Seemingly reacting to certification from Georgia election officials that President-elect Joe Biden had indeed won the Peach State following an election recount, the protesters disavowed the GOP.
“Any Republican who allows this to happen is complicit, and we will finish you,” a protester, donning a camo sweatshirt with an elephant on it, shouted into the microphone, James Crowley reported at Newsweek (11/21). “For any Republicans not explicitly helping Trump to ‘stop the steal,’ we will make sure you are never elected ever again.”
Another demonstrator can be heard shouting a long “We’re the new GOP.”
Reading remarks off his phone, the protester in the camo vows to dismantle the party. “If the Republican establishment stands back and stands by and allows the steal to go through, we will do whatever it takes to completely destroy the Republican Party,” he said. “We will accept nothing less than a Donald Trump victory.” He also accused recounts and ballots of being “fake” — yet claims about voter fraud have been widely debunked.
While in-person protests urged officials to call the election for Trump, a number of Republicans on the “free-speech” social media website Parler have demanded a boycott of the Senate runoff elections, citing a conspiracy theory about “rigged” voting machines. Screenshots shared by reporter Marcus Baram showed that people on the app accused Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of being “Republican in Name Only” (RINOs)—and trying to lead to victories for Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Both Warnock and Ossoff are challenging incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively.
Many of the posts bore a resemblance to language used by people who believe the QAnon conspiracy theory. “DO NOT VOTE IN THE GEORGIA RUNOFFS, THE DEEP STATE WILL BE COLLECTING EVERYONE’S INFO. THIS IS A CHARADE, MEANT TO IDENTIFY PEOPLE WHO DON’T VOTE DEMOCRAT,” one post read, which also lamented that potential victories for Warnock and Ossoff were a “small price to pay.”
The runoffs will determine which party controls the Senate.
Trump’s campaign requested a recount of votes in the Georgia presidential race (11/21), a day after state officials certified results showing Democrat Joe Biden won the state, as Trump’s legal team presses forward with attacks alleging widespread fraud without proof.
Georgia’s results showed Biden beating Trump by 12,670 votes out of about 5 million cast, or 0.25%. State law allows a candidate to request a recount if the margin is less than 0.5%. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp formalized the state’s slate of 16 presidential electors.
A Trump legal team statement said: “Today, the Trump campaign filed a petition for recount in Georgia. We are focused on ensuring that every aspect of Georgia State Law and the US Constitution are followed so that every legal vote is counted. President Trump and his campaign continue to insist on an honest recount in Georgia, which has to include signature matching and other vital safeguards.”
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has reiterated confidence in the results, and the Associated Press noted, in fact, the signatures on absentee ballot applications and envelopes are required to be checked when they are received.
State law requires that one race be audited by hand to ensure that the machines counted the ballots accurately, and Raffensperger selected the presidential race. Because of the tight margin in that race, a full hand count of ballots was necessary to complete the audit, he said.
Trump has criticized the audit, calling it a “joke” in a tweet that claimed without evidence that “thousands of fraudulent votes have been found.” Twitter has flagged the post as containing disputed information.
TRUMP TEAM CUTS TIES WITH LAWYER AFTER SHE THREATENS TO ‘BLOW UP’ GEORGIA WITH ‘BIBLICAL’ LAWSUIT. Donald Trump’s attempts to sow doubts about the elections hit a low point (11/19) when the Trump legal squad of Rudolph Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis held an almost two-hour press conference that can only be called bizarre. The three legal minds all share a detachment from reality and factual information that is prized within the Trump world, Walter Einenkel noted at DailyKos (11/22).
At the presser, Powell claimed that a server hosting evidence of voting irregularities was located in Germany, that voting software used by Georgia and other states was created at the direction of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (who died in 2013) and that votes for Trump had probably been switched in favor of Biden.
None of that was substantiated, of course, but the Trump campaign’s legal team distanced itself from the firebrand conservative attorney after a subsequent interview with Newsmax (11/21), in which she appeared to accuse Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and its Republican secretary of state of being part of a conspiracy involving a voting-system contract award that she contends harmed Trump’s re-election bid, the Associated Press reported (11/22).
“Georgia’s probably going to be the first state I’m going to blow up and Mr Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it,” she said, later adding that a lawsuit she planned to file against the state would be “biblical.”
In a statement the following day, Giuliani and Ellis said, “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.”
AARON VAN LANGEVELDE HAS MORE SPINE THAN ENTIRE REPUBLICAN CAUCUS IN CONGRESS. “Because there is a pandemic and I have no life, I spent the afternoon watching the Michigan Board of Canvassers deliberating whether or not to certify Joe Biden’s clear and irrefutable victory in that state’s presidential election,” Charles P. Pierce wrote at Esquire.com (11/23). “Eventually, of course, the board voted 3-0, with one Republican abstaining, to do so, putting an end to that particular sideshow, but not before an extended public comment session in which all manner of dark Trumpian fantasies were aired. In fact, the comment session went on after the vote was taken, God knoweth why. Everything doesn’t have to be a talk show, does it?”
Republican Norm Shinkle was the abstaining vote while his fellow Republican, Aaron Van Langevelde, bucked the crazy and voted to certify. Van Langevelde had telegraphed his vote early on when he faced down a lawyer for defeated Republican Senate candidate John James.
“I think we’re pretty limited today. I think we’ve got a duty to do this, but I also think we owe it to the people to allow them to speak. We’re not a court here. We don’t have judicial power. We don’t have the authority to conduct a trial on whether election fraud occurs.
“We are a simple board.”
Pierce concluded: “Put Aaron Van Langevelde on the plaque with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as Republicans with more spine between them than the entire Republican caucus in Congress. Sub in these two guys for, say, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and we’d all be better off.”
TRUMP MAKES ONE LAST EFFORT TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY. In the middle of the Trump pandemic, in which untold millions of people who survive the disease could end up disabled for life, the Trump administration announced (11/13) that it’s finalizing rules meant to make it harder for disabled people to receive Social Security, and to endanger the Social Security benefits of disabled people who are already approved, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (11/16). In the first regulation, it’s changing the appeals process by replacing impartial, independent administrative law judges (ALJs) with internal agency lawyers, making it much more difficult for people to navigate the process.
The proposal to the Office of Management and Budget would dramatically increase “continuing disability reviews” (the process during which those receiving disability must prove they’re still disabled). The administration admitted it is about dropping people out of the program, “saving” $2.6 billion. It would mean earlier and more frequent reviews for people on disability, likely older people who are physically unable to continue their work. This is simply, in the words of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), “harassment of people with disabilities” that puts Americans at “greater risk of falling through the cracks.”
Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee blasted the final rule on cutting out judges, which would take effect on Dec. 16. “For nearly two years, we’ve sounded the alarm that this change would erode due process for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income applicants and beneficiaries and threaten their access to their earned benefits. The rule puts unqualified agency staff in control of deciding appeals hearings and contradicts the congressional intent of the law governing such proceedings.”
The rule would remove administrative law from taking up standard cases, conducting hearings, and issuing decisions on applications for disability benefits — all responsibilities currently reserved for them. The ALJ union responded early this year, calling the proposal a violation of current law and Supreme Court precedent, saying it would “effectively subject the entire administrative adjudicative process under performance appraisal control by the agency.”
These two rules are just Trump’s kick in the teeth to vulnerable people. The new Biden administration and/or Congress will have to spend time and energy unwinding these rules, which have no other purpose than making life more difficult for people who are already hurting. As with everything with everyone in Trump’s orbit, the cruelty is the point.
BIDEN URGED TO CLEAR OUT TRUMP LOYALISTS ON DAY ONE. During his four-year tenure in the White House, President Trump packed powerful federal regulatory agencies with dozens of right-wing loyalists who are well-placed to stall or undermine the agenda of President-elect Joe Biden from the moment he takes office.
But according to a report released by the Revolving Door Project (11/23), there is an immediate and perfectly legal solution available to Biden if he’s willing to act: Clean house of all political officials who were installed because of their allegiance to Trump.
While noting that many political appointees typically step aside once the president who hired them departs, the Revolving Door Project points out that “a powerful minority will, by default, continue in office,” leaving them positioned to slow-walk or even “sabotage” Biden’s agenda, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (11/23).
