“While we all wish that our fellow Americans in these positions will always show such courage and commitment to free and fair elections, I hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse we saw in this election,” Biden said. “We owe these public servants a debt of gratitude. They didn’t seek the spotlight, and our democracy survived because of them.”
Biden’s statement is correct, and that is chilling.
It is easy to write a triumphal take today because the system ultimately is working. Legal claims by Trump and his supporters have been rejected by at least 86 judges in more than 50 court cases. Despite some drama on canvassing boards, all the vote totals have been certified. Six weeks after Election Day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) finally congratulated Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory in a floor speech this morning. “The electoral college has spoken,” he said.
The system for selecting a president has certainly passed a stress test, but it was more stressful than the Founding Fathers intended. Yes, we are a nation of laws and not of men. But this donnybrook has offered nerve-wracking reminders that institutions are only as strong as the people who lead them.
Biden won the election by 74 electoral votes and 7.1 million popular votes. Imagine if this election had actually been close. What if the entire race had come down to a closer contest in Georgia – like it did Florida in 2000 – and a Republican more pliant than Brad Raffensperger was secretary of state? The last six chaotic weeks have strengthened the case for a more pessimistic view of the vulnerability of our system to bad-faith demagogues down the road.
The country dodged a bullet, in part, because Trump has been so cartoonishly ham-handed about his frontal assault on democracy. He signaled months ahead of time that he was going to cry fraud if he lost and repeatedly declined, in advance, to commit to respecting the outcome of the election. The president was also poorly served by a subpar crew of junior-varsity attorneys who could never get hired at the best firms or teach at the top law schools. Could American democracy survive a Caesar or a Napoleon?
To be sure, Trump’s denialism continues. The president claimed victory and reiterated baseless conspiracy theories in a cascade of tweets shared after midnight. “Many Trump votes were routed to Biden,” Trump claimed early this morning. “This Fake Election can no longer stand. Get moving Republicans.”
Republicans in six states won by Biden held their own electoral college-style votes Monday for Trump — hoping that future court decisions would throw out Biden’s votes and count the GOP ones instead. “These votes have no legal meaning, according to election law experts. The law only recognizes votes from electors chosen according to state law — which, in every one of these states, is the Democratic electors. But many Republicans who had been chosen to cast electoral votes for Trump still gathered to cast them,” Haisten Willis, Jeremy Duda, Kathleen Masterson and David Fahrenthold report. “They said they were employing a tactic used by Democrats in Hawaii in an election 60 years ago — casting votes that don’t count, in the hopes that a later court decision would give them force.”
On Jan. 6, Congress will formally open and count all 538 electoral votes. Some of Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill plan to challenge Biden’s win during this event by demanding that the official electors of states Biden won be thrown out. This is not going to happen because it would require the Democratic majority in the House to go along.
But what if Republicans controlled the House? There would certainly be a lot more suspense if Nancy Pelosi was not speaker. After all, 126 congressional Republicans signed an amicus brief last week in support of a Texas-based legal challenge — which was joined by 17 Republican attorneys general – to overturn results in four states that Biden won: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The No. 1 and No. 2 House Republicans were among the signatories: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Steve Scalise (La.).
In a brief order, the Supreme Court dismissed Texas’s lawsuit on Friday night. Notably, Justices Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas said they did not think the court had the authority to simply reject the filing. They also said they would not have granted the remedy sought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), which was to disallow the electors from all four states.
During his speech on Monday night, Biden described both the Texas lawsuit and the number of Republicans who signed the amicus brief as stunning. “This legal maneuver was an effort by elected officials in one group of states to try to get the Supreme Court to wipe out the votes of more than 20 million Americans in other states and to hand the presidency to a candidate who lost,” Biden said. “It’s a position so extreme we’ve never seen it before – a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law and refused to honor our Constitution.”
Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) is so upset about GOP leaders aiding and abetting Trump’s efforts that he is quitting the Republican Party to become an independent. Practically, this will have little impact because Mitchell is retiring in two weeks. But his 2½-page open letter to McCarthy and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel is quite damning.
“While admittedly symbolic, we all know that symbols matter,” he writes. “It is unacceptable for political candidates to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote. I believe that raw political considerations, not constitutional or voting integrity concerns, motivate many in party leadership to support the ‘stop the steal’ efforts, which is extremely disappointing to me.”
Mitchell is the second House Republican from Michigan to quit the party in this Congress. Rep. Justin Amash declared his independence from the GOP on July 4 last year because of his disgust with the party’s subservience to Trump. He, too, is retiring from electoral politics.
