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      in Elections

      Kayleigh McEnany refuses to follow McConnell admitting Trump election defeat – video

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      Kayleigh McEnany has described Monday’s electoral college vote confirming Joe Biden as the nation’s next president as just ‘one step in the constitutional process’. The White House press secretary’s assessment is the latest example of White House officials declining to accept Biden’s victory, even after Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday broke his silence on the winner of the presidency, saying: ‘The electoral college has spoken.’US news – live updates Continue reading… More

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      in US Politics

      Barr couldn't pass Trump's loyalty test: shredding the US constitution | David Smith's sketch

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      [embedded content]
      If Dick Cheney gained notoriety as George W Bush’s “Darth Vader”, William Barr, the US attorney general, appeared a worthy successor as Donald Trump’s Lord of the Sith.
      Barr played the role of presidential enforcer with apparent relish, whether spinning the Russia investigation in Trump’s favour or defending a harsh crackdown on this summer’s civil unrest.
      But even he could not or would not pass the ultimate loyalty test: shredding the US constitution to help his boss steal an election. As Trump’s niece, Mary, puts in the title of her book, it was a case of Too Much and Never Enough.
      Trump tweeted on Monday that Barr will resign before Christmas. Barr, for his part, issued a resignation letter that noted election fraud allegations “will continue to be pursued” before going on to lavish praise on Trump’s “historic” record despite resistance that included “frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.
      David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for Barack Obama, observed in a Twitter post: “In writing his fawning exit letter, Barr reflected a fundamental understanding of @realDonaldTrump: Like a dog, if you scratch his belly, he is a lot more docile. Just as[k] Kim [Jong-un] !”
      But the sycophantic words could not conceal how Barr, like the attorney general Jeff Sessions and the FBI director James Comey before him, had refused to do the 45th president’s bidding once too often. With democracy in existential danger, he was the dog that did not bark.
      Barr, who previously served as attorney general under George HW Bush in the early 1990s, had always been a believer in expansive presidential power and being tough on crime. He was therefore “simpatico” – to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favourite words – with Trump from the off.
      Weeks after his Senate confirmation, Barr cleared the president of obstruction of justice even though Robert Mueller’s report would identity 10 credible allegations (for which Trump may yet face prosecution after leaving office). Barr’s pre-emptive summary of the special counsel’s report more than accentuated the positive.
      Barr did much else to emulate Roy Cohn, the bullying lawyer and Trump mentor. Appearing before Congress, he haughtily defended the aggressive law enforcement response to protests in Portland and other cities. He intervened in the cases of Trump allies such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and railed against coronavirus lockdowns. He acted more like the president’s personal attorney than the attorney general. More

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      in Elections

      William Barr steps down as Trump's attorney general

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      The US attorney general, William Barr, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies, has resigned just weeks after he contradicted the president by saying the justice department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.Barr’s departure ends a tenure marked by brazen displays of fealty to a president whose political agenda he willingly advanced. Critics said Barr had turned the Department of Justice (DoJ) into an obedient servant of the White House, eroding its commitment to independence and the rule of law.Trump sought to play down tensions as he announced Barr’s resignation in a tweet on Monday, moments after members of the electoral college officially pushed Joe Biden over the 270-vote threshold to win the White House on Monday. The procedural step effectively ends Trump’s unprecedented bid to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election based on false claims of widespread voter fraud that Barr concluded were meritless.“Just had a very nice meeting with attorney general Bill Barr at the White House,” the president said. “Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family…”In his resignation letter, released by Trump on Twitter, Barr was characteristically effusive of the president. He praised Trump’s resilience in the face of what the attorney general described as a “partisan onslaught” that aimed to undermine a duly elected president.“No tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds,” Barr wrote.“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” he continued, adding: “Few could have weathered these attacks, much less forge ahead with a positive program for the country.”Jeff Rosen, the deputy attorney general, who Trump called “an outstanding person”, will take over the role of acting attorney general and “highly respected” Richard Donoghue, an official in Rosen’s office, would become the deputy attorney general.Barr surprised many observers by telling the Associated Press in an interview published on 1 December that he disputed the idea, promulgated by the president and his re-election campaign, that there had been widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Trump has attempted to undermine Biden’s victory by pointing to routine, small-scale issues in an election – questions about signatures, envelopes and postal marks – as evidence of widespread fraud across the nation that cost him the election.Trump and some of his allies have also endorsed more bizarre sources of supposed fraud, such as tying Biden’s win to election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chávez” – the former Venezuelan president who died in 2013.“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DoJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said in the interview with the AP.Barr said some people were confusing the role of the federal criminal justice system and asking it to step in on allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits and reviewed by state or local officials, not the justice department.Barr added: “There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and, people don’t like something – they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate’.”Those comments infuriated Trump and his supporters as they have tried – and failed – to find any meaningful way, via the courts, requested recounts, or pressure on officials, of overturning his defeat by Biden.Speculation about Barr’s future was rife from the moment his AP interview was published, as the most high-profile member of the administration flatly to contradict the president’s continuing arguments that he is the rightful winner.For months, Barr also kept a justice department investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, from becoming public, despite calls from Republicans and the White House to launch an inquiry into the younger Biden’s business dealings, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hunter Biden, long a target of the president and his political allies, announced last week that his tax affairs were under investigation.In the weeks before the 2020 election, Trump publicly berated his attorney general for not prosecuting the president’s political enemies, among them his Democratic opponent and his predecessor, Barack Obama. In an October interview, Trump said Barr would be remembered as a “very sad, sad situation” if he did not indict Biden or Obama. Barr’s refusal to act, Trump warned then, could cost him the election.Trump announced in December 2018 that he was nominating Barr to become his next attorney general, replacing Jeff Sessions, a loyalist who angered the president when he stepped aside and allowed his deputy to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s election interference.Barr, 70, had previously served as attorney general in the George Bush administration and was initially viewed by political veterans in Washington as a much-needed stabilizing force who would insulate the department from political attacks. Yet, assuming the post the post as the Russia investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump 2016 election campaign and Russian operatives neared its denouement in early 2019, Barr quickly upended expectations by ferociously attacking the special counsel investigation that examined the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.In his resignation letter, the attorney general said it was the “nadir” of what he believed was a partisan crusade against the president “was the effort to cripple, if not oust, your administration with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia”.Critics have often accused Barr of showing more loyalty to the president than to the nation. In one such instance, Barr called a press conference last April and offered a misleading preview of Mueller’s report. He omitted the report’s detailed description of potential obstruction of justice by Trump and falsely claimed the White House had cooperated fully.This set the tone for Trump’s inaccurate trumpeting when the report itself came out, in restricted form, that he and his team had enjoyed “total exoneration” by Mueller – a blatant misinterpretation.And Barr’s protocol-smashing, partisan path continued from there, as he intervened in criminal cases brought against prominent individuals in Trump’s circle, such as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.He also initiated an investigation of the origins of the Russia investigation itself, seen as a fundamental undermining of the work of Mueller and his team, an effort that continues. More

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      in US Politics

      US Covid deaths pass 300,000 as first Americans receive coronavirus vaccine

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      More than 300,000 people have now died because of Covid-19 in the United States, with the latest milestone coming amid record daily fatalities and the national rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.The first shot in the US mass vaccination program was given shortly after 9am ET on Monday morning at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York. Intensive care nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first person not enrolled in the vaccine trials to receive the shot in the US.“I believe this is the weapon that will end the war,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo said. Donald Trump tweeted: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”As hospitals around the US warn of a crisis of capacity in intensive care units, experts have described this winter as likely the most perilous time, despite the hopes brought by the recent vaccine progress. It also comes less than a month after the country lost a quarter of a million people to the disease.The latest figures from Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus resource center show more than 300,000 fatalities in the US, and more than 16m cases.The US has the highest death toll from the disease in the world, followed by Brazil, India and Mexico, and the US is among the worst-hit of developed nations in terms of its death rate. Globally, there have been more than 69m cases and at least 1.5m deaths.On Sunday, trucks hauling trailers loaded with suitcase–sized containers of Covid-19 vaccine rolled out of Pfizer’s manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, launching the largest and most complex vaccine distribution project in the US.While progress on the vaccine is being celebrated across America, it also comes amid safety concerns and fears of anti-vaccination sentiments that might hinder the rollout. There are also worries over a potentially chaotic roll-out with local plans for vaccine distribution that vary widely, lack federal funding, and will not reach everyone even in early, limited populations.The US, which has recently been reporting around 2,200 deaths per day, recorded more than 3,000 deaths on one day for the first time on 9 December.Cases have been surging in the US since mid-October to more than 200,000 a day and experts including Dr Anthony Fauci have said the worst of the surge is expected after Thanksgiving – despite official requests not to travel – and likely just before Christmas.Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, told CNN his fears about Christmas were the same as Thanksgiving: people traveling and not social distancing, “only this may be even more compounded because it’s a longer holiday”.Dr Michael Osterholm, a member of US president-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, told CNN: “No Christmas parties. There is not a safe Christmas party in this country right now.“It won’t end after that but that is the period right now where we could have a surge upon a surge upon a surge.”Earlier this month the UK became the first country in the world to begin administering Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, followed quickly by the US.Hospitals around the country have reported being under huge pressure. One in 10 Americans – especially across the midwest, south and south-west – live in an area where intensive care beds are either full, or available at lower than 5% of capacity, the New York Times reported.In California, Fresno county’s interim public health officer, Dr Rais Vohra, told CNN that there was recently one day in the county with zero intensive-care capacity: “I know that those who aren’t in the medical field may not understand or quite grasp just how dire the situation is, but all the things you’re hearing about – how impacted our hospitals are, about how dire the situation with our ICUs is – it’s absolutely true. And that really is the reason that we want everyone to stay home as much as possible.” More

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      Donald Trump reverses plan to give White House officials Covid vaccine

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      The US recorded another 1,389 deaths from Covid-19 on Sunday, pushing the toll closer to 300,000 as hospitalisations continued to hit new heights. There was a ray of hope on Monday morning, however, as the first vaccinations were carried out using the Food and Drug Administration-approved Pfizer vaccine.
      “I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” said critical case nurse Sandra Lindsay after getting a shot at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York.
      Watching via video, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said: “This is the light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long tunnel.”
      From Washington, Donald Trump tweeted: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”
      Earlier, responding to a New York Times report that senior administration staffers would be among those vaccinated first, Trump rowed back, tweeting: “People working in the White House should receive the vaccine somewhat later in the programme, unless specifically necessary. I have asked that this adjustment be made.”
      According to Johns Hopkins University, the US death toll stood at 298,949 out of a caseload of 16,242,953, itself up by 190,920 on Sunday. Deaths were down from a daily peak of more than 3,000 last week but according to the Covid Tracking Project 109,331 people were hospitalised, a record. A record 21,231 people were in intensive care.
      States across the US are under increasing strain, healthcare systems creaking and economies, already battered, close to damaging collapse.
      In California, where large parts of the state are under lockdown until after Christmas, Alan Auerbach, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Guardian an eventual recovery could look more like a “K” than a “V”, as high earners thrive and the most vulnerable plunge.
      “We have lacked a coherent national strategy for dealing with the pandemic and 2021 is probably going to be a pretty tough year for California,” he said.
      In Washington, a bipartisan group of senators was due to unveil a $908bn stimulus package, though it was reported to have little chance of success. Agreement between House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell remains elusive.
      Though the vaccination effort just beginning will be the biggest public health push in US history, it will take some time for the vaccine to reach most of the population. On Monday, health secretary Alex Azar told NBC the vaccine will be available to the broader public “by late February going into March”. By that time, he said, vaccine distribution will be “like a flu vaccination campaign” at local pharmacies.
      That timeline is ambitious, especially in light of news that the administration did not expand its order for the Pfizer vaccination, sparking concerns there will be a shortage after initial doses. Vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, which is expected to be approved by the FDA for emergency use this week, require two doses.
      According to the Times, the Trump administration is “rushing to roll out a $250m public education campaign to encourage Americans to take the coronavirus vaccine”. Former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush are among famous names who have said they are willing to be vaccinated in public and an ABC News poll released on Monday said 80% of respondents said they would take the vaccine.
      Speaking to Fox News Sunday, however, Dr Moncef Slaoui, chief science adviser to the federal effort to speed vaccine development, said he was “very concerned” about skepticism about the vaccine in some circles.
      “Unfortunately … there’s been a confusion between how thorough and scientific and factual the work that has been done is, and the perception that people are thinking that we cut corners,” Slaoui said. “I can guarantee you that no such things have happened, that we follow the science.”
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      Trump, who recovered from Covid-19 in October, said he would not initially be taking the shot and was reversing an administration directive to vaccinate top officials while public distribution is limited to frontline health workers and people in nursing homes and long-term care.
      Trump made the announcement hours after his administration confirmed that senior officials, including some aides who work in close proximity to Trump and Mike Pence, would be offered vaccines as soon as this week.
      “I am not scheduled to take the vaccine,” Trump tweeted, “but look forward to doing so at the appropriate time.”
      It was not immediately clear what effect Trump’s tweet would have on efforts to protect top leadership, two people briefed on the matter told the Associated Press.
      News that White House staff would receive the vaccine early drew criticism on social media. Trump and his aides have flouted Covid-19 guidelines issued by his own administration, including hosting large holiday parties with maskless attendees this month.
      Officials said earlier on Sunday doses of the Pfizer vaccine would be made available to those who work in close quarters with the nation’s leaders, to prevent Covid-19 spreading in the White House and other critical facilities. The move would be consistent with the rollout of rapid testing machines, which were reserved to protect the White House and other facilities.
      According to guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is not yet enough information to determine whether those who have had Covid-19 should also get the vaccine.
      Pence has not come down with the virus, and his aides have been discussing when and how he should receive the shot. Aides to the president-elect, Joe Biden, have been discussing how he should receive the vaccine and working to establish plans to boost virus safeguards in the West Wing. More

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      Classifying Houthis as terrorists will worsen famine in Yemen, Trump is warned