“Some of these figures are beyond the next president’s reach, protected by provisions that stipulate they can only be removed ‘for cause.’ (Of course, if ‘cause’ for termination is ultimately ascertained, it ought to be acted upon.) Many, however, can be removed on a president’s first day in office, even if that is not routine,” reads the four-page memo. “These figures are only protected by norms — norms that the Trump administration has itself undermined.”
The Revolving Door Project, an initiative of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) that aims to ensure executive branch officials serve the public interest, pointed to a number of officials whom Biden has the authority to terminate immediately upon assuming the presidency.
Those officials, according to the report, include the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Comptroller of the Currency, the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA).
Citing the new memo, progressive advocacy group Social Security Works urged Biden to make use of his power and remove top SSA officials “who have been waging a regulatory war on people with disabilities.”
“Biden has the power to remove the top two officials at the Social Security Administration,” the group said. “He needs to use it.”
Though top Trump-appointed officials at other key agencies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and Postal Regulatory Commission cannot be removed without cause, they can be demoted, stripped of the “power to set an agency’s agenda and otherwise steer its course,” and replaced, the Revolving Door Project noted.
BIDEN AND DEMS TRY TO LEAD WHILE McCONNELL HOLDS NATION HOSTAGE. Some 20 million Americans unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic are lobbying to get Congress to reinstate the $600 supplement to unemployment assistance and keep the payments for gig workers and long-term jobless that are scheduled to expire the day after Christmas.
Democrats have pushed to bring back the extra $600, reauthorize the other expiring unemployment programs, and extend other coronavirus relief measures as part of a $2 trillion package the House passed (10/1). Republicans have refused to go along, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he wouldn’t go above $500 billion, and he wants to include a provision to hold employers harmless for putting workers in harm’s way.
With Trump having pretty much entirely checked out from reality as he spins fantasies for his followers about voter fraud and stolen elections and the Supreme Court riding to the rescue, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (11/23), President-elect Joe Biden is stepping into the breach to try to get some kind of coronavirus bill done before the end of the year to tide the nation over until he’s in office two months from now. Biden had his first meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to start talks on legislative priorities.
That includes asking Pelosi and Schumer to strike a quick deal with Senate Republicans, even if that means compromising further, sources told the New York Times.
As of now, Pelosi and Schumer are not backing down from their $2 trillion demand, arguing that “despite the consensus from economists and experts that the country requires a much larger injection of aid,” McConnell has been slashing his bottom line.
“There needs to be emergency assistance and aid during the lame-duck session to help families, to help small business,” Jen Psaki, a Biden transition aide, said Friday before the Biden meeting with the leaders. “There’s no more room for delay, and we need to move forward as quickly as possible.”
The situation is absolutely dire, McCarter noted, inducing former Treasury secretaries to publicly urge lawmakers to get something out there to families, small businesses, and state and local governments, saying the economy “cannot wait until 2021” for relief.
McConnell has been adamant in opposing aid to state and local governments, and just as adamant that he will only agree to a proposal if it lets businesses off the liability hook. For example, a Tyson meatpacking plant was in the news for the grotesque abuses it inflicted on workers, where individuals in management actually placed bets on how many workers would get sick with COVID-19. If McConnell had his way, those abuses would never have come to light since they were revealed in a lawsuit by the family of the late Isidro Fernandez, who was infected at the plant. As of now, McConnell hasn’t lifted that demand.
Meanwhile, the crisis continues. “What I’m really worried about is the millions of people who are going to be without food or without a home during the winter,” said Melissa S. Kearney of the Aspen Institute. “That level of individual suffering, really, to me, should be everyone’s priority and move them past their political differences.” She clearly hasn’t met Mitch McConnell.
OBAMACARE IS ENROLLING AND EXPANDING. Enrollments in Obamacare individual insurance plans (in most states) end on Dec. 15, though President-elect Joe Biden probably will reopen it as soon as he’s sworn in in January to make sure that everyone who’s been affected by the pandemic has that as an alternative, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (11/23). There’s every indication with Donald Trump out and a Supreme Court that’s skeptical about striking the law down that it will be around for the next plan year.
Outside of all the politics swirling around the Affordable Care Act for the last four years, it has grown and remained remarkably stable. For the third year in a row, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds, several new insurers are either entering the market to offer plans on the exchange, or are expanding into new regions for 2021. KFF identified 30 new insurers across 20 states, with an additional 61 insurers expanding into new parts of the states they’re already offering plans in. There’s an average across all states of five insurers to choose from, all with a variety of plans.
More than 200 counties across the country will have five or more insurers, and only 10% of counties have just one insurer offering. In the 2018 plan year when enrollment was happening during the 2017 Senate push to repeal the law, fully 52% of counties only had one offering. What a difference a Democratic House made there.
At the same time, premiums have fallen in many parts of the country. You can check to see how your county compares on the interactive map at KFF(dot)org. KFF found that “‘free’ ($0 premium) bronze plans are available in 84% of counties to the lowest-income subsidized Marketplace enrollees. Because insurers load additional costs onto silver plans, we also find that in 983 counties, gold premiums are lower than or comparable to the cost of silver plans.”
Once again, chances are very, good that you’ll find a plan you can afford if you’re in the market. But be aware that the junk health plan purveyors are out in force this year again after Trump sabotage let them loose. If you need a plan, go to healthcare(dot)com.
RANKING DEMOCRAT CALLS FOR PROSECUTION OF TRUMP CRIMES. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.)—a fierce critic of the president—released a statement calling for the prosecution of Trump and members of his administration, whom the 83-year-old congressman accused of committing “innumerable crimes against the United States.”
Pascrell’s statement said: “[Trump] has endangered our national security. He ripped families apart. He poisoned the Census. He has personally profited from his office. He has attacked our elections and sought to throttle democracy. He was rightly impeached by the House of Representatives. He has engaged in treachery [and] in treason. He has all but given up on governing and protecting our nation and if he had a shred of dignity he would resign today.
“In 2021 the entire Trump administration must be fully investigated by the Department of Justice and any other relevant offices,” Pascrell asserted. “Trump along with his worst enablers must be tried for their crimes against our nation and Constitution. Importantly, any further abuse of the sacred pardon power to shield criminals would itself be obstruction of justice, and any self-pardons would be illegal.”
Pascrell, who serves as chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, has pursued the president with dogged determination, especially on matters regarding his taxes. Upon his appointment as subcommittee chair, he vowed to be “relentless” in uncovering the president’s misdeeds.
“I’m going to use my chairmanship aggressively,” Pascrell said last month. Earlier this month, he successfully requested that the United States Special Counsel—an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency—investigate reports that Trump’s reelection team illegally used the White House’s Eisenhower Executive Office as a campaign “war room.”
Pascrell also has written legal bar authorities in Arizona, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania, seeking the disbarment of Rudy Giuliani and 22 other lawyers representing Trump in his attempts to overturn the election.
“Mr. Giuliani has participated in filing a series of absurd lawsuits seeking to overturn the will of the voters in these states and has caused irreversible damage to public trust in the fair administration of our elections,” the complaint stated. “The egregious pattern of behavior by Mr. Giuliani to effectuate Mr. Trump’s sinister arson is a danger not just to our legal system but is also unprecedented in our national like. In carrying out that perversion, Mr. Giuliani has clearly violated the New York Rules of Professional Conduct he swore to uphold and should face the severest sanction your body can mete out: revocation of his law license.”
Following Giuliani’s embarrassing federal court appearance on Tuesday and the Trump campaign legal team’s completely off-the-rails press conference (11/19), public sentiment may be on Pascrell’s side. Attorneys representing Delaware County, Pennsylvania on Friday also filed court documents accusing the former New York City mayor of making the “demonstrably false” claim that election officials “improperly commingled” ballots received before and after Election Day.
But legal ethics experts say Pascrell’s complaint will have little, if any, effect with the bar associations in the aforementioned states, Jerry Lambe noted at Law&Crime(dot)com. New York University School of Law professor Stephen Gillers, one of the nation’s foremost experts in regulation of the legal profession, said the disciplinary committees won’t even consider the complaint.
“If a judge were to find that Rudy Giuliani engaged in frivolous conduct in court, the committee might rely on that finding but it will not conduct its own evaluation. Nor will the committee recognize the second allegation as within its jurisdiction. Disciplinary committees nationwide are much more anemic bodies than most people realize,” Gillers told Law&Crime. “This is not to excuse Giuliani’s conduct, which demeans not only him but also the bar, the administration of justice, and our democracy.”
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2020
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