A third congressman, Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia, has expressed doubt lately about whether he still belongs in the party. He was defeated for the GOP nomination at a convention in June by Bob Good, a former Liberty University fundraiser, because he had officiated a same-sex wedding last year.
After winning the general election, Rep.-elect Good came to Washington for the protests this weekend. Speaking at a rally supporting Trump’s refusal to concede, Good made headlines by declaring that the coronavirus is “a phony pandemic” as he praised people for not wearing masks. “It’s great to see your faces,” Good said. “You get it. You stand up against tyranny.”
In the same speech, Good alleged without evidence that there has been a vast and shadowy conspiracy to steal the election from Trump. “How many votes did they steal? As many as they needed,” Good said.
In an interview on Monday, Riggleman called Good’s comments denying the pandemic “dangerous.” The outgoing congressman’s own 83-year-old grandmother is hospitalized with the virus and pneumonia. His father and stepmother had it, too. So did his daughter’s boyfriend.
“When you put out disinformation like this, it goes from pandering to possibly endangering others,” Riggleman told Meagan Flynn and Laura Vozzella. “There’s a pandemic. I think sometimes there’s an overreaction by governors, sometimes there’s an under-reaction by governors. But it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a pandemic.”
All the president’s men
Bill Barr is stepping down as attorney general.
He will end a controversial tenure next week in which critics say he repeatedly used the Justice Department to aid Trump’s allies, only to have Trump turn on him when he did not announce investigations of political foes and disputed White House claims of widespread election fraud. “Trump revealed the move on Twitter, writing that he and Barr had a ‘nice meeting’ at the White House, and that Barr would ‘be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family,’” Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett report. “Trump also posted a copy of Barr’s resignation letter, in which Barr indicated he had just provided the president an ‘update’ on the department’s review of voter fraud allegations. …
“Trump on Twitter claimed of Barr, ‘Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!’ But in public and behind the scenes, the men’s relationship had significantly soured on a number of fronts, with one person saying the pair had barely spoken directly in recent months. A senior White House official … insisted that Barr resigned of his own accord. … [Another] White House official said that Trump discussed firing Barr as recently as Friday … White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had been critical toward Barr to the president on several occasions.”
The president had expressed frustration with Barr in recent days, including on Fox News, because Barr did not leak before the election that Hunter Biden was under investigation by the Justice Department: “Trump wrote on Twitter that Barr would be replaced on an acting basis by the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and that Rosen would be replaced by his own top deputy, Richard Donoghue. … Inside and outside the Justice Department, Barr’s critics were not sorry to see him go. … In his resignation letter, Barr doubled down on his attacks on the Russia probe … David Laufman, a former Justice Department counterintelligence official involved in the Russia probe, wrote on Twitter, ‘Even in the act of resigning, Barr soils his tenure as AG further.’”
D.C. police blame the Proud Boys for many of the weekend’s clashes.
“Police said 39 people were arrested for protest-related actions Friday and Saturday,” Tom Jackman, Paul Duggan, Ann Marimow and Spencer Hsu report. “Police also said four churches were vandalized, two more than previously disclosed, and they released photos of White men marching with and burning a Black Lives Matter banner ripped down from one of the churches … D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said one of the victims nearly died. … On Monday afternoon, some of those arrested began appearing in D.C. Superior Court from both sides of the protests. They included a Pennsylvania man charged with attacking someone with a flagpole, an Ohio man who authorities said was part of a mob beating a man, and a D.C. woman who police said carried a backpack full of fireworks and lighter fluid, and pepper-sprayed a person on K Street NW.”
Trump, who often refers to liberal protesters as “thugs,” once again remains silent when it’s his own supporters perpetrating violence. “Even if it is not the case that Trump supports the violent acts of his followers, his failure to speak out will reaffirm one perception of him held by his critics: Trump isn’t that concerned about ‘law and order’ and being ‘tough on crime’ when those misbehaving are among his tribe,” Eugene Scott writes.
Newsmax and OAN respond differently to Biden’s electoral college win.
“For the past six weeks, two upstart cable news channels — Newsmax and One America News — have tried to outflank Fox News from the right by embracing Trump’s strategy of election denialism. But on Monday, as the electoral college sealed Biden’s victory, their paths seemed to diverge,” Jeremy Barr reports. “John Bachman, who anchors an afternoon show on Newsmax, the larger of the two channels, referred to Biden as the president-elect … Yet OAN, the smaller of the two channels, virtually ignored the unfolding developments as electors cast their votes, instead devoting about four hours of daytime programming to a live feed of a hearing by the Arizona Senate to address voting procedures. Its 4 p.m. news roundup failed to mention the electoral college vote at all.”
