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President Trump seemed convinced that the U.S. Supreme Court would somehow just make him the winner of the 2020 election. But as The Washington Post reports:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a last-minute attempt by President Trump’s allies to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, a blow to the president’s continuing efforts to reverse his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The court’s brief order denying a requested injunction provided no reasoning, nor did it note any dissenting votes. [Pols emphasis] It was the first request to delay or overturn the results of last month’s presidential election to reach the court, and it appears that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s latest nominee, took part in the case.
The lawsuit was part of a blizzard of litigation and personal interventions Trump and his lawyers have waged to overturn victories by Biden in a handful of key states. But time is running out, and the electoral college is scheduled to meet in less than a week.
We’ve reached the point where judges are just saying, “No. Go Away.” As Stephen Collinson writes for CNN, there’s really only one question remaining:
The only questions now are how many more times President Donald Trump wants to lose the election to President-elect Joe Biden and whether his Republican acolytes on Capitol Hill will wake up and recognize reality.
Trump’s dangerous delusions about a stolen election represent the most overt attempt in modern history by a President to overthrow the will of the voters. But they have reached the point of no return after the conservative-majority Supreme Court largely crushed what remaining hallucinatory hopes Trump harbored of reversing his defeat…
…The denial of Pennsylvania Republicans’ request to block the certification of their state’s results, for which there were no noted dissents, was a humiliating repudiation of Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding that three justices that he installed on the Court would swing him a disputed election. It also showed that evidence-free conspiracy theories might thrill the President’s base and his media propagandists, but they don’t cut it in court. [Pols emphasis]
Democrat Joe Biden is the President-elect and will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021. Nothing is going to change this fact — not even your dumbass finger-waving, Sen. Ron Johnson.
► President Trump’s bellyaching about his election loss won’t end up accomplishing anything, but observers are growing more worried about the potential for violence from Trump supporters. As The New York Times reports:
Despite his clear loss, Mr. Trump has shown no intention of stopping his sustained assault on the American electoral process. But his baseless conspiracy theories about voting fraud have devolved into an exercise in delegitimizing the election results, and the rhetoric is accelerating among his most fervent allies. This has prompted outrage among Trump loyalists and led to behavior that Democrats and even some Republicans say has become dangerous…
…Those supporters have started to flood the voice mails, cellphones and inboxes of dozens of elected officials across the country with angry messages and threats, as well as countless officials who handle local elections. The tenor has seemed to grow more menacing as Mr. Trump’s efforts appear even more unlikely to succeed, some officials said.
► Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner is among the many Republican elected officials in Congress who have refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden is the President-elect. In Gardner’s typical hypocritical style, he delivered a farewell speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday in which he talked about the importance of a peaceful transition of power…which he is helping to obstruct.
► The election is truly over, at least in Colorado. As The Denver Post explains:
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold officially certified the state’s November election results Tuesday, a normally sleepy affair that took on unusual significance in the face of President Donald Trump’s persistent rejection of 2020’s vote count showing Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential race…
…Colorado saw record turnout in last month’s election, with nearly 87% of active voters — representing nearly 3.3 million ballots — casting votes. Griswold said 94% of ballots in Colorado were cast using a mail ballot, a system Trump has without evidence denounced as susceptible to fraud.
► Governor Jared Polisextended a statewide mask mandate in Colorado for another 30 days. Masks are required to be worn indoors in all public spaces.
More political (and coronavirus) news is available right after the jump…
►POLITICO reports on the status of stimulus talks in Congress as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell keeps throwing wrenches into the gears:
After a flurry of momentum over the last week, the stimulus talks are back to where they’ve been for months: nowhere. Congressional leaders have retreated to their corners, blaming each other for inaction as the economy teeters on the brink of shambles and the U.S. nears 300,000 dead from the virus.
Time is running short in the lame duck, with as few as nine days for Congress to deliver much-needed relief.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is loath to divide Republicans as he confronts two years with, at best, a slim majority. And the bipartisan $908 billion framework includes $160 billion in aid to states and localities that is attracting pronounced GOP opposition — just as a liability shield is being shunned by Democrats.
On Tuesday in their private party conference call, Senate Republicans wrestled over whether cutting a deal that trades the two is even doable. Afterward, McConnell urged negotiators to drop liability reform and state and local aid from the discussion, deeming them too contentious to be workable in the breakneck lame duck session.
► As Jennifer Rubin writes for The Washington Post, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz seems hellbent on making sure that he is heavily-involved in the hopeless legal wrangling from the Trump campaign:
Most Republicans remain mute, but at least one was champing at the bit to join in Trump’s preposterous abuse of the legal system. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) “volunteered” to argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) to throw out mail-in ballots…
…Trump has no incentive to stop his efforts to overturn a valid election. To the contrary, with blowhards like Cruz available to provide a patina of respectability, and nearly all elected Republicans refusing to recognize the election results, he has every reason to hit up his fans for more donations and to continue insisting he is the rightful winner. When three Republican members of the inauguration committee refuse to recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and when the Arizona Republican Party retweets a right-wing extremist’s declaration that he is “willing to give up my life for this fight,“ we see that far from being isolated, Trump is right at home in today’s deranged Republican Party.
► As The Washington Post reports, there appear to be two favorites in the running to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission: Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Gary Gensler, the former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chief.
► The Ft. Collins Coloradoan reports on progress toward a new monument in Washington D.C. that has strong connections to Loveland:
A century after U.S. women won their fight for women’s suffrage, the fight for Washington, D.C’s first outdoor monument honoring them has nearly ended.
Bipartisan legislation to create the Every Word We Utter women’s suffrage movement monument passed the U.S. Senate last week and is now headed to President Donald Trump’s desk for a signature. Trump has previously expressed support for the legislation, according to a news release from Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse’s office.
Neguse — U.S. Representative for Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Larimer County — introduced the monument legislation in January 2019. It passed the House in February 2020 and cleared the Senate last week.
► Colorado Public Radio reports on a “trial run” for a COVID-19 vaccine distribution in our state:
When Colorado receives its first shipment of the COVID-19 vaccine next week, state officials don’t want any chance of something going wrong. So they decided to give vaccine distribution a test run first.
The Pfizer vaccine Colorado will receive must be stored between minus 60 and minus 86 degrees Celsius, a temperature range that requires an ultra-cold specialty freezer. Once in a regular refrigerator, it must be used within 5 days. Without careful coordination, doses could expire and go to waste.
On Tuesday the state tested its distribution protocols by bringing a mock dose of the Pfizer vaccine from Denver International Airport to Vail Health Hospital, one of eight regional hubs the state has designated to receive the vaccine in the coming days. Each of those locations already has an ultra-cold freezer.
►The Huffington Post has some sobering statistics amid good news about a COVID-19 vaccine:
Deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to more than 2,200 a day on average, matching the frightening peak reached last April, and cases per day have eclipsed 200,000 on average for the first time on record, with the crisis all but certain to get worse because of the fallout from Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.
Virtually every state is reporting surges just as a vaccine appears days away from getting the go-ahead in the U.S.
► It sure would be nice to hear Rep. Ken Buck (R-Greeley), who also serves as the State Republican Party Chairman, speak out more forcefully about the fact that there was NO ELECTION FRAUD IN COLORADO.
► Check out the latest episode of The Get More Smarter Podcast, featuring an interview with House Speaker KC Becker as she breaks down last week’s special legislative session.
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December 09, 2020 11:28 AM UTC
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