
reelection
Michael
Turner (Ohio)
Fred Upton (Mich.)
Greg Walden (Ore.), retiring
Steve Watkins (Kan.), lost
reelection
Steve
Womack
Attachment Nine – from the New York Times
|
|
|
Masks, distancing — and tests |
By David Leonhardt |
|
|
Some of the ways are well-known:
consistent messages from national leaders; mask wearing; hand washing; and fewer
indoor gatherings. But there is one other promising strategy, many experts
believe: |
|
Much more testing,
especially tests that return results almost immediately, rather than a day or
two later. |
|
These tests, often known as antigen
tests, could sharply cut the number of new infections by causing many more
people who have the virus to enter quarantine. Germany and Italy have
used antigen tests recently to reduce new cases. Several U.S. colleges have
also used blanket testing — including slower-turnaround tests — to minimize outbreaks. |
|
“There’s clear evidence that
test-and-isolate works,” Paul Romer,
a Nobel Prize-winning economist at N.Y.U., told me. As Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, said, “It can make
a big difference, provided it’s coupled with other things.” |
|
To get a
better sense of rapid testing, I went through it myself this week. I
called several pharmacies and clinics in my areas until I found one offering
a test to anybody who wanted one, and I drove there on Tuesday afternoon. |
|
Within minutes of my walking in the door,
a pharmacist — wearing a gown, gloves and face shield — was sticking a swab
up each of my nostrils. It was unpleasant but not horrible. An hour later he
texted me, “Test was negative,” along with a photo of a hand-held device
whose screen showed “CoV2: -” |
|
Imagine if all Americans could take
multiple tests every month — including right before any risky behavior, like
flying or seeing relatives. And imagine the tests were free, rather than the
$100-plus I paid. A program of mass testing “can enable the United States to
begin to achieve normalcy within weeks,” Michael Mina, a
Harvard epidemiologist who is pushing for more testing, has written. |
|
It’s important to note that these
antigen tests are imperfect. Even after a negative test, people need to
remain careful. Yet tests don’t need to be perfect to reverse the virus’s recent
growth — and save thousands of lives. The key, Mina told me, is reducing the
average number of new infections caused by each person with the virus to fewer than 1.0, from roughly 1.3 now. |
|
Why isn’t
the U.S. doing more testing? There are a few reasons. |
|
The F.D.A. has been slow to grant approval for
new tests. The Trump administration has been slow to spend the money that
Congress has allocated for testing. And Congress may need to allocate more
money; mass testing could cost a few billion dollars a month — still a small
fraction of the cost of recent proposed virus bills. |
|
To go into more depth on Covid testing, I recommend this new Times guide.
“Ideally, you should be able to get a coronavirus test whenever you want it,”
Tara Parker-Pope and Katherine J. Wu write. |
ATTACHMENT TEN – from the Brookings
Inst., July 14, 2020
“FAITHLESS ELECTORS” DECISION VALIDATES CASE FOR
THE NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE INTERSTATE
On July 6, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states
have the power to require presidential electors to vote for
their party’s candidate for president.
More specifically, the decision allows
states to pass laws requiring presidential electors to cast their votes in
a manner that faithfully reflects their commitment to vote for the person they
promised to choose when they were nominated as an elector.
Supporters of a popular vote for
president should understand two important and positive things about the court’s
decision. First, the ruling underscores the fact that Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution accords
states broad power over their electors. Justice Kagan wrote in the opinion for
eight justices:
“Article II, section 1’s appointments
power gives the States far-reaching authority over presidential electors,
absent some other constitutional constraint. As [the Constitution says], each
State may appoint electors ‘in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct.’ … This Court has described that clause as ‘conveying the broadest
power of determination’ over who becomes an elector.”
The opinion goes on:
“The Constitution is barebones
about electors. Article II includes only the instruction to each State to
appoint, in whatever way it likes, [its presidential electors]. The Twelfth
Amendment then tells electors to meet in their States, to vote for President
and Vice President separately, and to transmit lists of all their votes to the
President of the United States Senate for counting. … That is all.”
Justice Thomas reached the same
conclusion as the other justices, but he (and Justice Gorsuch) said that the 10th Amendment provided a basis for the decision.
Thomas wrote that the “powers related to electors reside with States to the
extent that the Constitution does not remove or restrict that power. Thus, to
invalidate a state law, there must be ‘something in the Federal Constitution
that deprives the [States of] the power to enact such a measure.’”
This clear reaffirmation of the power of
states to appoint their electoral votes “in whatever way it likes” supports
the National Popular Vote
Interstate Compact and Article II, section 1 upon which
National Popular Vote is based. States have broad authority over their
electors, and nothing in this case would suggest this plenary power would
suddenly be limited if the states’ electors were awarded to the National
Popular Vote winner.
And second, the Court’s decision
reinforces the validity of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under
National Popular Vote, states that combine for at least 270 electoral votes
agree to award their electors to the presidential candidate who wins the most
individual votes across the nation. (Fifteen states and the District of
Columbia, totaling 196 electoral votes, have already passed the measure.)
In the 18 states currently without
faithless elector laws, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would
operate in a manner identical to the system that they have been using for over
200 years. In these states (which currently use the state-by-state
winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes), the presidential electors
are chosen by the political party whose presidential candidate receives the most popular votes inside the state, and there
are no additional requirements placed upon the elector.
The National Popular Vote Interstate
Compact would operate in the same way, except that the presidential electors
would be persons chosen by the political party whose presidential
candidate receives the most popular votes across all 50
states and the District of Columbia.
Interestingly enough, after 23,529
electoral votes in 58 presidential elections between 1789 and 2016, the vote of
Samuel Miles in 1796 was the only case where an electoral vote was cast for
president in an unfaithful way by an elector who may have thought his vote
could affect the outcome. (See section 2.12 of the book Every Vote Equal.)
In their decision, the justices also noted that “…
faithless voters have never come close to affecting an outcome.”
However, during the same period (1789
to 2016), there have been a number of “grandstanding”
presidential electors—that is, electors who cast a deviant vote for
president knowing that their vote would not affect the outcome in the Electoral
College.
Prior to 2016, there had never
been more than one grandstanding presidential elector in any given
election. Having seven faithless electors in one year (2016) was
unusual. All of the faithless electors in 2016 were well aware, at the time
they voted, that their vote would not affect the outcome in the Electoral
College because everyone knew that Donald Trump had won 36 more electoral votes
than required for election.
Given the amount of publicity received
by the grandstanding faithless electors in 2016, each political party can be
expected to be extremely careful in 2020 about vetting the people they nominate
for the position of presidential elector. If the political parties do their job
carefully and well, faithless electors cannot have any effect on the outcome of
a presidential election—under either the current system or the National Popular
Vote Interstate Compact.
ATTACHMENT ELEVEN - FROM
the Dallas Morning News
As early as two weeks ago,
Could
‘faithless electors’ change the outcome of the presidential election? Experts
say no
The Electoral College is one of the
last steps to certifying the election. This is how it works.
4:16 PM on Dec
3, 2020 CST
It ain’t
over ‘til it’s over, and in the presidential election, the Electoral College
still needs to vote. But experts say it’s unlikely that the results will
change.
President Donald Trump continues to
mount legal challenges alleging voter fraud, but President-elect Joe Biden
still holds a lead of more than 6.8 million popular votes, and he is projected
to have a 306-232 advantage in the Electoral College, well over the 270 votes
needed for victory.
But in the past, “faithless
electors” have voted against their party’s candidate, slightly changing the
Electoral College vote count. Electors are set to vote for their states on Dec.
14 by paper ballot. Some Trump supporters are holding out hope that these
faithless electors will swing the vote in the Electoral College to the
president over Biden.
But experts say there is no chance
of this happening. Here is why.
What is the Electoral College?
The president of the United States
is not chosen simply by the popular vote of the American people — instead, the
final say is up to 538 electors. When you vote in a presidential election, you
are actually voting for how you want your elector to vote.
Each state has an elector for every
member of Congress. In Texas, there are two senators and 36 House members, so
it gets 38 electoral votes. The number of electors in a state can change every
10 years when the census allows the number of House members to be reapportioned
to reflect changes in population.
The Electoral College was
instituted to prevent a demagogue from winning the presidency, even if that
person won the popular vote, said Jeffrey Tulis,
professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Democracy is not just about the
process but about the outcome,” Tulis said.
But the Electoral College was
introduced by the founders before the party system existed, so it works in ways
they never could have anticipated, said George Edwards, professor of political
science at Texas A&M University.
In 48 out of 50 states, the party
that wins the popular vote in the state is the party whose electors vote in the
Electoral College. If a Democrat wins the state, the Democratic electors will
cast their votes, and if a Republican wins, Republicans cast their votes.
“Even if a candidate wins by 500
votes in a state that’s casting 20 million votes, they get all the electoral
votes” in those states, Edwards said.
Faithless electors
The role of electors has been
debated in recent years. Tulis said the Electoral
College was designed to serve as “an intermediate body” between the popular
vote and the presidency, but it has become the custom for electors to stay
faithful to their party’s candidate.
In 2016, Trump was slated to
receive 306 electoral votes, but he only received 304. Two Republican Texas
electors cast their votes for different candidates instead, one for John Kasich
and the other for Ron Paul.
Texas does not have a penalty for
electors who choose to vote against their party, but there are many states that
do. In South Carolina, faithless electors could get a criminal
conviction, according to FairVote,
a nonprofit dedicated to electoral reform. In some states, votes that do not
correspond with an elector’s party are not counted.
It is not surprising that it’s uncommon
to cast a vote contrary to one’s party. The seven faithless electors in 2016
made up the largest number of electors voting contrary to their party’s winner
in over a century. The other five faithless electors were Democrats — one
elector from Hawaii voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, three electors from
Washington voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell and another elector
from Washington voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Yankton Sioux
Nation, according to CBS News.
Three of the faithless Democratic
electors, known as “Hamilton Electors” voted contrary to their party in an
effort to encourage Republicans to do the same, based on Alexander Hamilton’s
writings on the Electoral College.
Experts say it’s impossible for
Trump to win the Electoral College with faithless electors this year. The main
reason? Democratic electors, who hold the majority of votes, would have to throw
out their votes for him.
“Their candidate won by what is
going to be in the end nearly 7 million votes,” Edwards said. “And they hate
Trump. One thing they share in common is that they hate Trump, so there’s no
possibility it’s going to happen.”
Challenging the Electoral College
Once the Electoral College votes,
there is one last opportunity to challenge its results: if at least one member
of the Senate and at least one member of the House object to the vote returns
on Jan. 6.
Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks has been
telling colleagues and allies he plans to do just that, according to Politico. But so
far, he does not have the public support of a senator.
If Brooks is successful in getting
a senator to join him in objecting to the Electoral College votes, it will be
up to Congress to overturn the election results or not. Considering the makeup
of Congress, it is unlikely that will happen.
Some House Democrats attempted to
object to the election’s results in 2017, including Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson
Lee, when Congress met to declare the election results, but they failed to
garner the support of any senators.
It was then-Vice President Biden
who ended their challenge, presiding over the meeting as president of the
senate.
“It is over,” he said at the time.
ATTACHMENT ELEVEN - FROM the Dallas Morning News
As early as two weeks ago,
Could ‘faithless electors’ change
the outcome of the presidential election? Experts say no
The Electoral College is one of the
last steps to certifying the election. This is how it works.
By Elizabeth Thompson
4:16 PM on Dec 3, 2020 CST
It ain’t
over ‘til it’s over, and in the presidential election, the Electoral College
still needs to vote. But experts say it’s unlikely that the results will
change.
President Donald Trump continues to
mount legal challenges alleging voter fraud, but President-elect Joe Biden
still holds a lead of more than 6.8 million popular votes, and he is projected
to have a 306-232 advantage in the Electoral College, well over the 270 votes
needed for victory.
But in the past, “faithless
electors” have voted against their party’s candidate, slightly changing the
Electoral College vote count. Electors are set to vote for their states on Dec.
14 by paper ballot. Some Trump supporters are holding out hope that these
faithless electors will swing the vote in the Electoral College to the
president over Biden.
ADVERTISING
But experts say there is no chance
of this happening. Here is why.
What is the Electoral College?
The president of the United States
is not chosen simply by the popular vote of the American people — instead, the
final say is up to 538 electors. When you vote in a presidential election, you
are actually voting for how you want your elector to vote.
Each state has an elector for every
member of Congress. In Texas, there are two senators and 36 House members, so
it gets 38 electoral votes. The number of electors in a state can change every
10 years when the census allows the number of House members to be reapportioned
to reflect changes in population.
The Electoral College was
instituted to prevent a demagogue from winning the presidency, even if that
person won the popular vote, said Jeffrey Tulis,
professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Democracy is not just about the
process but about the outcome,” Tulis said.
But the Electoral College was
introduced by the founders before the party system existed, so it works in ways
they never could have anticipated, said George Edwards, professor of political
science at Texas A&M University.
In 48 out of 50 states, the party
that wins the popular vote in the state is the party whose electors vote in the
Electoral College. If a Democrat wins the state, the Democratic electors will
cast their votes, and if a Republican wins, Republicans cast their votes.
ADVERTISING
“Even if a candidate wins by 500
votes in a state that’s casting 20 million votes, they get all the electoral
votes” in those states, Edwards said.
Faithless electors
The role of electors has been
debated in recent years. Tulis said the Electoral
College was designed to serve as “an intermediate body” between the popular
vote and the presidency, but it has become the custom for electors to stay
faithful to their party’s candidate.
In 2016, Trump was slated to
receive 306 electoral votes, but he only received 304. Two Republican Texas electors
cast their votes for different candidates instead, one for John Kasich and the
other for Ron Paul.
Texas does not have a penalty for
electors who choose to vote against their party, but there are many states that
do. In South Carolina, faithless electors could get a criminal conviction,
according to FairVote, a nonprofit dedicated to
electoral reform. In some states, votes that do not correspond with an
elector’s party are not counted.
It is not surprising that it’s
uncommon to cast a vote contrary to one’s party. The seven faithless electors
in 2016 made up the largest number of electors voting contrary to their party’s
winner in over a century. The other five faithless electors were Democrats —
one elector from Hawaii voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, three electors from
Washington voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell and another elector
from Washington voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Yankton Sioux
Nation, according to CBS News.
Three of the faithless Democratic
electors, known as “Hamilton Electors” voted contrary to their party in an
effort to encourage Republicans to do the same, based on Alexander Hamilton’s
writings on the Electoral College.
Experts say it’s impossible for
Trump to win the Electoral College with faithless electors this year. The main
reason? Democratic electors, who hold the majority of votes, would have to
throw out their votes for him.
“Their candidate won by what is
going to be in the end nearly 7 million votes,” Edwards said. “And they hate
Trump. One thing they share in common is that they hate Trump, so there’s no
possibility it’s going to happen.”
Challenging the Electoral College
Once the Electoral College votes,
there is one last opportunity to challenge its results: if at least one member
of the Senate and at least one member of the House object to the vote returns
on Jan. 6.
Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks has been
telling colleagues and allies he plans to do just that, according to Politico.
But so far, he does not have the public support of a senator.
If Brooks is successful in getting
a senator to join him in objecting to the Electoral College votes, it will be
up to Congress to overturn the election results or not. Considering the makeup
of Congress, it is unlikely that will happen.
Some House Democrats attempted to
object to the election’s results in 2017, including Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson
Lee, when Congress met to declare the election results, but they failed to
garner the support of any senators.
It was then-Vice President Biden
who ended their challenge, presiding over the meeting as president of the
senate.
“It is over,” he said at the time.
ATTACHMENT TWELVE – from USA Today
Fact check: State legislatures choose electors, but electors
vote how state dictates
By Chelsey Cox
Corrections & Clarifications: This fact-check has
been updated to reflect further reporting and analysis and to more accurately
describe how electors are chosen. The fact-check rating has been changed to
"partly false."
The claim:
Republican state legislatures have the final say over choosing electors
The uncertainty over which candidate would secure the
required number of Electoral College votes for the presidency ended
Nov. 7, after Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden won battleground states
Pennsylvania and Nevada. Biden has earned 290 votes — 20 more than the
required 270 — versus 232 for his opponent, President Donald
Trump, according to USA TODAY.
Despite the popular vote tally, state
legislatures have the "final say" in choosing electors to
the Electoral College and by extension, the president-elect, according to
a claim on Facebook.
"Reminder to the Republican
state legislatures, you have the final say over the choosing of electors,
not any board of elections, secretary of state, governor, or even
court. You have the final say — Article II of the federal
Constitution. So, get ready to do your constitutional duty," conservative
radio and television show host Mark Levin posted to his Facebook page on Nov.
5.
Levin has hosted "The Mark Levin Show," a
talk radio program, since the early 2000s. He counts fellow Fox
News host Sean Hannity and conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh among
his peers. Levin also hosts a show on Fox: "Life, Liberty and Levin,"
according to his website. A lawyer, Levin
once served as chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese III during the
Reagan administration, according to The Washington Post.
USA TODAY reached out to Levin for comment.
Some legislators apparently discussed the idea of
overriding the popular vote in favor of Trump, Fox5 Atlanta has reported. Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has publicly promoted the concept, according to The Associated Press.
In September, The Atlantic magazine implied some Pennsylvania
Republicans planned to directly appoint electors loyal to Trump.The state's Republican leaders denied the
magazine's claims, according to the York Daily Record..
The desired outcome from substituting
electors would rely on a conservative-leaning Supreme Court ruling
"to settle any dispute over the move" in favor of Trump, the Associated Press reported. In reality,
legislatures are constrained to certain actions under the law.
How electors are
chosen
Electors are nominated by the political parties in
each state according to rules established by state legislatures. The
number of electors by state is equal to the number of members of the House
of Representatives plus two senators, according to Article II, Section 1 of
the Constitution. A senator, representative, or a person holding an office of
trust or profit cannot serve as an elector.
A total of 538 electors will meet at state capitals on
Dec. 8 to cast their votes. The roster of electors cannot be substituted
after Election Day, according to a report by the
National Task Force on Election Crises.
USA TODAY reached out to the task force for comment.
States controlled by Republican legislatures
Fewer battleground states are controlled
exclusively by Republicans post-election. Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have
majority-Republican legislatures but Democratic governors, according to
election website, Ballotpedia.
Arizona remains under Republican control, but Biden
gained the state's 11 Electoral College votes by winning the popular vote. Per
state law, the electors will come from the same political party as the popular
vote winner, USA TODAY reported.
Democratic Party chairwoman Felecia Rotellini consulted with
Arizona's six congressional Democrats in selecting a roster of electors who
will vote for Biden in December.
Georgia is also controlled by a Republican state
legislature and a Republican governor, according to Ballotpedia.
Biden leads Trump in the state's popular vote and will gain 16 Electoral
College votes if he wins, USA TODAY reported. Electors belonging to the party
of the winner of the popular vote get to cast votes in the Electoral
College. One elector is chosen per congressional district in Georgiaby state party committees.
Aside from Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers in
Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin said they would not intervene in the electoral
process in their states, the AP reported.
“I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud —
which I haven’t heard of anything — I don’t see us in any serious way
addressing a change in electors,” said Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s Republican House
speaker, told AP. “They are mandated by statute to choose according to the vote
of the people.”
Benjamin Ginsburg, a former election lawyer for the
Republican Party, told the New York Times that GOP leaders
would not support undermining the popular vote.
"The most partisan Trump legislators might, but I
believe enough would rebel at hijacking their constituents’ votes that such
actions would fail,” Ginsburg said.
Limits on state
legislatures
Lawrence Lessig, a professor
at Harvard Law School, told USA TODAY that Levin suggested state
legislatures have the constitutional power to pick another slate of
electors after Election Day.
"Literally never in our history has any state
ever done that," Lessig said. "Never has a
legislature decided to ignore the vote of the people and pick its own
slate."
A "safe harbor" provision of the Electoral
Count Act mandates the selection of electors under laws enacted prior to
Election Day, according to the National Task Force on Election Crises. The
selection process, including any disputes, must be completed at least six
days prior to the meeting of electors.
Election Day is established as the “Tuesday after the
first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a
President and Vice President” in the Constitution. Switching chosen electors
once the day has passed is a violation of federal law.
In July, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled
states can require members of the Electoral College to vote for the winner of
the popular vote. It upheld existing laws in 32 states by doing so,
USA TODAY reported.
Lessig said the ruling also sheds light on
restrictions placed upon state legislatures.
"For the same reason that electors have no power
today, legislatures could not have the power to appoint a slate of electors
that was contrary to the vote of the people." Lessig
said.
Our ruling: Partly
false
We rate the claim that Republican state legislatures
have final say on electors per the Constitution and should be
ready to perform their "constitutional duty" as PARTLY FALSE,
based on our research. It is true the Constitution grants
state legislatures the power to choose electors for the Electoral College.
But it is false to suggest, as Levin does, that legislatures retain this
authority after a popular vote on Election Day. A "safe
harbor" provision of the Electoral Count Act dictates changing the
slate of electors after election day is a violation of
federal law.
Our fact-check
sources:
·
USA TODAY, Nov.
3: "2020 Presidential Election
Results & Electoral Map"
·
USA TODAY, Nov.
12: "Trump is contesting the
election in several key states. Here's how their electoral votes work"
·
Fox 5 Atlanta, Nov.
11: "State legislatures cannot override
popular vote after Election Day, legal experts say"
·
The Atlantic, Sept.
23: "The Election That Could Break
America"
·
National Task Force on
Election Crises, accessed Nov. 11: "A State Legislature Cannot
Appoint Its Preferred Slate of Electors to Override the Will of the People
After the Election"
·
Arizona Dems, accessed
Nov. 13: "Our Leadership"
·
Ballotpedia, accessed Nov. 13: "Party control of Wisconsin
state government"
·
Ballotpedia, accessed Nov. 13: "Party control of North
Carolina state government"
·
Ballotpedia, accessed Nov. 13: "Party control of Michigan
state government"
·
Ballotpedia, accessed Nov. 13: "Party control of Georgia
state government"
·
Ballotpedia, accessed Nov. 13: "Party control of
Wisconsin state government"
·
Ballotpedia, accessed Nov. 13: "Party control of Pennsylvania
state government"
·
Ballotpedia, accessed Nov. 13: "Party control of
Arizona state government"
·
National Constitution
Center, accessed Nov. 11: "Article II"
·
The Washington Post,
Jan. 19, 1988: "MEESE SELECTS NEW CHIEF
OF STAFF"
·
The Mark Levin Show,
accessed. Nov. 11: "About the Show"
·
York Daily Record,
Nov. 6: "Could Pa.'s GOP legislature
send Trump slate to Electoral College? No, say lawmakers, experts"
·
Associated Press, Nov.
14, "GOP leaders in 4 states quash
dubious Trump bid on electors"
·
The New York Times,
Nov. 13: "Could State Legislatures Pick
Electors to Vote for Trump? Not Likely"
The Associated Press contributed
ATTACHMENT
THIRTEEN - From the Daily Mail, U.K.
SUPREME COURT REJECTS
REPUBLICAN PLEA TO OVERTURN JOE BIDEN'S VICTORY IN PENNSYLVANIA WITHOUT EVEN
HEARING IT - AS DONALD TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN ADMITS HIS ONLY CHANCE NOW IS TO GET
CONGRESS TO VOID ELECTORAL COLLEGE
Topics:
·
The Supreme Court rejected a Republican bid to void the Pennsylvania
election result out of hand without even hearing it.
·
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern
Pennsylvania and other plaintiffs pleaded with the justices to intervene after
the state Supreme Court turned away their case
·
The Republicans argued that Pennsylvania´s expansive
vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional because it required a constitutional
amendment to authorize its provisions
·
Case was slammed by Pennsylvania in its submission to
justices, with its AG calling it 'one of the most dramatic, disruptive
invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic'
·
Justices rejected it just after Texas' Republican AG, Ken
Paxton, launched lawsuit to try to void the popular vote in Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia
·
Hail Mary to Supreme Court asks the justices to rule that
mail-in ballots in the states were 'illegal' on
constitutional grounds
·
Supreme Court does not have to consider the move, which
comes after stream of defeats for Trump and his allies
·
Paxton is under FBI investigation over bribery and abuse
of his office for a donor and has also admitted affair with a state senate aide
·
One Texas law professor called suit 'insane'
·
Rebuke came shortly before House ignored veto threat to
pass Defense bill
·
·
By GEOFF
EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
·
PUBLISHED: 17:13 EST, 8 December 2020 | UPDATED: 08:27
EST, 9 December 202
·
The Supreme
Court on Tuesday rejected Republicans'
last-gasp bid to reverse Pennsylvania's
certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory
in the electoral battleground - meaning he will be certified by the Electoral
College as the winner.
The
court without comment refused to call into question the the
certification process in Pennsylvania by voiding its mail-in ballots. No
justice registered a dissent - suggesting that the decision could have been
9-0.
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 beat President Donald Trump by
more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016. Most
mail-in ballots were submitted by Democrats.
Within
minutes Donald Trump's campaign blasted a text appeal to supporters effectively
admitting defeat in the courts and saying: 'Everything Pres. Trump has achieved
is on the line on Jan 5' - the day before Congress meets to certify the
Electoral College's result.
That is
now Trump's last chance to overturn the election result, by somehow persuading
Congress to void Biden's victory in enough states to cut his Electoral College
total to under 270, making it up to the House to decide on who is president. If
the House gets to decide, each state delegation gets one vote, and Republicans
have a majority in 26 state delegations - which Trump appears to think would
mean him being made president.
The
blow from the Supreme Court means that its 6-3 conservative majority, with
three Trump judges on the bench, has - so far - refused to help him.
The
rebuke came shortly before the House ignored a veto threat by Trump and voted
overwhelmingly to pass a Defense bill. Trump was demanding change to a
communication law and objecting to a provision on renaming military bases named
after Confederate officers.
The
$741 billion bill passed on a bipartisan 335-78 vote.
The
move came hours after the state of Texas joined
the desperate effort to get a case that would overturn the election results by
suing four battleground states that Joe Biden won
for the way they conducted elections.
And
just before the ruling came down, Trump had ranted that he had 'won' in Pennsylvania
- and the other swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia - at a White
House event, saying that he wanted the Supreme Court justices to have 'the
courage' to agree with him.
The SCOTUS document looked like this…
(DJI)
(ORDER
LIST: 592 U.S.)
TUESDAY,
DECEMBER 8, 2020
ORDER
IN PENDING CASE
20A98 KELLY, MIKE, ET AL. V. PENNSYLVANIA, ET
AL.
The
application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him
referred to the Court is denied.
(The verdict was a)pparently unanimous: No justice
registered any dissent from the refusal to hear the plea from Republicans to
void Pennsylvania's mail-in votes.
How the Trump
'campaign' reacted: January 5 is the day before Congress meets to certify the
Electoral College result and therefore Joe Biden's victory. The SCOTUS ruling
means Trump has effectively abandoned hope of conservative justices coming to
his aid.
The case turned down by the justices was the only one to
even make it to them. Justice Samuel Alito, who is responsible for
Pennsylvania's federal courts, had moved up a deadline for submissions by a
day, a move which apparently brought hope to the president and his supporters.
But it
meant that the justices slapped it down on the day of 'safe harbor' when all state
election litigation must be concluded.
That
means that Trump and his Republican and legal allies, including COVID-stricken
Rudy Giulaini and Jenna Ellis and conspiracy
theorists Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood failed to change a single state's
result or win all but a single case which affected less than 2,000 votes.
It also
means that when the Electoral College meets next week it will certify Biden's
win - leaving the January 6 Congressional session Trump's only hope.
In the
underlying lawsuit rejected by the high court, Kelly and the other Republican
plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5 million mail-in ballots
submitted under the law or to wipe out the election results and direct the
state's Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania's presidential
electors.
The
state's high court said the plaintiffs waited too long to file the challenge
and noted the Republicans' staggering demand that an entire election be
overturned retroactively.
By
rejecting the case out of hand, the justices do not have to say why they made
their ruling. None noted any dissent, suggesting it was a unanimous decision.
Republican
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania and other plaintiffs had
pleaded with the justices to intervene after the state Supreme Court turned
away their case.
The
Republicans argued that Pennsylvania's expansive vote-by-mail law is
unconstitutional because it required a constitutional amendment to authorize
its provisions.
The
Pennsylvania supreme court had already ruled against
them in November.
'At the
time this action was filed on Nov. 21, 2020, millions of Pennsylvania voters
had already expressed their will in both the June 2020 primary election and the
November 2020 general election,' the state court ruled. 'Petitioners failed to
act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim. Equally clear is the
substantial prejudice arising from petitioners' failure to institute promptly a
facial challenge to the mail-in voting statutory scheme, as such inaction would
result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters.'
In the
suit filed late Monday in the name of the State of Texas, its attorney general
Ken Paxton argues that the Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia
violated the Constitution's Elections Clause with their dramatic expansion of
mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Paxton
is himself under FBI investigation over allegations of bribery and abuse of his
office. It is unclear if he and Trump had coordinated on the move but Trump
tweeted that it showed 'courage and brilliance.'
Texas'
governor Greg Abbott tweeted 'God Bless Texas' while senators
Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and governor Greg Abbott
have not passed comment on it.
By
targeting the four swing states, Paxton's lawsuit aims to either get their
Republican-majority state representatives to appoint electors to the Electoral
College, flipping its majority to Trump, or invalidate their electors entirely,
reducing Biden's electoral college majority under 270
and handing the decision on the presidency to the House of
Representatives.
The
Supreme Court does not have to take up the case and could simply ignore it. The
attorneys general of Michigan and Wisconsin - both Democrats - mocked the legal
bid and accused Paxton of running a 'circus.'
Paxton
claims that the four states acted against their own constitutions to make
voting easier in the pandemic, and that this hurt the voters of Texas by
violating the federal constitution's equal protection clause.
'Whether
well-intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform
effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States,'
according to the suit.
'Those
changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by
non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The
acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.'
The suit
came after another bad day for the president and his allies in court, with
federal judges in Georgia and Michigan dismissing ally Sidney Powell's 'Kraken'
lawsuits, and on a crucial deadline known as 'safe harbor,' when all state
litigation must end at at 11.59pm Tuesday.
And his
lawyer Jenna Ellis became the latest to be diagnosed with COVID, while Rudy
Giuliani remains in the hospital in Georgetown being treated for it. He is
claimed to be making conference calls from his bed.
Attachment Fourteen – from huffpost
LAWMAKERS WHO BACKED TEXAS
LAWSUIT SHOULD BE BARRED FROM HOUSE: NJ CONGRESSMAN
Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell cited Section 3 of the
14th Amendment of the Constitution, enacted after the Civil War to keep
traitors out of the government.
Rep. Bill
Pascrell (D-N.J.) has called on House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bar 126 GOP representatives from the House,
arguing that their support for the failed,
baseless Texas lawsuit seeking to hijack the presidential election violated
the Constitution.
The Texas
suit, supported by 17 other state attorneys general, was rejected
Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court. President
Donald Trump had attempted to join the self-serving suit, which
sought to jettison votes in Georgia,
Pennsylvania,
Michigan
and Wisconsin,
whose voters chose President-elect Joe
Biden.
Pascrell accused the House members who signed
an amicus brief supporting the action — including
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — of violating the
Constitution by seeking to nullify Americans’ votes and instead choose a
“dictator.” He cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil
War and designed to keep traitors out of government.
The section prohibits anyone who had gone to war
against the union or given aid and comfort to the nation’s enemies from running
for federal or state office.
The Pennsylvania brief responding to the Texas lawsuit
referred to its “seditious
abuse of the judicial process.”
Pascrell said in a tweet accompanied by a statement on
Friday: “Today I’m calling on House leaders to refuse to seat any Members
trying to overturn the election and make Donald Trump an unelected dictator.”
The “text of the 14th Amendment expressly forbids
Members of Congress from engaging in rebellion against the United States,” he
tweeted. “Trying to overturn a democratic election and install a dictator seems
like a pretty clear example of that.”
Pascrell was quoted in his statement as saying:
“Stated simply, the men and women who would act to tear the United States
Government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress.”
Pelosi’s office didn’t comment on Pascrell’s request.
But in a letter to colleagues Friday evening, the California Democrat said
Republicans are “subverting
the Constitution by their reckless and fruitless assault on our
democracy.”
Trump has refused to concede the election and
continues to repeat baseless claims of election fraud. Dozens of court cases by
his campaign and supporters have failed in court.
ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – From nbc
BIDEN HOPES TO
AVOID DIVISIVE TRUMP INVESTIGATIONS, PREFERRING UNITY
Biden has told aides that he's concerned that
investigations would divide the country but that he would leave decisions up to
an independent Justice Department.
Nov. 17, 2020, 5:00 AM EST
By Carol E. Lee, Kristen
Welker and Mike Memoli
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden has privately
told advisers that he doesn't want his presidency to
be consumed by
investigations of his predecessor, according
to five people familiar with the discussions, despite pressure from some
Democrats who want inquiries into President Donald Trump, his policies and
members of his administration.
Biden has raised concerns that investigations would
further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his
presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer
details of private conversations.
They said he has specifically told advisers that he is
wary of federal tax investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump
may issue granting immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office.
One adviser said Biden has made it clear that he "just wants to move
on."
Another Biden adviser said, "He's going to be
more oriented toward fixing the problems and moving forward than prosecuting
them."
Any decisions by Biden's Justice Department regarding
Trump, his staff, his associates, his business or his policies wouldn't affect
investigations by state officials, including Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus
Vance Jr., who has fought to obtain Trump's tax returns.
As Biden tries to balance his own inclinations with
pressures from within his party, his advisers stressed that he is seeking to
reset the dynamic between the White House and the Justice Department from what
it has been under Trump.
Biden wants his Justice Department to function
independently from the White House, aides said, and Biden isn't going to tell
federal law enforcement officials whom or what to investigate or not to
investigate.
"His overarching view is that we need to move the
country forward," an adviser said. "But the most important thing on
this is that he will not interfere with his Justice Department and not
politicize his Justice Department."
A third Biden adviser said that when it comes to any
Trump-related investigations, the expectation is "it's going to be very
situational" and "depending on the merits." Broadly, Biden's
priorities will be the economy, the coronavirus, climate change and race
relations, not looking back at the Trump administration, an adviser said.
Presidents generally set the tone for what issues they
believe should be priorities for the Justice Department, and questions about
Trump-related investigations or retrospective reviews are expected to intensify
as Biden gets closer to taking office.
"He can set a tone about what he thinks should be
done," a Biden adviser said. But, the adviser said, "he's not going to be a president who directs the Justice
Department one way or the other."
Biden's team is also reluctant to send any signal to
Trump administration officials that the Justice Department wouldn't look into
their actions, given that there are still nine weeks until the inauguration,
another person briefed about the discussions said.
"While they're not looking for broad criminal
indictments, they do want to make sure that people don't think there are no
ramifications for any of their actions between now and the new
presidency," this person said.
Emphasizing an arm's-length approach to the Justice
Department could give Biden cover from criticism from his supporters about any
lack of investigations into Trump, his policies or his staff. Democrats have
sharply criticized Trump's direct influence on Justice Department
investigations, including his calls for Biden and former President Barack Obama
to be prosecuted over allegations of unspecified crimes. Pledging, as Biden
has, not to interfere with federal investigations would be welcomed by many of
his supporters.
But it will be difficult for Biden to avoid the issue
altogether, given the expected calls for investigations into an array of issues
involving Trump — from his administration's child separation policy to his
taxes, possible conflicts of interest and potential violations of campaign
finance law. The issue could set Biden on a collision course with some of his
own supporters, who are eager for a wholesale examination of the Trump
presidency.
"There's also a strong school of thought that
believes the law's the law," a Biden adviser said, describing the internal
debate.
Biden said many times during the campaign that he
would leave any decision whether to prosecute Trump up to his attorney general.
"If that was the judgment that he violated the law and he should be, in
fact, criminally prosecuted, then so be it," he said during a debate in
Atlanta. "But I would not direct it."
Biden has said he wouldn't pardon Trump should that
become a realistic question.
Still, multiple aides said, Biden is generally not
inclined to see his Justice Department investigate Trump.
One of the reasons he has given aides is that he
believes investigations would alienate the more than 73 million Americans who
voted for Trump, the people familiar with the discussions said. Some Democrats,
however, have said Biden should be prioritizing the concerns of his supporters,
not those of his detractors.
The delicate balance of answering to his own
supporters and uniting the country is in part why Biden recognizes that his
nominee for attorney general is "going to be one of the most consequential
decisions he's going to make," an adviser said.
Biden has vowed to sign an executive order declaring
that any member of his administration would be fired if found to
"initiate, encourage, obstruct or otherwise improperly influence specific
DOJ investigations or prosecutions for any reason."
The dilemma facing Biden is similar to the one Obama
faced when he took office in 2009. Democrats were demanding the prosecution of
Bush administration officials who were involved in policies that allowed
enhanced interrogations, or torture, of terrorism suspects.
To appease those Democrats, Obama released memos about
the controversial program and then publicly said he didn't support prosecuting
Bush administration officials who devised or carried out the policies. He also
rejected calls for a 9/11-style commission or a truth and reconciliation
commission, like the one that examined apartheid in South Africa, to review the
policies.
ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – from Law and Crime
‘SO MUCH FOR THE PARTY OF LINCOLN’: HEAD OF TEXAS GOP CALLS FOR STATE TO
SECEDE FROM THE UNION FOLLOWING SCOTUS LOSS
BY JERRY LAMBE Dec 12th,
2020, 11:20 am
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of a
long-shot Texas lawsuit that challenged election results in several states
where Donald Trump lost the popular
vote, the head of the Texas Republican Party has already twice suggested that
the Lone Star State should seek to secede from the United States of America.
Texas Attorney General Ken
Paxton (R) earlier this week filed a motion for leave to file a bill of complaint against
Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, claiming
that “electoral irregularities” prevented anyone from knowing who
“legitimately” won the 2020 election. Paxton’s lawsuit, which was later
endorsed by 17 other Republican attorneys general and more than 100 GOP
lawmakers, was summarily rejected by all nine justices. (Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said
they would have permitted Paxton to file his arguments due to their unique view
of the court’s original jurisdiction to handle cases between states, but the
pair admitted they “would not grant other
relief.” In other words, Paxton would still lose.)
In response, Texas GOP Chairman Allen West on Friday
erroneously claimed that the high court’s ruling—which was widely expected
among legal experts and court watchers—created a precedent that allows states
to act unlawfully in the administration of elections, leading him to float the
idea that the Lone Star State should look into forming a separate nation. In
other words, he is preaching secession.
“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that
was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressman, has decreed that a state
can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law. Resulting
in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty
state suffers no consequences,” West said in a statement. “This decision establishes a precedent that
says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable. This decision
will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional
republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of
states that will abide by the constitution.”
A few hours later, West gave an interview where he again indicated that Texas and
those states that backed its election lawsuit should form a separate nation.
The comments—which echoed statements made earlier in
the week by far-right conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh—were met with harsh criticism by
attorneys, lawmakers, and political pundits from both sides of the aisle.
“So much for the party of Lincoln,” wrote attorney and
co-founder of the Lincoln Project George
Conway.
That sentiment was echoed by conservative political
commentator Rich Lowry, who said that “musing about the destruction of our
union as a way to vindicate the U.S. constitution and *the party of Lincoln* is
completely bizarre.”
Rep. Brian
Schatz (D-Hawaii) said Texas Republicans had “lost their minds.”
“The Texas Republican Party is officially in favor of
leaving the Union,” he wrote. “They have lost their minds. Biden will be President,
but these people are deadly serious about secession and sedition. And this is
the only question that media should ask any elected Republican tomorrow.”
(West, a rare black Republican, may have been
suffering after-effects from a motorcycle crash resulting in fractured bones,
concussions, and possible brain damage. – DJI.
See this. Or maybe he and several million more Texans
and Trump deadenders are serious, in which case… YEE
HAW!)
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called on his own political
party to disown West’s comments and remove him from his position.
“I believe should immediately retract this, apologize,
and fire Allen West and anyone else associated with this. My guy Abraham
Lincoln and the Union soldiers already told you no,” he tweeted.