- Georgia saw a normal start to early voting in the Senate runoffs. “Voters cast ballots despite — and in some cases because of — the fusillade of baseless claims Trump has directed at Georgia officials in the weeks since he lost the state to Biden,” Cleve Wootson reports.
In his final years at the helm of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr. spent heavily on boosting Trump.
He pumped millions of the nonprofit religious institution’s funds into Republican causes and efforts to promote the Trump administration, blurring the lines between education and politics, Politico’s Maggie Severns reports. “The culmination of his efforts was the creation of a university-funded campus ‘think tank’ — which has produced no peer-reviewed academic work and bears little relation to study centers at other universities — that ran pro-Trump ads, hired Trump allies including former adviser Sebastian Gorka and current Trump attorney Jenna Ellis to serve as fellows and, in recent weeks, has aggressively promoted Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. The think tank — called the Falkirk Center, a portmanteau of Falwell’s name and that of GOP activist Charlie Kirk, who co-founded it — purchased campaign-season ads on Facebook … that promoted Trump and other Republican candidates by name. … Liberty’s actions … suggest the university is pushing the boundaries of its status as a nonprofit organization under Section 501c(3) of the federal tax code, which forbids spending money on political campaigns.”
The coronavirus
With a jab to a nurse’s left deltoid, America enters a new phase in its fight against the coronavirus.
“The injection to Sandra Lindsay’s arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Center made her the first American to receive the coronavirus vaccine outside a clinical trial. The small dose of mRNA represented a giant leap in efforts to beat back the virus, a moonshot worth of hope amid a pandemic that has infected more than 16 million and killed more than 300,000 nationwide,” Ben Guarino, Ariana Eunjung Cha, Josh Wood and Griff Witte report. “Vaccinations rolled out across the country Monday, with doctors and nurses at hospitals nationwide injecting one another as part of a federal plan to prioritize front-line health-care workers. Some said they had dedicated the experience to the patients they had lost, or to family members they had seldom seen as they battled around-the-clock to save others. …
“The immunization campaign will rapidly expand in the days ahead, with some states beginning to include nursing homes. Federal officials leading the effort to manufacture and distribute the vaccines said Monday that they expect 20 million people to get the first of two required doses by the end of the year. … The first inoculation was heavy on symbolism: Long Island Jewish Medical Center, in Queens, was on the front lines of the covid-19 fight this spring. It is part of the Northwell Health System, which has treated more than 100,000 covid patients. Several who were among the first to receive the vaccine, Lindsay included, are Black, a reflection of the virus’s outsize toll in communities of color. … And even with the injection, Lindsay was not fully protected. The vaccine administered Monday — developed by Pfizer with the German company BioNTech — requires two doses to achieve the 95 percent effectiveness that studies have shown. …
“The first inoculations Monday came at a time when the United States is averaging more than 200,000 new cases and nearly 2,500 deaths each day. Both are record highs. Nonetheless, large segments of the population continue to ignore warnings to wear masks and avoid gatherings. A significant segment of the country also says it has no intention of getting immunized: Recent surveys have shown between 42 percent and 61 percent of Americans are willing to get vaccinated. … Nearly 10 months after the UC Davis Medical Center staff treated the first known U.S. case of community transmission, the Sacramento hospital was prepared to receive 4,875 doses of the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday. That depended, of course, on a smooth delivery of the shipments. But on Monday, there were no reports of serious delays.”
The nurse who received the first shot has lost an aunt and uncle to covid: “What made Lindsay an especially poignant choice, her brother said, was that she had dreamed her whole life — since a 6-year-old in their home country of Jamaica — of finding a way to help others,” Guarino and William Wan write in a profile. “Lindsay, 52, oversees five units of critical-care nurses who have been caring for covid-19 patients since the worst weeks in New York this spring. … Her staff worked 16-hour days, even when — at the end of their shift — pain and hurt were visible in their eyes.” Reflecting on the spring, Lindsay said in an interview: “We were scared. I had to remain numb sometimes and push forward.”
