Since Election Day, Donald Trump has been trolling for dollars. Of course, trolling for dollars is also what he did before Election Day. It’s what he’s always done. The post-election trolling has taken on a very special character, thanks to Trump’s crack team of kraken wranglers. But well before the actual vote, Trump was feeding his followers Q-worthy claims of vote fraud and mass conspiracies.
On Tuesday, Houston police detailed how those poison seeds bore dangerous fruit in the days just before the election. That’s when a former Houston police officer purposely crashed into repair van, forced it off the road, pointed a gun at the startled man driving the van, forced him to the ground, put a knee on his back, and directed an associate to drive away with the van. Then the man who had just committed carjacking, assault, and brandishing a weapon … called the police. Because he was convinced that the van was full of fraudulent ballots.
It was full of air conditioner parts.
The Texas Tribune details how former police captain Mark Aguirre carried out the action described above as part of an even more elaborate scheme to uncover supposed election fraud in Harris County, Texas. Former officer Mark Aguirre wasn’t just out there pulling over vans for fun; he was being paid to do it by a group funded by a Republican megadonor.
Aguirre was paid $266,400 by a groupcalled “Liberty Center for God and Country”, headed up by GOP power broker Steven Hotze. Hotze would be the same man who, back in June, called up Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott to give him directions on how to handle Black Lives Matter protests.
“I want to make sure that he has National Guard down here,” Hotze told Abbott’s chief of staff, “and they have the order to shoot to kill if any of these son-of-a-bitch people start rioting like they have in Dallas, start tearing down businesses — shoot to kill the son of a bitches. That’s the only way you restore order. Kill ’em. Thank you.”
Hotze was also the money behind an effort that successfully repealed a LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance in Houston, as well as the originator of the Texas version of the “bathroom bill.” Hotze has repeatedly sued the state over social distancing restrictions passed to reduce the spread of COVID-19, including a new one filed just last Friday in an effort to block local mask mandates.
With that kind of reasoned leader at the helm, it’s not shocking that the Liberty Center hired Aguirre to “investigate voter fraud ahead of the 2020 election.” And it wasn’t just Aguirre. He subcontracted 20 private investigators, all of whom were out patrolling around tracking down supposed incidents of fraud. How this particular air conditioner technician, described by the Houston police as “innocent and ordinary” came to Aguirre’s attention isn’t clear, but the former policeman and a team of his contracted investigators stalked the man for four days. Then Aguirre rear-ended the man’s van, forced him from the road, and held him at gunpoint.
When police arrived to find Aguirre holding the technician at gunpoint, he explained that the man was at the center of a “huge” vote fraud scheme. Aguirre directed the police to a parking lot where one of his associates had taken the van, and told them it contained 750,000 fake ballots. Shockingly, it contained … air conditioner parts and tools.
Aguirre isn’t just a former officer, he’s a former captain. He has been on “indefinite suspension” since 2002. What did Aguirre do in 2002 that earned him an 18 year suspension? That was when Aguirre designed and lead The Great Texas Kmart Raid. In what was supposed to be an operation to stop late night drag racing by local teens, Aguirre led a large force of officers into a Kmart parking lot where they arrested a total of 450 people — not one of whom was drag racing. People were arrested coming out of the store. They were arrested buying food from a restaurant. A ten-year-old girl was arrested and taken away from her father who was not arrested. Much of this was done at gunpoint, with officers directing shotguns at Kmart shoppers as they forced them into police vans.
The result of all this was an amazing raft of lawsuits that took years for Houston to process. And Aguirre’s extremely lengthy suspension. But of course, something like that didn’t stop Hotze from putting Aguirre at the head of his fraud investigation team. For Hotze, that Kmart raid was probably a big plus.
Aguirre was arrested in Houston on Tuesday. The only question being … what took so long?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden’s win for more than five weeks after major media organizations called the election—not through multiple recounts and more than 50 lawsuits affirming Biden’s win. Not until the Electoral College voted. But once he did, Donald Trump lashed out almost immediately.
“Many of us hoped that the presidential election would yield a different result, but our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on Jan. 20,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Monday. “The Electoral College has spoken. So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.” More consequentially, McConnell, joined by Sens. Roy Blunt and John Thune, went on to beg other Senate Republicans not to join some House Republicans in objecting to counting electoral votes from key states when Congress—and Mike Pence—tally the votes on January 6.
McConnell reportedly called that a “terrible vote” for Republicans, because they’d look disloyal to Trump in voting down the effort.
In response, late Tuesday night, Trump did a Trump, tweeting a Daily Mail article headlined “Trump’s allies slam Mitch McConnell for congratulating Biden” along with the commentary, “Mitch, 75,000,000 VOTES, a record for a sitting President (by a lot). Too soon to give up. Republican Party must finally learn to fight. People are angry!”
Biden, of course, got more than 81 million votes. And the idea that Mitch McConnell doesn’t know how to fight—or, more specifically, how to abuse power to the greatest extent possible—is truly outlandish. Electorally and legally speaking, Trump is the guy who’s been leveled in a bar fight and is lying barely conscious on the sticky floor, still mumbling through a broken mouth that the winner of the fight is too much of a coward to take him on. The problem is that Trump continues to have the loyalty of his base, and as long as they remain dangerous, he does.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, and David Beard.
Leading Off
●Pres-by-CD: Daily Kos Elections’ project to calculate the results of the 2020 presidential election for all 435 congressional districts makes its next stop in Georgia, which Democrats not only won for the first time since 1992 but which of course is also hosting two crucial runoffs that will determine control of the Senate. Because of this special situation, we’re bringing you results for the presidential race and both Senate races as they played out on Nov. 3.
We have our usual county-by-county breakdowns for president and for the regular Senate race between Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff. But because the special Senate election featured 20 candidates on the ballot, we’ve sliced the data in a couple of different ways. Our first spreadsheet features the vote shares for the three main candidates: Democrat Raphael Warnock, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, and Republican Rep. Doug Collins, who collectively won 79% of the vote in the first round. We’ve also compiled a second spreadsheet that consolidates the total vote for Democrats, Republicans, and third-party candidates.
Joe Biden’s astonishing win was powered by an ongoing surge in the Atlanta suburbs, where large numbers of voters have been demonstrating their distaste for Donald Trump ever since the 2016 elections.
Despite a deliberate GOP gerrymander, both the 6th and 7th Districts saw some of the biggest swings in the country four years ago, a trend that continued this year as Biden flipped both seats. The 6th, which supported Mitt Romney 61-37 in 2012, went for Trump just 48-47 last time and Biden 55-44 in November. Freshman Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath easily won a rematch with the woman she ousted in the midterms, Republican Karen Handel, winning 55-45.
As for the 7th, it had been the most diverse district still held by a Republican, and it’s undergone a similar transformation: After going 60-38 for Romney, Trump won it by a much narrower 51-45 spread in 2016, and Biden carried it 52-46. It also gave Democrats their lone House pickup that wasn’t aided by redistricting, as Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux beat back Republican Rich McCormick 51-49 to pick up the seat left open by retiring GOP Rep. Rob Woodall, who nearly lost to Bourdeaux in 2018.
Perhaps most interesting of all, Biden’s third-best improvement came even further out in Atlanta’s northwestern suburbs, deep into Republican turf in the 11th District. This seat, held by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, narrowed from 67-31 Romney to 60-35 Trump, then made a similar jump again this year, voting for Trump 57-42. That’s still a long ways from competitive (Loudermilk won re-election 60-40), but the pattern should worry the GOP.
In fact, Biden improved on Clinton’s performance in all 14 of Georgia’s congressional districts on every metric: his margin against Trump, his own vote share, and his raw vote totals (though Trump’s vote totals also increased across the board). Democrats, however, may not get to enjoy the fruits of the Peach State’s metamorphosis for much longer, since Republicans will exert total control over the next round of redistricting and are certain to impose another heavily gerrymandered map on voters.
The Senate results, meanwhile, help shed some light on the areas that the runoff campaigns might target. Both races followed the same pattern as the presidential contest: The majority Black 5th District in the heart of Atlanta yielded the best results for Democrats, while the rural 9th in the state’s northeast corner—which is represented by Collins—gave Republicans their best numbers. And in most cases, Democratic Senate candidates ran just 1 to 2 points behind Biden.
There were, however, some gaps, the most notable of which came, perhaps surprisingly, in the 6th. Ossoff’s 51-46 win there was about 6 points back of Biden’s 11-point margin, despite the fact that Ossoff rather famously lost a close special election in 2017 in the district. The same thing played out in the special election, where Democrats combined for 52% of the vote and Republicans 46.
It’s possible that a sizable chunk of traditionally Republican voters here were receptive to Biden’s appeal as the answer to Trump but still retained their loyalties further down the ballot—at least, selectively. The most optimistic sign for Ossoff and Warnock is that there was almost no daylight between Biden and McBath, indicating that many of the voters who backed Trump and Republican Senate candidates are in fact open to supporting Democrats in congressional races.
As for the also-ran Collins, his best district was, unsurprisingly, his own, the 9th, where he beat Loeffler 45-28, making it the only seat he carried. Loeffler won the other seven Trump districts and made her top showing in the rural 14th in the northwestern part of the state, which was won by pro-QAnon Republican Marjorie Greene. Warnock prevailed in the six Biden districts, as did Ossoff.
●GA-Sen-A, GA-Sen-B: Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger absolutely torched GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler on Tuesday for demanding voter registration data they already have, snarking in an official press release that they should “call their campaign offices” to remedy their “embarrassing” blunder. It’s hard to excerpt just part of the smackdown, but enjoy this:
“Though I’ve told the Republican Party to stop focusing on me and instead direct their energies to winning the Senate runoffs, clearly they haven’t listened,” said Secretary Raffensperger. “As embarrassing as it is for Sens. Perdue and Loeffler not to know that the data they want is already publicly available from the Secretary of State, it’s even worse that they’re not aware their own campaigns already have the data they’re looking for. Early voting has already started but it’s not too late for them to call their offices and get their campaigns in order.”
Even more amazing, Raffensperger included a quote from a nameless source he claims is an NRSC official, who said of Loeffler and Perdue, “They have those lists.” Yes, you read that right: The Senate GOP’s campaign arm is using a press release issued by a state election official to anonymously attack their own Senate candidates. Just bizarre.
Back in the slightly more normal world, we of course have some more new ads:
Early voting started on Monday, so Raphael Warnock urges viewers to “make voting part of your holiday plans” as he fights a losing battle with hopelessly tangled Christmas lights.
Another Warnock spot features a series of Black voters explaining the importance of supporting Warnock. An older woman says that Warnock “will work with Joe Biden to get us the help we need” while a young man says, “Raphael Warnock’s story is our story.”
A Warnock narrator slams Loeffler, “the richest member of Congress,” for using “a special tax break” to help pay for a private jet to ferry her to the Senate. A related ad contrasts Loeffler’s gilded life with Warnock’s humbler origins, noting that he “grew up in public housing” and supports protections for those with pre-existing conditions while Loeffler wants to eliminate them.
End Citizens United has a pair of similar spots, one targeted at Perdue and one at Loeffler, that attack them for opposing COVID relief.
