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sabra's JournalHouse conservatives urge Trump not to concede and press for floor fight over election loss
Source: CNN
(CNN)President Donald Trump's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill are urging him not to concede even after President-elect Joe Biden wins the Electoral College vote next week, calling on their party's leader to fight for his unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud all the way to the House floor in January.
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But conservative House Republicans argue that next week doesn't mark the end of Trump's desperate efforts to overturn the election results, which he has failed to do through scores of fruitless lawsuits and brazen efforts to pressure state and local leaders to subvert the will of voters and appoint new slates of electors to the Electoral College. They said that Congress should engage in a full-throated debate over the results in key states because of their allegations of fraud, which have yet to be borne out in court.
Asked if Trump should concede next Monday, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said bluntly: "No. No way, no way, no way."
"We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said that includes, I think, debates on the House floor -- potentially on January 6," Jordan, a trusted Trump confidant, told CNN.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/house-republicans-trump-biden/index.html
Lawyers across the country urge bar associations to investigate Trump's legal team
Source: NYT
Arguing that “a license to practice law is not a license to lie,” nearly 1,500 lawyers issued a letter on Monday calling on bar associations across the country to investigate and, if needed, penalize the members of President Trump’s legal team, including the architect of his post-election strategy, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
“It is indefensible for lawyers to falsely proclaim widespread voting fraud, submit a pattern of frivolous court claims and actively seek to undermine citizens’ faith in our election’s integrity,” said the letter, which was signed by several former judges, former federal prosecutors and law professors. “We condemn this conduct without reservation.”
The letter comes as Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have lost or withdrawn from nearly 50 legal challenges to this year’s election, including five in five different states within about three hours on Friday evening alone. Even so, Mr. Trump’s lawyers and those representing his Republican allies have continued filing lawsuits, igniting criticism that they are acting frivolously, even irresponsibly.
In their letter on Monday, the signers noted that Mr. Giuliani — who recently tested positive for Covid-19, according to President Trump — has made baseless arguments in public about “massive fraud” in the election, but has tempered his claims under questioning in court, saying he was not alleging fraud.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/07/us/joe-biden-trump#lawyers-across-the-country-urge-bar-associations-to-investigate-trumps-legal-team
Trump admin set to approve Arizona land swap for mine opposed by Native Americans
Source: kfgo/Reuters
(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's outgoing administration is set to approve a controversial land swap later this month that would give Rio Tinto Ltd and partners more than 2,400 acres (9.7 square kilometers) to build an Arizona copper mine, even though the project would destroy religious and cultural sites sacred to Native Americans.
Tribal leaders and other critics allege that the U.S. government is fast-tracking the environmental review process before Trump is replaced by President-elect Joe Biden next month, charges the government and Rio Tinto deny.
The land swap, outlined in U.S. government documents, reflects the tension between the increasing global attention on the rights of indigenous peoples and the need to boost metals production to power electric vehicles and reduce global carbon emissions. Copper is used to make solar panels, wind turbines and EV batteries.
The San Carlos Apache Tribe says the mine, if built, would destroy land considered the home of religious deities and sites used for tribal ceremonies, including one to celebrate teenage girls who have come of age.
Read more: https://kfgo.com/2020/12/07/trump-admin-set-to-approve-arizona-land-swap-for-mine-opposed-by-native-americans/
'Fauci Effect' Drives Record Number Of Medical School Applications
Source: NPR
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The number of applicants is up 18% this year over last year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, or AAMC, driven by the example of medical workers and public health figures such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"It's unprecedented," said Geoffrey Young, the AAMC's senior director for student affairs and programs, who compares it to another response to a traumatic moment in American history: the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"After [Sept. 11], there was a huge increase in the number of men and women that were entering into the military," Young said. "So far in my lifetime, at least, and for as long as I've been in medical education, that's the only comparison that I could make."
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Medical school admissions officers have started calling this the Fauci Effect.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/942170588/fauci-effect-drives-record-number-of-medical-school-applications
Trump's Afghanistan Airstrikes Increased Civilian Deaths by 330 Percent, Brown Costs of War Study...
Source: The Daily Beast
A new study from the Costs of War Project at Brown University finds the civilian death toll in Afghanistan has skyrocketed under President Donald Trump. As Trump relaxed military authorization rules for airstrikes in 2017, “the number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent from 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, to 2019, the most recent year for which there is complete data from the United Nations,” writes study architect Neta C. Crawford. Going back even further, between 2016 and 2017, U.S. and Afghan government forces killed “an average of 582 civilians each year,” a number that rose by nearly 95 percent from 2017 to 2019, when an average of 1,134 civilians were killed annually. Even after the U.S.-Taliban peace deal in February, Crawford finds, a decline in U.S. bombing has led to the U.S.-sponsored Afghan Air Force killing 156 people and injuring 193 through September alone, “exceeding its total harm to civilians compared to 2019.”
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-afghanistan-airstrikes-increased-civilian-deaths-by-330-percent-brown-costs-of-war-study-reports?via=twitter_page
As first lady, Jill Biden plans to push for debt-free community college
Source: Yahoo News
WASHINGTON — Dr. Jill Biden has devoted her life to the field of education, and that won’t change when she becomes first lady next month. According to a source close to her, Biden will advocate for debt-free community college.
Dr. Martha Kanter, who served as under secretary of education in the Obama administration and who has known Biden for more than a decade, said she has worked hard to make debt-free community college a reality.
“That is what she would like to see. We have often talked about community colleges as the unsung heroes,” Kanter said in a conversation with Yahoo News, adding that Biden has strived “to really help people understand the value proposition and the return on investment and why it’s important.”
Along with promoting debt-free community college, Biden plans to champion other aspects of the education platform her husband, President-elect Joe Biden, put forth during his campaign for the White House.
Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/as-first-lady-jill-biden-plans-to-push-for-debtfree-community-college-180034077.html
Arizona legislature shuts down after Giuliani tests positive for coronavirus
Source: The Hill
The two chambers of the Arizona state legislature will suspend their work this week after former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani tested positive for the coronavirus less than a week after spending hours testifying in front of Republican legislators in a futile bid to overturn the state’s election results.
Spokespeople for the state House and Senate confirmed to The Hill Sunday that the two chambers would cancel their planned meetings this week because of concerns over the spread of the coronavirus.
President Trump tweeted that Giuliani tested positive for the virus Sunday, and reports said he is receiving treatment at a Washington-area hospital.
Giuliani, Trump’s lead legal strategist in a series of cases the president has lost in court, has traveled to several states in recent days to testify — not under oath — about alleged election irregularities for which he has not offered evidence.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/528990-arizona-legislature-shuts-down-after-giuliani-tests-positive
Attorney General Barr considering leaving post before Trump exits office, source says
Source: CNN
(CNN)Attorney General William Barr is considering leaving his post before January 20, the day President Donald Trump leaves office, a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to CNN.
The source confirmed that Barr is not happy with Trump, writing that Barr "is not someone who takes bullying and turns the other cheek!"
"He has not made a final decision," the source said.
The New York Times was first to report on Barr's thinking. CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/06/politics/william-barr-considering-leaving-office/index.html?utm_term=image&utm_source=twCNNp&utm_content=2020-12-07T01%3A41%3A02&utm_medium=social
Biden's already more popular than Trump's ever been (Gallup Poll)
Source: CNN
(CNN)Poll of the week: A new Gallup poll finds that President-elect Joe Biden has a 55% favorable rating and a 41% unfavorable rating.
The same poll gives President Donald Trump a 42% favorable rating and a 57% unfavorable rating.
What's the point: The 2020 election was, like almost every election involving an incumbent, mostly about voters' feelings toward said incumbent. Not enough attention, however, has been paid to the fact that the challenger was a fairly popular guy. He did not allow Trump to make this election a choice of the lesser of two evils.
Indeed, Biden is more popular than Trump has been at any point since he started running for president in June 2015.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/06/politics/biden-trump-popularity-analysis/index.html
Georgia GOP voting manager says threats against election official led to unloading on Trump
Source: MSN/The Hill
A top Republican elections official in Georgia said Sunday that threats against another official led to his unloading on President Trump during a press conference last week.
Georgia voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling told NBC News's "Meet the Press" that he was informed of threats against a contractor in Gwinnett County that sparked his fiery remarks directed at the president during the press briefing.
"What for lack of a better word set me off on Tuesday was about an hour before or an hour and a half before a previously scheduled news conference, I got a call from the project manager from Dominion Voting Systems out of Colorado who was telling me in a very audibly shaken voice that one of their contractors had received some threats in Gwinnett County," said Sterling, who voted for Trump in the election.
"When I was going through the Twitter feed on it, and I saw it basically had the young man's name, which was a very unique name, so they tracked down his family and started harassing them," he added.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/georgia-gop-voting-manager-says-threats-against-election-official-led-to-unloading-on-trump/ar-BB1bGpr5?ocid=ob-tw-enus-677
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