- Moderna’s vaccine is likely to gain emergency-use authorization later this week. The FDA’s advisory committee will meet Thursday. (WSJ)
- Tony Fauci recommended that Biden be vaccinated “as soon as we possibly can.” He said it is important for “security reasons.” Biden aides said he plans on taking the vaccine publicly whenever Fauci recommends he do so. (John Wagner)
- Walgreens, CVS and Costco expect to have shots for the general public at their stores in the spring. Walmart is preparing its more than 5,000 stores for the vaccine, even though it hasn’t said when they may arrive. (CNBC)
- Six institutions will receive D.C.’s initial allotment of 6,825 doses this week. Five employees at George Washington University Hospital, including emergency medicine nurses and anesthesiologists, were among the first in the nation’s capital to receive the vaccine. (Rebecca Tan, Michael Brice-Saddler and Lola Fadulu)
- In Texas, all rural hospitals were excluded from the first shipments, and the vaccine is reaching only 34 of the state’s 254 counties. (Houston Public Media)
- The WHO is in talks with Pfizer to include its vaccine in a global initiative to distribute shots to poorer nations. (Erin Cunningham)
Senators remove liability protections and local government aid from their primary relief bill.
“The bipartisan group unveiled one $748 billion package that includes new unemployment benefits, small business aid and other programs that received broad bipartisan support. The second bill includes the two provisions most divisive among lawmakers — liability protections for firms and roughly $160 billion in aid for state and local governments — with the expectation that both could be excluded from a final deal to secure passage of the most popular provisions. This second bill could end up falling out of the final deal if lawmakers don’t rally around it amid broad opposition among Democrats to approving the liability shield,” Jeff Stein, Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim report.
“The progress in the bipartisan group’s work comes as congressional leaders indicated momentum for quickly approving some sort of economic relief package before lawmakers leave for Christmas recess. Two senior Democrats appeared open to advancing legislation that lacked state and local funding, a possible concession that could pave the way for an agreement. And [Mitch] McConnell sounded hopeful and emphasized potential cooperation in a speech on the Senate floor. The effort to break the months-long legislative logjam over economic aid has been spearheaded by Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) …
“Sens. Murkowski and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) touted the need for state and local aid to make its way into a final package, but it’s unclear if that element will survive the final stages of negotiations. Negotiators are hoping that by advancing both of these measures, they will draw Democratic and Republican leaders into talks to speed the process along and ultimately lead to a final package. That effort has shown signs of success. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) discussed a relief bill with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.”
Certain gene variants are closely linked to severe coronavirus infections.
A team of European scientists “studied the genomes of 2,200 critically ill covid-19 patients. Their results provide robust support that genetic makeup plays a role in the potentially fatal illness experienced by some people,” Ben Guarino reports. Researchers “pinpointed eight spots on chromosomes — five of which strongly held up under further scrutiny — where variants were more common among people in intensive care. Some of the genes contain instructions for anti-viral components of the immune system, suggesting flaws in a person’s microscopic defenses that therapeutics might fix, at least in theory. … People with blood type A were at higher risk of severe infections, while having blood type O was somewhat associated with a protective effect. …
“Among the new links to severe disease is a gene named IFNAR2. That gene allows cells to build a protein receptor for a potent immune molecule, dubbed interferon for its ability to interfere with viral replication. It is part of the body’s first responses against infection. But a weak interferon response could allow the virus to quickly proliferate.”
- Across the nation, at least 181 state and local public health leathers in 38 states have resigned, retired or been fired since April 1, according to an AP and Kaiser Health News analysis. Experts say this is the largest exodus of public health leaders in U.S. history.
- Crede Bailey, the director of the White House security office, spent three months at the hospital battling the worst of the covid cases directly connected to the White House. He lost his right foot and lower leg, as well as his big toe on his left foot. His family asked the White House not to publicize his condition, and Bailey’s friends raised more than $50,000 for his rehabilitation through a GoFundMe account. The White House declined to say whether Trump contributed to the effort. (Bloomberg News)
- Santa and Mrs. Claus may have exposed dozens of children to the virus, officials in the rural Georgia town of Ludowici revealed. Roughly 50 children posed for pictures with the pair during the town’s annual Christmas parade. The Clauses had been feeling fine during the event but tested positive days later. (Antonia Farzan)
As cases abroad surge, hopes for a Christmas miracle are looking like a mirage.
“In Germany, where officials spent weeks deliberating over whether to offer a Christmas reprieve from restrictions, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Sunday that the country would return to the strict measures it saw at the start of the pandemic,” Adam Taylor reports. “The Dutch government announced Monday that it would install its toughest restrictions yet over the holiday season, through Jan 19. … The Italian media has speculated that a similar lockdown is impending, while other European countries including Greece have already imposed measures ahead of Christmas.”
