November 21, 2020

Michigan group sues Trump campaign for alleged mass voter suppression

Source: The Hill



BY SARAH POLUS - 11/21/20 08:17 AM EST

Three Black Michigan voters and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization filed a lawsuit Friday against President Trump and his campaign claiming the president and his team have disenfranchised Black voters with their attempts to challenge the outcome of the presidential election.

After engaging in a slew of legal challenges over election results in various battleground states, the campaign is now pressing state and local authorities not to certify the results of their elections, therefore “compromising the integrity of the election process” and “unlawfully interfering with will of the voters,” the case document, obtained by Politico, alleges.

The lawsuit, filed a day after Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed during a press conference that the president’s campaign had uncovered 300,000 “illegitimate ballots” cast primarily in Detroit, specifically targets Wayne County, where Detroit is located. The residents of the county, which has a large Black population, are facing an echo of “the worst abuses in our nation’s history” at the hands of the Trump administration, the plaintiffs claim.

President-Elect Joe Biden won Wayne County with 597,170 votes, while Trump received 264,553 votes — including a margin of over 200,000 votes in Detroit.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/526997-michigan-group-sues-trump-campaign-for-alleged-mass-voter-suppression

November 20, 2020

Ex-GOP lawmaker who blew off COVID rules admits he got it wrong after catching the disease

November 20, 2020

Trump pal suggests on MSNBC the president had a nervous breakdown after election loss

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/trump-pal-suggests-on-msnbc-the-president-had-a-nervous-breakdown-after-election-loss/

November 20, 2020

Trump's Antics Show Contempt for His Own Voters

November 20, 2020 at 9:26 am EST By Taegan Goddard

Jonathan Bernstein: “I’m hardly the first to say this, but one thing remains clear about Donald Trump as a politician: No one has more contempt for his supporters than the president himself and those around him.”

“Trump is currently taking his allies through a crash course in disdain for democracy. He’s inventing, repeating or embellishing entirely false accusations about fraud. He’s asking the courts to toss out hundreds of thousands of legal votes for basically no reason. He’s demanding that the election results be overturned altogether by Republican officials — judges in some cases, election administrators in others, or even state legislators in an extreme scenario. It could hardly be more unconstitutional and undemocratic. Oh, and it’s entirely impractical: Trump’s legal and political strategies have no realistic chance of working…”

“Trump and his allies are treating their own supporters as if they were the easiest marks in the world, willing to fall for whatever wild claims the president can come up with to keep their resentment boiling and their donations flowing. And while it’s true that some Democratic politicians have said nasty things over the years about rank-and-file Trump voters, none of them has ever reached that level of contempt.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2020/11/20/trumps-antics-show-contempt-for-his-own-voters/

November 20, 2020

Trump's lawsuits challenging the election have turned into a clown show

Republican officials aren’t just losing. They are embarrassing themselves.

By Ian Millhiser Nov 20, 2020, 9:20am EST

On Tuesday, former New York Mayor and Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani made his first appearance as a lawyer in federal court since 1992. It did not go well. As election law professor Rick Hasen tweeted during the hearing, “I’ve never seen worse lawyering in an election law case in my life.”

Giuliani, who served as the lead federal prosecutor in Manhattan for much of the 1980s, was once a very distinguished attorney. But there are good reasons why a lawyer who hasn’t litigated a federal case in nearly three decades should be cautious about trying to relive their glory days. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are 140 pages long and full of traps for the unwary or the out-of-practice. Giuliani appeared unaware of important provisions of these rules — such as a one detailing what lawyers must do if they raise an allegation of fraud.

Indeed, at several points in the hearing, Giuliani appeared unfamiliar with basic legal concepts that would be familiar to any undergraduate who has taken a semester of constitutional law. “Maybe I don’t understand what you mean by ‘strict scrutiny,’” Giuliani admitted to Judge Matthew Brann at one point in the hearing.

(“Strict scrutiny” is the highly skeptical test courts apply to many government actions that are disfavored by the Constitution, such as actions that discriminate on the basis of race. It’s one of the foundational concepts taught to every law student in their introduction to constitutional law.)

more
https://www.vox.com/21575301/trump-lawsuits-election-rudy-giuliani-pennsylvania-georgia-michigan

November 20, 2020

Trump Camp Outraged Georgia Recount Counted The Votes

By Cristina Cabrera|November 20, 2020 7:37 a.m.

President Donald Trump’s campaign is having a fit after a manual recount of Georgia’s election results confirmed on Thursday night President-elect Joe Biden’s stunning victory in the Peach State.

Jenna Ellis, one of the campaign’s legal advisors, said in a statement that they will “continue to demand” an “honest recount,” parroting Trumpland’s baseless accusation that the election was mired in fraud.

“This so-called hand recount went exactly as we expected because Georgia simply recounted all of the illegal ballots that had been included in the total,” Ellis said without providing evidence.

Biden defeated President Donald Trump by a margin of 12,284 votes, the recount showed.

more
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/georgia-vote-recount-confirms-biden-victory

November 20, 2020

Face mask trial didn't stop coronavirus spread, but it shows why more mask-wearing is needed

By KAREN KAPLAN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE EDITOR

NOV. 20, 20206 AM

Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers in Denmark decided to conduct an usual experiment to test the infection-fighting power of face masks the same way they’d evaluate a potential vaccine or drug.

At the time, mask use was not recommended by Danish health authorities, and fewer than 5% of residents used them outside of hospital settings. Those conditions made it possible to conduct the first — and only — randomized controlled trial of the face coverings.

The researchers recruited more than 6,000 volunteers from around the country who spent at least three hours each day with people from other households and didn’t wear masks for their jobs. About half of these volunteers were chosen at random to receive 50 surgical face masks and were asked to wear them whenever they left home for the next month. The other half did not get masks and served as controls.

Overall, 95 of the 4,862 volunteers who made it to the end of the study became infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. That’s an infection rate of just under 2%.

more
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-11-20/face-masks-didnt-stop-coronavirus-spread-in-danish-clinical-trial

November 20, 2020

Geraldo Rivera Wants to Name Vaccine After Trump

November 20, 2020 at 8:59 am EST By Taegan Goddard

Geraldo Rivera suggested on Fox News that we name the coronavirus vaccine after President Trump to soften the blow of his election defeat.

Said Rivera: “It would be a nice gesture to him and years from now it would become kind of a generic name. Have you got your trump yet, I got my trump, I’m fine. I wished we could honor him in that way.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2020/11/20/geraldo-proposes-naming-vaccine-after-trump/

November 20, 2020

WHO panel recommends against use of remdesivir for COVID-19 patients

Source: The Hill


BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL - 11/20/20 08:40 AM EST

A World Health Organization panel recommended against using remdesivir in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 because there is no evidence it improves survival.

The recommendation breaks with the Trump administration, as remdesivir recently became the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

The WHO panel also found the drug, which is delivered intravenously, had no real impact on whether patients would need to be put on ventilators.

The recommendation from the WHO Guideline Development Group was published late Thursday night in the international journal The BMJ.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/526839-who-panel-recommends-against-use-of-remdesivir-for-covid-19-patients

November 20, 2020

Trump and Giuliani are the Republican Party

November 20, 2020 at 8:49 am EST By Taegan Goddard

Jennifer Rubin: “Let us not dwell on the details. Or on the shamefulness of state bar authorities in failing to sanction such unprofessional conduct. Or on Giuliani’s hair dye that ran down from each sideburn. What is clear is that this is the level of sheer insanity and irrational propaganda that passes for Republican ‘thinking.’ Plainly, Giuliani is representing the president’s views, and because the vast majority of Republicans say Trump should be allowed to exhaust his legal claims, his performance has, in effect, been endorsed by Republican House and Senate leadership, much of right-wing media and the Republican National Committee.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2020/11/20/trump-and-giuliani-are-the-republican-party/