And an ad from a group called the Progress Action Fund hits both Loeffler and Perdue, claiming they “invested in body bags” after Congress was briefed on the coronavirus pandemic early this year.
Finally, Michael Tesler at FiveThirtyEight offers an interesting analysis of a pair of older Warnock ads that prominently featured him with cute dogs and went viral online. But they’re about more than just charming hounds: Tesler believes they “are carefully crafted attempts to neutralize racial stereotypes” and cites, among others, political science professor Hakeem Jefferson, who said the spots are “meant to deracialize Warnock with this cute ‘white people friendly’ doggy.”
Indeed, notes Tesler, dog ownership is more than twice as common among white Americans as with Blacks, and his own polling has found that respondents assume that Black people are more likely to own “scarier” breeds, like pit bulls and Rottweilers, which helps explain Warnock’s choice of an adorable beagle. Tesler also cites New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who adds that the “setting” and Warnock’s clothes also contribute to the overall message—something that struck us as well when we took note of the “picket-fenced neighborhood” the second ad was set in.
Governors
●MA-Gov: Political scientist Danielle Allen announced this week that she was forming an exploratory committee for a potential bid for the Democratic nomination. Allen would be the first woman elected governor of Massachusetts (Republican Jane Swift ascended to this office in 2001 but never sought election in her own right), as well as the first Black woman elected to lead any state.
Allen has never run for office before, but the 2001 MacArthur “genius grant” recipient has a long career in academia. Earlier this year, Allen convened a conference at Harvard to develop a “roadmap” to reopen the economy in the midst of the pandemic, and Joe Biden has incorporated parts of it into his own COVID plan.
There are several other Democrats who might also be interested in running for the post currently held by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who has not yet announced his 2022 plans. Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone is reportedly considering, and the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and Politico name a few other possibilities:
Former state Sen. Ben Downing
Attorney General Maura Healey
Outgoing Rep. Joe Kennedy III
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh
A Walsh candidacy looks unlikely at this point, though. Walsh has signaled that he plans to seek a third term as mayor next year, and he’d need to immediately switch to a statewide campaign right after what could be a difficult re-election bid.
House
●CA-39: Democratic Rep. Gil Cisneros, who lost to Republican Young Kim 50.6 to 49.4 last month, isn’t ruling out a 2022 rematch. In new remarks, Cisneros says, “Everything is on the table. This seat is definitely a possibility to run again.” However, he added that he’s not “feeling pressure to decide” and would consider his options after the winter holidays. New calculations from Daily Kos Elections show that Joe Biden carried California’s 39th District 54-44.
●MD-05: Greenbelt Mayor Colin Byrd announced this week that he would challenge 21-term Rep. Steny Hoyer in next year’s Democratic primary. Byrd expressed support for left-wing priorities like Medicare for All and said that Hoyer, who is white, “can no longer represent adequately more diverse places like Prince George’s County and Charles County,” both of which have large African American populations (Byrd is Black).
Last year, Byrd ousted the incumbent mayor of Greenbelt, a city of 23,000 in the D.C. suburbs, at the age of 27, becoming the youngest mayor in the city’s history. Hoyer, now 81, is the second-ranking House Democrat and has drawn primary challenges in six of the last seven election cycles. While none have come close to unseating him, his 64-27 win over activist McKayla Wilkes was the weakest of his career since he first won office in a 1981 special election.
●OH-11: Former state Sen. Nina Turner, who’d reportedly been considering a bid to succeed Rep. Marcia Fudge and had filed paperwork with the FEC, made her campaign official on Tuesday. Turner is one of several Democrats planning to run in a special election for Ohio’s safely blue 11th District should Fudge get confirmed as Joe Biden’s new secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Turner began her political career by winning a seat on the Cleveland City Council in 2005 and was appointed to the state Senate in 2008 to fill a vacancy. She won election in her own right in 2010 but then badly lost a race for secretary of state during the 2014 GOP wave. She later became a vocal surrogate for Bernie Sanders in 2015 after switching her allegiance from Hillary Clinton and considered an offer by the Green Party presidential candidate to serve as her running-mate the following year before turning it down.
Prosecutors
●Manhattan, NY District Attorney: Civil rights attorney Janos Marton announced this week that he was exiting the 2021 Democratic primary because of fundraising concerns. Marton’s departure leaves eight fellow Democrats competing for the office currently held by incumbent Cyrus Vance Jr.; Vance has not yet announced his plans, though New York City politicos widely expect him to retire.
This week on The Brief (our last episode of the year), we had a fully packed Daily Kos episode! Hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld were joined by three Daily Kos writers: Mark Sumner, David Nir, and Walter Einenkel. Mark joined to discuss his extensive coverage of the coronavirus, how the rollout of the vaccine will go, and what the timeline may be when it comes to bringing an end to the pandemic. David shared crucial data and insights about voters in Georgia that should help inform Democrats’ strategy as we head towards the Jan. 5 Senate runoffs. Lastly, Markos and Kerry chatted with Walter about the year in review.
Mark, a prolific writer with a penchant for reading and summarizing scientific research papers, has written over 140 pieces on the Covid-19 virus so far this year and was covering the pandemic before many were even acknowledging it as the grave threat we now know it to be. As one of the early writers extensively covering the subject, Mark was well aware of the dangers of the virus by January and February of this year and had hoped that the U.S. would have a better response:
It became obvious early on that this wasn’t going to be contained to Wuhan, right? That there was going to be a pandemic of some extent. This thing was just too communicable to be contained. But, like everybody else, I made the foolish assumption that people would make reasonable choices and that there wouldn’t be a pandemic the way we’re seeing it now. Even when it hit South Korea, and you started seeing those numbers go to 8,000 cases just overnight—but you saw, they responded. They put in a national testing program, they put in case tracing, and really, to my surprise, they brought the case count down just about as quickly as it went up. And I expected that model to be repeated in other countries. I expected we’d see one South Korea, and another South Korea, and another South Korea, in terms of how those outbreaks went. So when it hit the United States and we deliberately did nothing, that was really shocking. It still is shocking.
Mark believes that with the pending approval of the Moderna vaccine, more Americans will want to get vaccinated—leading to overwhelming demand for vaccine. He also discussed the vaccine rollout timeline, and most Americans will not be able to get vaccinated until the late spring at the earliest. The Trump administration passed up on a chance to secure a second round of Pfizer vaccines, meaning that many people will have to wait until June to receive an innoculation.
David, Daily Kos’ political director, came on next to talk about the latest updates in the U.S. Senate runoff races in Georgia and how the Republicans are trying to turn out voters who may have have become reluctant to vote thanks to Trump’s rhetoric about “rigged” voting and elections. January will be a test of anti-Trump Republicans, David thinks, as their votes could be crucial to swinging the elections in either direction—and thereby, control of the Senate. As David explained,
The 6th District, of course, was the site of the famous special election in 2017. Biden flipped that district this year, and both Ossoff and the Democrats collectively in the special Senate race carried the district, but they were several points behind Biden. And I wonder if this means that in these Atlanta suburbs, you had a sizable chunk of, sort of, never-Trump Republicans—Traditionally Republican voters—they were happy to vote for Biden just to get rid of the orange menace, but then, a little lower down the ticket, they stuck with Republicans. Are these people going to show up again? Can they be convinced to go one step further? Have Trump’s hard antics and refusal to accept [the results of] the election over the last five weeks convinced them, Wow, maybe we really do have to support Ossoff and Warnock this time instead of Perdue and Loeffler? I think that’s going to be a huge question for January.
The Daily Kos Elections team released some interesting data that calculated the results of the Nov. 3 election for president and U.S. Senate in Georgia broken down by congressional district. As David noted, “The most interesting thing we found was that the biggest gap between Biden’s win at the top of the ticket and then both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the Senate races came in the 6th District.”
Our final guest was Walter, and he gave us an overview to help recap all the major events of this wild ride of a year. Despite all the things that happened, he witnessed so many reasons to find joy—including more people getting interested and involved in voting and the democratic process at large:
Even under this terrible administration, a corrupt Senate, and then a pandemic, people continued to do the work on the ground. And you’d see stories of people doing the good stuff that people do for other people. This is at a time when you’re like, I don’t even want to go outside without wearing gloves. So the fact that there are 70+ million people voting for Joe Biden, for all of the 64 or so million that voted for Trump, there are that many more people—and they’re growing, there’s more people becoming more and more interested. And that’s the best thing that our democracy can have: more people interested in it. It’s been this mixture of feeling really bad and also really hopeful, because it is such an extreme version of what you normally see.
Walter also discussed how the organizational infrastructure built in Georgia and Arizona that helped Democrats clinch the presidential election goes back years—and the more we support these efforts financially and with people power, the more we can increase voter engagement in the long term. As he said, “We’re seeing these dividends [from organizing locally] pay out. No matter what happens in Georgia, we’re having a runoff in Georgia. Four years ago, I was not even looking anywhere near that part of the map.”
Days ’til the electoral votes are certified in Congress: 21
Days ’til inauguration day: 35
Percent of Americans who are satisfied with what they pay for health care, according to Gallup, up from 58% a decade ago: 67%
Percent of the 782 LGBTQ candidates who entered the 2020 general election and won their races: 43%
Percent by which Covid deaths rose in counties with the largest college student populations since August, though most occurred among older community members, according to The New York Times: 100%
Percent rise in Covid deaths in the rest of the nation: 58%
Age of spy novelist John le Carré and country star Charley Pride when they died last week: 89, 86
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Mid-weekRapture Index: 184 (including 5 plagues and thegravest sin Newsmax ever committed). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
CHEERS to timely departures. Attorney General Bill Barr, whose dedication to applying equal justice under the law is absolute as long as you wear a red hat or orange face makeup, is finally going bye-bye. After 22 months of gleefully weaponizing the Justice Department on behalf of one guy—you know who—Barr made a critical mistake that his boss simply couldn’t abide: he accidentally told the truth about the accuracy of the 2020 election results. For the C&J time capsule, his greatest hits via CNN:
In his most notorious move, Barr delivered a misleading summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, essentially clearing Trump in the Russia probe, which drew a sharp rebuke from Mueller himself. […]
True fact: more mattress tags were illegally removed under the nose of Bill Barr than any other attorney general. And he sat there and did nothing. Nothing.
The attorney general echoed the President’s anger at coronavirus lockdowns, calling them, apart from slavery, “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.” Barr also asked for the Justice Department to take over the President’s defense in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Jean E. Carroll, who accused him of sexual assault.
[I]n June, Barr ordered authorities to disperse a large crowd of peaceful protesters near the White House so Trump could walk to the nearby historic St. John’s Church, where a fire had been set in the basement the previous night during unrest sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Barr and his jowls will slouch back to the private sector on Festivus under the guise of wanting to spend more time with his family. His family plans to appeal the decision.
CHEERS to Billeh’s Miracle Life Lessons, Part 45. In our continuing series, which we’re starting just now, we offer this handy truism to ponder over your morning mimosa(s): Life Comes At You Fast. We made a note to revisit this news item from October, 2019, and today we’re making good on it. The exalted Magic 8-Ball shakers at Moody’s Analytics stuck their thumbs under their designer suspenders and emerged from under their green eyeshades two years ago to give Trump the green light for a second term. To their credit, they wisely added a small caveat:
President Donald Trump looks likely to cruise to reelection next year under three different economic models Moody’s Analytics employed to gauge the 2020 race.
Barring anything unusual happening, the president’s Electoral College victory could easily surpass his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, which came by a 304-227 count.
Moody’s FAIL.
Moody’s based its projections on how consumers feel about their own financial situation, the gains the stock market has achieved during Trump’s tenure and the prospects for unemployment, which has fallen to a 50-year low. Should those variables hold up, the president looks set to get another four-year term.
Which brings us to Billeh’s Miracle Life Lesson, Part 46: In Trump World, Variables Are Now Part of the Deep State.
CHEERS to civil disobedience…with pinky extended. Don’t forget to throw a few bags of Earl Grey into the nearest body of water today, the 247th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. That was the day in 1773 when rebellious colonists dumped a few hundred chests of tea into Boston Harbor, an act of defiance against the British Crown for imposing taxation without representation. Which is exactly what the modern day “tea party”—now the Trump Party—is all about, plus racism, birtherism, secessionism, misogyny, Islamophobia, homophobia, and making the rich as comfortable as possible…but minus the taxation without representation part since they do have taxation with representation. And for those of you represented by Louie Gohmert, we have just one thing to say: thoughts and prayers.
JEERS to running out of time. Just a little reminder that if you have a flexible spending account as part of your health insurance plan, it’s likely that you’ll lose whatever money you have socked away if you don’t spend it within the next 15 days. Some things that are usually eligible: birth control, smoking cessation, cold remedies (NyQuil: humankind’s greatest gift to itself), contact lens solution…stuff like that. But if your remaining balance is sizable enough, we’d advise you to buy something that’ll deliver the most bang for your pre-tax buck: senators.
CHEERS to 56 years of proudly waving, eh. On December 15, 1964, “after six months of debate and 308 speeches, passed by a majority vote in the House of Commons,” Canada adopted the maple leaf flag:
Each of the tips on the leaf represent beer. The red and white colors signify…um…also beer.
We’re not sure what the proper gift is for a flag on its birthday, so we defaulted to the usual: a pair of socks.
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 16, 2010
JEERS to the giant sinkhole of guns, treasure and lives (not necessarily in that order). The spin doctors in the Obama administration have spun their “eagerly-awaited” review of the Afghanistan War, which turns 10 next year. The positive summary: we win some, we lose some, it’s hard work, we can start a drawdown in July but we have to stay there in a combat capacity at least through 2014, and the pallets of American taxpayer cash—stacked in two-ton bundles and topped with a shiny red bow—will continue being flown into Kabul airport and replaced with American coffins being flown out, and we have no idea why we’re there. The negative summary: all of the above plus every other word insert the word “fucking.”
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Fabulous Ludwig B. When I was 10 (circa 1974), me and a busload of 5th grade classmates went to see the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. It was the first time I’d ever heard classical music played by a live orchestra. When the opening notes of Beethoven’s 6th ‘Pastoral’ symphony started playing, it was love at first downbeat and I’ve been waving my lighter and throwing my underwear on the stage at concerts ever since. Today the world is celebrating Beethoven’s 250th birthday. For the occasion, via the brilliant Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharminoker, Ludwig got us a present: goosebumps…
Poll: Americans Are Growing Less Reluctant To Take COVID-19 Vaccine
Now that federal regulators have authorized one COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the U.S. — and appear close to authorizing another — it seems Americans are growing less reluctant about receiving an inoculation themselves. The Kaiser Family Foundation, or KFF, released a poll Tuesday showing a significant leap in the number of people saying they definitely or probably would get vaccinated.
About 71% of respondents to the late November and early December survey said they would get a vaccine, up from 63% in an August/September poll. KFF says the increase was evident across all racial and ethnic groups surveyed, as well as both Democrats and Republicans.
‘A dark, empty place:’ Public officials face personal threats as tensions flare
Over the weekend, demonstrations by Trump supporters in D.C.; Olympia, Wash.; and elsewhere turned violent, with four people stabbed in the nation’s capital and one person shot in Olympia. These kinds of conflicts, coupled with increasingly personal attacks on public officials, are raising fears of worse to come.
A record-shattering first day of early voting in the Georgia runoff: 168k vote in-person yesterday, up from 136k on day one of in-person early voting for the general election
[PSA: use polls wisely, they are not toys. Focus when you read polls and don’t be distracted. Follow all polling signals and poll safely. Do not drink and poll. ]
Pandemic backlash jeopardizes public health powers, leaders
Tisha Coleman has lived in close-knit Linn County, Kansas, for 42 years and never felt so alone.
As the public health administrator, she’s struggled every day of the coronavirus pandemic to keep her rural county along the Missouri border safe. In this community with no hospital, she’s failed to persuade her neighbors to wear masks and take precautions against COVID-19, even as cases rise. In return, she’s been harassed, sued, vilified and called a Democrat, an insult in her circles…
Across the United States, state and local public health officials such as Coleman have found themselves at the center of a political storm as they combat the worst pandemic in a century. With the federal response fractured, the usually invisible army of workers charged with preventing the spread of infectious diseases has become a public punching bag. Their expertise on how to fight the coronavirus is often disregarded.
Republicans election nullifiers were telling the majority: “We don’t like the choice you made. So we’ll get the courts to shove it aside. But we’ll still take the Social Security checks, farm subsidies & the other money Biden states send our way” My column https://t.co/H3tzQ7PyzE
But there’s a very important question lurking in this chart, one that goes straight to the heart of decision-making under uncertain conditions involving significant trade-offs. As can be seen, the incidence of Covid-19 drops off dramatically about 10 days after the first dose (look at the chart on the top left). However, the trial is designed to measure the efficacy of two doses: a prime and a booster. Eyeballing (we don’t have the underlying data), the first shot seems to have 65-80% efficacy in the full group—but we don’t know for how long that lasts. Hence, we have durability of immunity data—for three more months, to day 119—only with the booster shot.
Given the shortages, the potential for single dosing—at least for some populations—or more time between the doses is an important question. It’s possible that a single dose—one that can cover twice the number of people—would provide a significant benefit to the recipients, though we would be unsure about whether the immunity protections last as strongly three months later. This is no minor question. The United States is already planning to withhold vaccination from people unless a second shot has already been secured. If we get fifty million doses now, that’s 25 million people who could be vaccinated now who won’t be even though the doses are sitting in storage.
Bottom line is it’s probably best to give less people two shots and protect them more vs more people with one shot and protect them less, but it’s a discussion that should be had, with data and modeling. One thing “Warp Speed’ means is no time for difficult questions like this one.
In just 1 month, the number of hospitalized patients increased from 60,000 to over 110,000 for the first time today @COVID19Tracking That is w/ much quicker turnaround than in the earlier surges and turning many patients away who would have been admitted. Past the break point. pic.twitter.com/xtD6Im27mu
The president-elect has mostly ignored his opponent’s attacks on democracy. That’s probably for the best.
The contemporary Republican Party is hardly the first in U.S. history to have a faction that actively opposed democracy. Segregationist Democrats did so in the former Confederate states for decades. But there’s something very different about that situation, or recent Republican efforts to restrict the franchise, and a president who doesn’t even pretend to abide by the basic rules of the system. Especially since he’s also eager to restrict the vote — or to just eliminate it entirely when it doesn’t go his way.
Until Monday, Biden had dealt with this situation by downplaying it as much as possible. I think that was the best strategy. And so I think his decision to address it on Monday night after the Electoral College reaffirmed his victory was probably a mistake. Even giving such a speech was a concession of sorts to Trump’s illegitimate challenges. In normal years, everyone treats the gathering of the electors as purely ceremonial. Which is quite correct: Ever since the early days of the republic, the electors have done nothing more than tally what was already decided by their state’s voters. But Trump and his allies are doing what they can to establish new norms, in which partisan judges, state governments and eventually congressional majorities all are free to ignore voters and substitute their own preferences. One challenge for Biden is to strengthen the assumption that voters choose.
By not engaging with him, Trump’s war was with the entire political system. Now Biden isn’t so much doing tit for tat as he is disciplining an obnoxious child.
Donald Trump Has Hidden Evidence Of His Crimes For Years. Joe Biden Can Expose It.
The new administration should open the books and expose the Trump administration’s misdeeds.
While Biden admirably does not intend on echoing Trump’s undemocratic “lock them all up” chants, his administration can simply allow independent prosecutors to make their own decisions by opening the books on the Trump administration to expose wrongdoing, self-dealing and unlawful activity.
This will require the adoption of an affirmative policy to release and disclose information both in response to requests from Congress, oversight entities, journalists and the public — something the Trump administration did not do almost as a matter of policy. But in other respects it will involve the proactive implementation of policies through executive order or agency directive that would allow for the release of documents suppressed by the Trump administration. Much of the evidence of the Trump administration’s malfeasance is not yet in the public sphere, and by simply disclosing it Biden could begin the process of holding the soon-to-be ex-president accountable for his misdeeds.
Fox News poll shows a bit of a honeymoon for Biden. 59% view the president-elect favorably vs. 39% unfavorably.https://t.co/Jn9A7DuURC
Most feel election is “settled” but Trump voters disagree
Views expressed by Trump voters appear to be more than just the result of disappointment at the outcome. When we offered people a chance to explain why they would not view Mr. Biden as legitimate and offered the option that they were simply not ready to do so at the moment, few took it, saying instead it was because there was “fraud or inaccuracies,” in their view. Trump voters also largely reject the idea that the president is himself making these claims simply because he’s upset by his loss, with 85% saying he has “hard evidence of widespread vote fraud.”
I suppose you could make the argument that a few Biden voters would like to see the mess of not conceding/Rs trying to keep Trump in office… But my money is on clicked the wrong button for at least part of them.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has had every power and ability to release detained immigrants—including parents and their children—amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, but the government agency has refused. Inside one migrant family jail in Texas, like at other adult detention camps across the U.S., it has continued to result in the inevitable (and preventable): outbreaks.
Among them are “Margarita” and her 8-year-old son “Sal,” Tanvi Misra reports for The Fuller Project. They’ve been detained at South Texas Family Residential Center, or Dilley, for over 420 days, and since Nov. 25 both have been in medical isolation after the boy tested positive. “I am very worried about the other families here, but also about the officers,” Margarita tells Misra. “There is one woman I have seen here in the medical annex who is quite old and very nice … I think about her a lot and hope that she is okay.”
Margarita, who is seeking asylum in the U.S. after fleeing Guatemala, compared the medical annex at Dilley to the freezing cold, inhumane border facilities where migrants are initially held after crossing the border. “Even while I am freezing, and feeling like I was back in the hielera, [Sal] is burning up with fever,” she told The Fuller Project. And the medical annex appears to be in name only. “I keep asking for medicine and no one will bring it to us,” she continued.
Dilley already has a history of abuse against children: next May will mark three years since a toddler died after being detained at the jail. In testimony to Congress in July 2019, asylum-seeker Yazmin Juárez described how officials consistently failed to provide proper medical treatment when her nearly 2-year-old daughter Mariee became sick while in custody. “I noticed immediately how many sick kids there were—and no effort was made to separate the sick from the healthy,” she said.
Juárez and Mariee were eventually released, but it was already too late for the girl, and she died in a hospital after they rejoined family in New Jersey. “I’m here today because I don’t want another little angel to suffer like my Mariee,” she told legislators. “I don’t want other mothers and fathers to lose their children. It can’t be that hard in this great country to make sure that the little children you lock up don’t die from abuse and neglect.”
“The prolonged detention, the constant risk of getting sick with COVID-19, and the probability of dying there, is something that affects these women a lot,” the family’s attorney, Nora Picasso, told The Fuller Project. “It’s not only their concern for themselves but … those they most love.”
Dozens of children and parents at Dilley and another migrant family jail in Pennsylvania are at continued risk not just because of COVID-19, but also because ICE has been trying to deport them even though the cruel ban that initially blocked them from seeking asylum have been thrown out in court. “On Thanksgiving eve, a D.C. appeals court issued a temporary stay of removal for 28 children and their parents at Dilley and the Pennsylvania facilities until a final decision is rendered in their case,” the report continued.
But on Monday, Amy Maldonado, an attorney in litigation against the federal government, tweeted “[t]he Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has vacated the stay of removal for our families. There is no #SafetyForThe28. They can be removed immediately,” as early as Dec. 15. As of publishing date, the families still appear to be in the U.S. Remember, and keep repeating, that none of this has to be happening. ICE has always had every power to release families together as they pursue their cases.
Probably the most insidious aspect of the creep of proto-fascist movements in America is the way they have been able to insinuate themselves within the traditional mainstream, sometimes by attempting to create a false image through the adoption of labels that create an image of legitimacy: Think of the seditious “Patriot” movement with its “III Percent” militias and Oath Keepers that try to claim a nonexistent connection to the Constitution.
And then they sometimes actually try to take over existing institutions, such as the various attempts by the alt-right to gain a foothold within local Republican parties. The most vivid recent example of this is occurring on rural Whidbey Island in northwestern Washington state, where a “III Percent” militia group has been slowly taking over one of the local Granges.
The takeover, according to Mike Carter’s excellent reportage for the Seattle Times, began with far-right “Patriots” organizing pro-Trump events on the island, which is home to the Whidbey Island Naval Station at its northern end near Oak Harbor. Over the next several months, the Deer Lagoon Grange—located farther south, near the town of Langley—was flooded with new memberships, all of them far-right activists associated with the Washington Three Percent, a “Patriot”/militia organization.
The new membership then used the Grange to organize an October 18 “Freedom to Worship” rally in the nearby town of Freeland—an utterly mask-free, pro-Trump, pro-Republican candidates event featuring a slate of speakers from the far right, including Joey Gibson, founder/leader of the street-brawling proto-fascist group Patriot Prayer.
“Throughout history tyrannical regimes have sought to restrict, outlaw and persecute the faithful, regardless of the specific faith or denomination,” an announcement read. It urged participants to bring food for a potluck and promised patriotic fare and speeches.
Organizers rebranded the rally a “protest,” one that was part evangelical Christian tent revival, part pro-Trump political event, all wrapped up in patriotic bunting to disguise the ugly proto-fascist politics lurking just below the surface. Among the speakers that day was a man in a Revolutionary War costume with a tricorn hat.
Some current and former Deer Lagoon Grange members told Carter that meetings—which traditionally have involved workshops and discussions around agricultural topics—have more recently turned to “crowded, mask-free affairs involving topics like disaster preparedness and first-aid, including how to treat gunshot wounds.” They reported that newcomers have come to meetings armed.
The takeover simultaneously drove out longtime residents. “A lot of the old members are leaving,” Grange caretaker Dan Abat told Carter, adding that he’s quitting both his job and the Grange itself: “I have no idea who they are. I just don’t want to be hassled.”
Grange members aren’t the only longtime island residents who have been impacted. One of its longtime local institutions, the Bayview Farm and Garden—located near the Grange—has been subjected to ongoing harassment because its owner has been outspoken about following Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 mandates, particularly enforcing the wearing of masks. Owner Maureen Murphy notably published a Facebook post calling out the hate symbols sported by the “Trump train” caravans that became regular weekend fixtures on the island, including MAGA hats. The post sparked a threatening backlash: “Trump train” trucks parked in front of her business and revved their engines. Her business was vandalized. The Latino man she employed as a door greeter was repeatedly harassed and threatened.
“We were in the crosshairs,” Murphy said. “There were some really vicious phone calls, and not just from people in this community. I took calls from as far away as New Hampshire.” She took the post down and told Carter she regretted it: “I thought I was doing something good. What I ended up doing is putting my staff at risk.”
The majority of the island residents voted 54%-42% for Joe Biden in the November elections. Whidbey has a history of dealing with far-right extremists already: In 1984, the leader of the murderous neo-Nazi gang The Order was cornered by the FBI at a home there and killed. To this day, neo-Nazis make an annual pilgrimage to the island to honor his memory, which continues to anger longtime locals.
The men organizing the takeover shrug off the politics of intimidation they have brought to the previously peaceful island community. The Washington Three Percent member leading the takeover, an island resident named Erik Rohde, told Carter that he has been actively encouraging members of the militia group to join the Grange.
“It’s been frustrating,” Rohde said. “We have no racist ideology; that isn’t allowed in our organization. It’s not what we’re about. We have people from every walk of life.”
Matt Marshall, one of the state leaders of the Washington Three Percent, trotted out the same defense during the October 18 “Freedom to Worship” rally/protest, according to a reporter from Boise State Public Radio, Heath Druzin, who attended the rally and reported on it. Marshall was one of the speakers that day, along with Gibson and a far-right Republican write-in candidate for lieutenant governor, Joshua Freed (who eventually garnered 0.12% of the statewide vote).
“I am frequently discounted as a far-right extremist,” he told the crowd, which numbered about 150 people, all maskless. “I also get small-town redneck, leader of a militia and various other things that are used to discredit me and my qualifications and the Three Percent.”
What Marshall neglects to mention is that his group is closely affiliated with Gibson, whose own background is rife with associations with violent extremists and white nationalists, as well as far-right ex-legislator Matt Shea, whose eventual departure from the state legislature was the subject of a protest Marshall organized in January 2019. Moreover, Marshall has been an outspoken advocate of the “Boogaloo” movement—having shown up to protests in Olympia (including one that turned out to have been a Sacha Baron Cohen prank that in fact is featured in Cohen’s latest Borat film) and elsewhere wearing the movement’s trademark Hawaiian shirts and spouting pro-“Boogaloo” rhetoric.
Since then, the “Boogaloo” movement has inspired multiple acts of domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists:
The 14 Michigan militiamen arrested by the FBI in October were all “Boogaloo Bois.” Their initial plot involved taking over the state Capitol in Lansing and holding televised executions of state officials; they later defaulted to a simpler plot to kidnap the governor at her summer home and execute her after a “citizens court” trial.
An Air Force sergeant in California who was a “Boogaloo” fan shot two federal officers at an anti-police protest in Oakland, one fatally. Two days later, after being tracked to Santa Cruz County, he shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy while being arrested. During the rampage, he scrawled the word “Boog” in blood on the hood of the car he was driving.
The three Las Vegas-area “Boogaloo Bois” arrested for building Molotov cocktails as part of a larger campaign to wreak havoc around the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests over police brutality did not plan to attack BLM—as most “Patriot” and “Proud Boy” groups have done over the past three years—but instead sought to use the BLM protests to target police officers and power infrastructure, as a way of ramping up the violence around the protests.
A Texarkana, Texas, man who intended to spark the “Boogaloo” by ambushing police officers, was caught by officers who were alerted by his attempt to livestream his planned killing spree. They went to his location and arrested him shortly thereafter.
A “Boogaloo” enthusiast who posted comments on Facebook about bringing his rifle to an anti-stay-at-home-orders protest in Denver attracted the interest of FBI agents, who upon visiting him at his home discovered a cache of homemade pipe bombs. The man openly expressed his intent to use them to kill any federal agents who tried to invade his home.
Another “Boogaloo Boi” planned to livestream his ambush on police officers at an Ohio national park, but was arrested by FBI agents before he could pull off the plan.
It may be worth noting that at the October event on Whidbey Island, Marshall no longer wore a Hawaiian shirt and made no mention of the “Boogaloo.” But by then, the politics his organization embodied had already made itself all too plain to the residents of an island who know all too well how to spot a fascist.
One of Donald Trump’s “elite strike force” legal super team members, Jenna Ellis, once held the title of deputy district attorney at the Weld County District Attorney’s Office. When asked by the The Wall Street Journal about being terminated from that position after only six months, Ellis said she was fired because “she refused to bring a case to trial that she believed was an unethical prosecution.” At the time, Weld County “declined to comment.”
About that: The Colorado Sun has obtained some recordsfrom Ellis’ short stint at Weld County’s DA office. Guess what? They seem to contradict the magical story of persecution Ellis was feeding the WSJ. In fact, Ellis was let go because she “made mistakes on cases the employer believes she should not have made.” But most damning is what the nature of the mistakes were.
According to the Sun, the documents they received point to a mishandling of the process surrounding the Victim Rights Act. This is the law that Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta broke when he handed out a grotesque sweetheart deal to sexual predator and serial rapist Jeffrey Epstein back in 2008.
The documents, which you can see here, are from an appeal Ellis made to receive unemployment benefits. This paragraph sticks out:
There are federal laws and state statutes that regulate aspects of the process throughout each case. The employer noted some cases were being processed that did not adhere to the Victim Rights Act as it applies to the cases. There is the appearance in case documentation the claimant did not follow proper protocol for some of the cases she handled. The employer began tracking the claimant’s handling of cases and kept notes on issues the employer believed were not in compliance with accepted protocols and practices. The claimant did the best she could with her education and training to meet the expectations of the employer.
In Ellis’ defense, she won her appeal here and received unemployment benefits as the overseeing officer found: “There were some deficiencies in her education and experience that account for some of the errors she committed while learning on the job under high-volume conditions.”
If Ellis had just said that she was fired but received unemployment because her firing was deemed not to be her fault, there really would be nothing to write about. In fact, the unsigned statement sent to the Sun says: “This is a nonstory from a decade ago trying to damage her reputation simply because she works for President Trump.” However, Ellis very clearly told the WSJ that “she refused to bring a case to trial that she believed was an unethical prosecution.” Those are two very different things.
It begs the question: Why? Why say that? There are a couple of reasons this might be: The first is that, like most of the right-wing charlatans we’ve seen over the years, Ellis wants to boost her bonafides by creating a narrative more in line with the whiny reverse racism and Christian persecution right-wingers believe about themselves. Another reason is that while Ellis may have very legitimately made “mistakes” that were not intentionally nefarious, they may be more embarrassing or more problematic the more detail were to come out. It’s hard to say.
Ellis has a documented history of being something of a monster, albeit a lot less loud than her compatriots. Based on her history and the company she keeps, everything is usually under on the table.