There’s still a bear in the woods
A Russian state security team might have tried to kill the opposition leader with a poisoned Negroni.
“A team of Russian state security agents poisoned prominent opposition activist Alexei Navalny in August, the investigative website Bellingcat claimed in a report Monday, citing telecom and travel data that it says links Moscow with the attempt on Navalny’s life and reveals how he has been under constant surveillance for three years,” Isabelle Khurshudyan and Robyn Dixon report. “Bellingcat said the ‘voluminous’ data implicates eight members of a clandestine group of Russia’s FSB, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB responsible for domestic intelligence. The unit specializes in working with chemical weapons …
“Navalny became gravely ill during an Aug. 20 flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. … The Berlin hospital to which he was later transferred attributed his condition to a toxin similar to the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok … The Bellingcat investigation doesn’t say how Navalny was poisoned, but it indicates that it could have been at Tomsk’s Xander Hotel bar the night before his morning flight to Moscow. According to Bellingcat, at about 11:15 p.m., Navalny ordered a bloody mary, but the bartender told him he didn’t have the ingredients for that and suggested a Negroni instead. Navalny told Bellingcat that he couldn’t take more than one sip because ‘the cocktail tasted like the most disgusting thing I’ve had in my life.'”
The Russians also hacked State, DHS and the NIH.
“The Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the National Institutes of Health on Monday joined the list of known victims of a months-long, highly sophisticated digital spying operation by Russia whose damage remains uncertain but is presumed to be extensive,” Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg report. “The list of victims of the cyberespionage, which already included the Treasury and Commerce departments, is expected to grow and to include more federal agencies and numerous private companies … The fact that the department charged with safeguarding the country from physical and cyber attacks was victimized underscores the campaign’s significance and calls into question the adequacy of federal cybersecurity efforts. …
“The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is thought to be behind the campaign, which has been running since at least the spring. The hackers gained access to their victims’ systems through what is known as a ‘supply chain’ attack, or taking advantage of routine software patches sent to these systems by SolarWinds, which provides network-management tools. The nature of the hacks indicated that the attackers were focused on high-value targets … But the potentially good news is that stealthy attackers tend to prioritize surreptitious entrances and exits, while avoiding wholesale ransacking of computer systems that could tip off defenders. Such hackers typically are more focused on covering their tracks than simply backing up a digital truck and taking everything they can. The potentially bad news, however, is that such careful, precise attacks can be effective at gathering sensitive information over the course of months or even years.”
“Investigators at cybersecurity firm FireEye, which itself was victimized in the operation, marveled that the meticulous tactics involved ‘some of the best operational security’ its investigators had seen, using at least one piece of malicious software never previously detected,” Timberg and Nakashima note.
Putin finally recognizes Biden’s victory.
“More than a month later than most world leaders, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday congratulated Biden for his victory in the election, a delayed recognition that could set the tone for icy relations,” Khurshudyan reports. “‘Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un are other holdouts … In 2016, Putin congratulated Donald Trump within hours of his acceptance speech, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this situation differed because Trump didn’t concede. … Analysts viewed Putin’s silence as an attempt to grant legitimacy to Trump’s baseless claims that election was marred by fraud.”
Other news that should be on your radar
- A peaceful Christmas choral concert ended in chaos Sunday afternoon after police fatally shot an armed man who had opened fire outside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. (Paulina Villegas)
- Two of the four former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing want their trial delayed, accusing prosecutors of slow-rolling the handoff of key evidence and of turning over material that they say appears disorganized and riddled with technical problems. (Holly Bailey)
- California regulators issued a $59 million fine and threatened to suspend Uber’s license to operate in the state over the ride-hailing giant’s refusal to hand over data on sexual assault. The order came a year after Uber released a report on the prevalence of sexual assault on its app, which disclosed there had been roughly 6,000 cases of reported sexual assault between 2017 and 2018. (Faiz Siddiqui)
- Pinterest will pay $22.5 million to settle a lawsuit from its former chief operating officer, Françoise Brougher, who alleged gender discrimination and retaliation. It is the largest publicly announced individual settlement for gender discrimination in U.S. history. (Nitasha Tiku)
- Dixie State University in Utah proposed changing its name. The public university said about one in five of its recent graduates have received negative feedback from prospective out-of-state employers about their college’s name. (NYT)
Social media speed read
A conservative intellectual speculated on another possible reason Barr is leaving now:
Mark Shields, the legendary political analyst, is stepping back after 33 years as a fixture of PBS’s “News Hour”:
Health-care workers celebrated the arrival of the vaccine:
