US Politics

The quixotic quest by Donald Trump’s legal team to overturn the results of the election have birthed an unlikely star this week: Michigan resident Melissa Carone.Carone, a contract worker for Dominion Voting Systems, appeared before a Michigan house panel on Wednesday and insisted, without providing evidence, that tens of thousands of votes had been counted twice.It was the manner of her claims, however, that made her a social media hit, with numerous Twitter users comparing Carone to a Saturday Night Live character.Carone repeatedly talked over a Michigan representative as he tried to get to the bottom of her allegations of voter fraud.Those claims seemed to amount to vague accusations of ballot recounting and poll tampering, apparently by the Republican-controlled house.Responding to Carone’s assertions that she saw ballot workers count a batch of 30,000 votes multiple times, Steve Johnson, a Republican Michigan state representative, said:“We’re not seeing the poll book off by 30,000 votes.”Carone, who repeatedly spoke over Johnson as he attempted to understand her claims, was unmoved.“What’d you guys do, take it and do something crazy to it?” Carone said.“I’m just saying the numbers are not off by 30,000 votes,” Johnson replied.“I’d say that poll book is off by over 100,000 [votes],” Carone said.In her appearance before the house, Carone earned the rare distinction of making claims that were too bizarre for Rudy Giuliani, who has become a fount of unhinged election conspiracy theories in recent weeks.Giuliani, who sat next to Carone at the Michigan hearing, was heard shushing her as she loudly spoke over a state representative, and could be seen wincing during some of her account of witnessing fraud.On 13 November a Wayne county judge had decided that Carone’s claims “simply are not credible”, but that did not stop Trump’s team from bringing her to Wednesday’s hearing, where Carone added of the vote total:“It’s wildly off, and dead people voted, and illegals voted.”Carone, who has been doing the rounds on rightwing media in recent weeks, claimed on Wednesday night she “had to get rid of social media” in the wake of her public appearances.That statement also seems to be false, given a Facebook account in her name still exists on the site. More

A US president’s power to pardon and commute sentences for federal offences seems to explode America’s claims as a nation of laws and proper process. Donald Trump is no respecter of laws in any aspect of his life, so there is no surprise that he may now be gearing up to make extravagant use of the power before he is prised out of the White House in January.Two things should be remembered here. First, the pardon power does not extend to state laws, only federal ones. Second, other presidents have been here too. Barack Obama, who issued 212 pardons in eight years, granted 330 commutations on his very last day as president in 2017. At this stage of his own presidency, Mr Trump is a remarkably light pardoner and commuter. At the time of writing, he has issued a mere 28 pardons and 16 commutations, although all that could change soon.One explanation, and a difference between Mr Trump and his predecessors, is that a high proportion of his acts of clemency have directly involved his own allies and staff. The latest of these included commutation for his friend Roger Stone, and a pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, both of whom were convicted of obstructing the Robert Mueller investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign.As the end nears, Mr Trump may be planning to break new ground in other ways. He has sometimes mused that he can pardon himself, something no president has ever done and which many lawyers think is unconstitutional. But he is widely reported to be eyeing “pre-emptive” pardons to his children, Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka, as well as to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani. This week, it has been confirmed that the justice department is investigating an alleged “bribery for pardon” scheme at the White House. Any of these actions, never mind all three, would plumb new depths in Mr Trump’s four-year abuse of the presidency.Shocking though such possibilities are, there is an established legal argument for pardons. In this country, a royal pardon was issued in 2013 to the scientist Alan Turing, who took his own life after being convicted under anti-homosexuality laws in 1952. This leads to a wider moral point. “Pardon’s the word to all,” pronounces Cymbeline in the final scene of Shakespeare’s late play. The former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has described Cymbeline’s line as a moral clarion call. The ability to pardon a person helps to elevate human beings, the archbishop argued. The human capacity for compassion and reconciliation is, he has said, evidence of the hand of the divine.There is, though, nothing remotely divine or compassionate about Mr Trump. The legal power he wields should be used very sparingly, and only in line with a proper and transparent process. Mr Trump has no interest in such things. He may not be able to put himself beyond the law, but he can do massive damage along the way. That would indeed be unpardonable. More

The US recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, as the number of people admitted to hospital with Covid exceeded 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began.
According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, 3,157 new deaths were recorded on Wednesday, more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The previous high was the 2,607 deaths recorded on 15 April, at the beginning of the pandemic.

There were 200,070 new cases on Wednesday, only the second time that new cases had exceeded 200,000. With the total caseload now standing at 13,911,728, the US is expected to record its 14-millionth case on Thursday, and experts predict the death toll could reach nearly 450,000 by the end of February.
The deaths, cases and hospitalizations showed a country slipping deeper into crisis, with perhaps the worst yet to come, in part because of the delayed effects from Thanksgiving last week, when millions of Americans disregarded warnings to stay home and celebrate only with members of their household.
Across the US, the surge has swamped hospitals and left nurses and other healthcare workers shorthanded and burned out.
“The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they are going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation,” Dr Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Wednesday.
Redfield said that about 90% of hospitals in the country were at stretched capacity.
“We are at a very critical time right now about being able to maintain the resilience of our healthcare system,” he said.
The grave total came as Joe Biden, the president-elect, threw his weight behind a bipartisan $908bn coronavirus relief effort in Congress which would provide $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits and direct $160bn to states and cities.
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Hospital admissions grew over the course of November, setting new records nearly every day. The American Ambulance Association referred to a 911 emergency call system “at a breaking point”.
Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas said there were no staffed ICU beds in the south-west of the state, while in New Mexico, coronavirus patients were using 27% of hospital beds, which has left the state with just 16 intensive care beds left to spare.
In California alone, more than 8,000 people were being treated for coronavirus on Wednesday, after the state saw a record number of hospitalizations for the fourth day in a row.
Health authorities had warned that the numbers could fluctuate strongly before and after Thanksgiving, as they often do around holidays and weekends, when because of reporting delays, figures often drop, then rise sharply a few days later as state and local agencies catch up with the backlog.
The White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, Dr Deborah Birx, urged Americans who had travelled over the recent holiday weekend to behave as though they had the virus.
“If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household. Most likely, you will not have symptoms; however, you are dangerous to others.”
April’s peak of cases and deaths was concentrated mostly in New York and New England, but the current spread of the virus is across the whole country, and shows no sign of slowing down. Over 1.1m new cases have been recorded in the last seven days alone, and 273,621 people have died in total.
Donald Trump’s few public appearances recently have been dedicated to efforts to overturn the results of the election rather than deal with coronavirus. Before the election, Trump said that the country was rounding the corner, and the media would no longer talk about Covid after the election.
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The mayor of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US, with a population of 3.9 million, warned it was nearing a “devastating tipping point” this week, as officials introduced new guidance prohibiting mingling of households.
“It’s time to hunker down,” Eric Garcetti said. “It’s time to cancel everything. And if it isn’t essential, don’t do it.”
Los Angeles’s restrictions are far from a blanket ban on activity, however, with retail businesses allowed to remain open if they implement a set of protocols, and golf courses, tennis courts and outdoor gyms allowed to remain open. Film and TV production are also allowed to continue.
Los Angeles county, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas, is home to 10 million people and has recorded 414,185 infections so far. So far 7,740 people have died.
Some coronavirus relief programs passed by Congress are due to expire at the end of the year. Twelve million people are due to lose unemployment benefits as Democrats and Republicans remain at an impasse over the size of a new relief package.
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a stimulus bill worth $3tn in May and has pushed for a more than $2tn measure in recent weeks, but have dropped their demands to a $908bn bill, which Biden said on Wednesday he would support.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, supported a $1tn bill in the summer but abandoned that after criticism from conservatives. McConnell has since been fixed on a $550bn bill, which has twice failed in the Senate.
The vice-president, Mike Pence, who has been leading the Trump administration response to the pandemic, will participate in a coronavirus response roundtable in Memphis on Thursday. More

Former US presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton have pledged to get vaccinated for coronavirus on television to promote the safety of the vaccine.The trio’s effort comes as the Food and Drug Administration prepares to meet next week to decide whether to authorize a Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech.More than 3,100 people died from the coronavirus in America on Wednesday, a record single-day high and more than the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Obama, Bush and Clinton’s willingness to address the seriousness of the pandemic is markedly different from the attitude of Donald Trump, who remained silent as the US passed 250,000 coronavirus deaths in November.In an interview with SiriusXM host Joe Madison, Obama said that he would trust Anthony Fauci if the infectious disease expert declares a coronavirus vaccine to be safe.“People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely,” Obama said. “So, if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting Covid, absolutely, I’m going to take it.”Many Americans say they will not agree to be vaccinated against Covid-19. A poll by Gallup, released in mid-November, showed that 42% of the country would not take the vaccine even if it was “available right now at no cost”.Obama said he would take the vaccine once it was available for people “who are less at risk”. The 44th president is 59 and is not known to suffer from any serious health problems.“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid,” he added.Freddy Ford, Bush’s chief of staff, told CNN the former president is also willing to receive the vaccine on camera.“A few weeks ago, President Bush asked me to let Dr Fauci and Dr Birx know that, when the time is right, he wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” Ford told CNN.“First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations. Then, President Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.”Clinton’s press secretary told CNN that he too is prepared to be filmed as he takes the vaccine.“President Clinton will definitely take a vaccine as soon as available to him, based on the priorities determined by public health officials,” Angel Urena said. “And he will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same.”The three presidents, along with Jimmy Carter and George H Bush, who died in 2018, previously teamed up to raise money for relief efforts for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. More

Good morning Fight to Vote readers,Hope you all had a safe and healthy Thanksgiving break. I’m particularly thankful that I came back to a slightly more optimistic week for voting rights. First, there’s the fact that Donald Trump finally said he would leave the White House if the electoral college confirmed Joe Biden as president on 14 December. Then, there’s the surprising about-face from William Barr, the attorney general.Is Barr … good now?I wouldn’t go that far. But Trump’s top justice official announced on Tuesday that his department had not uncovered any instances of voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election.This, of course, marks a departure from Barr’s boss, the president, who has been claiming the election was rigged against him and that illegal votes were counted. It’s also a departure from Barr’s own previous statements that mail-in voting was vulnerable to fraud. Nevertheless, there was never any evidence of widespread voter tampering, and now Trump’s ardent ally has confirmed that.Trump’s election integrity battle remains uglyTrump’s campaign lawyer Joe DiGenova was condemned for his violent remarks on a podcast about Chris Krebs, a top election security official whom Trump recently fired. “Anybody who thinks the election went well,” DiGenova said, “like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class-A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”The Georgia secretary of state’s office is continuing to resist the White House rhetoric. After Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, pushed back on Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in Georgia, another official spoke up. Gabriel Sterling, a Republican who oversees the state’s voting system, called out the president for inciting violence.“Mr President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia,” Sterling said at a press conference on Tuesday, during which he became visibly angry. “We’re investigating, there’s always a possibility, I get it. You have the right to go to the courts. What you don’t have the ability to do – and you need to step up and say this – is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed, and it’s not right. It’s not right.”Want to join the fight for voting rights?All eyes are on Georgia as the heated Senate runoff battle approaches. But here at Fight to Vote we’re not about donating to campaigns or watching candidate Jon Ossoff’s TikTok channel. Instead, here are some organizations focused on making sure residents are educated about the voting process:I’ll leave you with this: calls for Dolly Parton to get the presidential medal of freedom. More

My father is a Chinese immigrant, middle-class. Growing up, he and his family were often on the move, escaping conflict in Vietnam, then the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution in China. During the reign of Chairman Mao, my father remembers schoolmates in Shanghai who were disappeared by the government. He had heard of dissidents who swam from mainland China to Hong Kong by night. Politically, he considered evangelicalism, anti-communism and democracy to be radical: the west. America captivated his imagination by way of Woodstock – Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary – and pictures of the magical big houses that sprawled the suburbs.After he immigrated to the States in the 1970s, he eventually did get his big house in the suburbs, which today stands at the heart of California’s 39th congressional district, comprising parts of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange county. It’s where the rapidly growing Asian American population was, in the last decade, heralded as the future of the Republican party. In November, the district flipped a House seat from Democrat to Republican. My father voted for Trump.He is just one of many Chinese American immigrants who increasingly find sympathy and belonging in the Republican party. They appear undeterred by Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric, with slurs like the “Chinese virus” and “kung-flu”. More pressingly, they vehemently hate the Chinese Communist party and support Trump’s hawkish stance against China in the trade wars. Chinese voters make up the largest group within Asian Americans, who are collectively the fastest-growing demographic category in the country. While Asian Americans supported Biden overall, Trump gained seven percentage points with Asian Americans this election. (Among Asians, only Japanese Americans shifted toward the Democrats.)This might be cause for alarm for Democrats, who like to see themselves as the bearer of a nationwide multiracial coalition. Is this a myth? In California, a Democratic stronghold, Asian Americans appear increasingly nonplussed about campaigns touting multicultural ideals. For instance, many Asian American families oppose affirmative action, fearing that their children would suffer in elite university admissions if merit were given less weight than race. So when Proposition 16 – which would have ended a 24-year-old ban on affirmative action in education, employment and contracting – appeared on the ballot, Asian Americans played a pivotal role in voting it down. They were not taking it for the team. But should they be expected to?I voted for Proposition 16 in support of affirmative action, but I represent a segment of the liberal elite: a photogenic if not misleading face of the Asian American constituency. For people like my father, Democrats’ messages of inclusion and multiculturalism are leaving them cold.When Kamala Harris identified as the first Asian American vice-presidential candidate, my father did not particularly “feel seen”. When he read that Black Lives Matter protests turned violent, he bought an American flag from Amazon and hoisted it above his front door. Some of his views and choices mystify me, but I see how, for instance, a term like “Bipoc” – which stands for Black and Indigenous people of color, and stakes authority based on relative disadvantage – risks leaving many Asian Americans feeling squeezed out of the minority coalition, like an expendable casualty. This breeds the kind of resentment that the writer Wesley Yang identified when describing Asian Americans as “a nominal minority whose claim to be a ‘person of color’ deserving of the special regard reserved for victims is taken seriously by no one”.While the Biden campaign heavily courted the suburban vote, it still missed demographics like my father’s. In California’s 39th district, where my parents live, Democrat Gil Cisneros launched a much-lauded campaign where Chinese-speaking staffers reached out to voters on apps like WeChat and Line (popular with Chinese), and Korean speakers to voters on KakaoTalk (popular with Koreans). This diversified approach helped secure his victory in 2018. Yet this year he still lost to the Republican candidate Young Kim.The Republican campaign to Asian Americans was narrower in scope than the Democrats’, but Republicans still won the hearts and minds of California’s 39th district. That so many swing congressional districts pivoted Republican seems to indicate that Biden’s victory is more indicative of a general impatience to vote Trump out of office, rather than a long-term persuasion towards Democratic interests. While Democrats still hold the majority of Asian American voters, they can hardly take them for granted.Today, Asian Americans are the only major demographic category in which naturalized citizens make up the majority, and the immigrant population is increasing. While the multiracial coalition is certainly an ideal worth fighting for, the Democrats need to find ways of reaching immigrant voters that go beyond an identity politics that treats Asian Americans as a consolidated monolith, and listen more to the grievances and enthusiasms immigrants feel today. Asian Americans will be ignorable up until they’re not. More

Ivanka Trump was interviewed by attorneys alleging that Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee misused donor funds, a new court filing reveals.The document, first reported by CNN on Wednesday, shows that Ivanka Trump, the president’s oldest daughter and a senior White House adviser, was interviewed on Tuesday by attorneys from the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office.The office has filed a lawsuit alleging waste of the nonprofit’s funds, accusing the committee of making more than $1m (£746,000) in improper payments to the president’s Washington, DC, hotel during the week of the inauguration in 2017.As part of the suit, they have subpoenaed records from Ivanka Trump; the first lady, Melania Trump; Thomas Barrack Jr, a close friend of the president who chaired the inaugural committee, and others. Barrack was also interviewed last month.Trump’s inaugural committee spent more than $1m to book a ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in the nation’s capital as part of a scheme to “grossly overpay” for party space and enrich the president’s own family in the process, the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Karl Racine, alleges.He has accused the committee of misusing nonprofit funds and coordinating with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events.“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” Racine has said. “In this case, we are seeking to recover the nonprofit funds that were improperly funnelled directly to the Trump family business.”The committee raised an unprecedented $107m to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, but its spending has drawn continued scrutiny.In a statement, Alan Garten, from the Trump Organization, said that “Ms Trump’s only involvement was connecting the parties and instructing the hotel to charge a ‘fair market rate,’ which the hotel did.” More

Former US president Barack Obama has criticised Democratic political candidates for using ‘snappy’ slogans such as ‘defund the police’, arguing they could turn voters away and defeat the original objective. In an interview with Good Luck America, a political show on social media platform Snapchat, Obama said the slogans can isolate potential voters. ‘You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,’ he said. ‘The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?’
Barack Obama criticizes ‘Defund the Police’ slogan but faces backlash More