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      The Trump administration is facing mounting calls to abandon threats to sanction Houthi rebels in northern Yemen to avoid an imminent danger of extreme famine in the country, where almost two-thirds of the population are in need of food aid.US state department officials are considering designating the Houthis as a terrorist group before the 20 January inauguration of Joe Biden, a move that would complicate the delivery of essential aid in large parts of the country, senior UN officials and NGOs have said.The widely predicted move would be alongside a raft of flagged sanctions against Iran and its interests over the final five weeks of Trump’s rule, in which squeezing Tehran and its allies looms as a central plank of Washington’s foreign policy.The Labour party in the UK added its voice to the concerns on Sunday, saying the expected move against the Houthis, whom Iran supports in Yemen, would result in aid being unable to reach much of the country’s north. The shadow minister for international development, Anna McMorrin, said this would deprive millions of people who had no choice but to remain under Houthi control of much-needed assistance.In a letter to the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, imploring the UK not to follow the US’s lead, McMorrin wrote: “We are concerned that a blanket definition for the Houthis would create a near insurmountable hurdle to the delivery of essential humanitarian relief, with those providing material relief or economic support to agencies and multilateral programmes at risk of legal or financial sanctions.“Humanitarian organisations would also be denied practical contact with much of the Houthis’ administrative infrastructure and would be barred from using local civilian contractors to deliver programmes.”Human Rights Watch has also warned of the consequences of US designation. “Many Yemenis are already on the brink of starvation, and US actions that would interfere with the work of aid organisations could have catastrophic consequences,” said the organisation’s Yemen researcher, Afrah Nasser, in a report released on Friday. “Any designation of the Houthis should at a minimum provide clear and immediate exemptions for humanitarian aid, but millions of lives should not have to depend on that.”Yemen, one of the region’s most impoverished states, has been in turmoil over most of the past decade. Instability worsened when the Houthis overthrew the Yemeni government in early 2015. That was followed by a military intervention led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which has further destabilised the country and led to soaring humanitarian needs. Despite temporary lulls in fighting, calls for a permanent ceasefire have not been met.The United Nations’ secretary general, António Guterres, said last month: “Yemen is now in imminent danger of the worst famine the world has seen for decades. In the absence of immediate action, millions of lives may be lost.”Calls to support humanitarian efforts have repeatedly met funding difficulties. Humanitarian needs have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has ravaged much of the country. However, a dysfunctional bureaucracy has made understanding the scale of the spread of disease almost impossible.Iran has provided support to Houthi rebels throughout the conflict with Saudi Arabia, which has led to mass displacement and disease and at least 12,000 civilian casualties. Riyadh insists Tehran’s level of backing is far higher than it acknowledges and amounts to a strategic threat against its eastern border. Ballistic missiles fired from Yemen have sporadically hit Saudi cities throughout the war, which has also been marked by repeated Saudi airstrikes inside the country.McMorrin and Human Rights Watch both say attempts to secure a negotiated ceasefire would be much more complicated if the US moves ahead with a designation of the Houthis.The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has told regional allies that he is determined to tighten pressure on Iran’s allies elsewhere in the region in the waning days of the administration, with proxies in Iraq and the powerful Lebanese militia and political bloc also in Washington’s crosshairs.A senior regional source said designating the Houthis and escalating pressure on Tehran over the next five weeks had been agreed between Washington and Riyadh during Pompeo’s most recent visit to the Middle East. More

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      in US Politics

      After Trump review: a provocative case for reform by Biden and beyond

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      At times, the Trump administration has seemed like a wrecking ball, careening from floor to floor of a building being destroyed, observers never quite knowing where the ball will strike next. At others, it has worked stealthily to undermine rules and norms, presumably fearing that, as the great supreme court justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “sunshine is the best of disinfectants”.
      These changes, far beyond politics or differences of opinion on policy, should trouble all those who care about the future of the American republic. Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer, veterans of Republican (Bush) and Democratic (Clinton) administrations, are students of the presidency whose scholarship is informed by their service. They have combined to write a field guide to the damage and serious proposals to undo it.
      Presidencies do not exist in a vacuum, and many of the excesses of which the authors complain did not begin in 2017. But Trump upped the stakes: the violations of rules and norms are not merely quantitatively more numerous but qualitatively different. Whether seeking to fire the special counsel investigating him, making money from his businesses or attacking the press, he has made breathtaking changes.
      As the authors write, “Trump has merged the institution of the presidency with his personal interests and has used the former to serve the latter”, attacking “core institutions of American democracy” to an extent no president had before.
      The American constitutional system, unlike the British, is one of enumerated powers. But over 230 years, norms have arisen. Unlike laws of which violations are (usually) clear, norms are “nonlegal principles of appropriate or expected behavior that presidents and other officials tacitly accept and that typically structure their actions”. In an illustration of the great American poet Carl Sandburg’s observation that “The fog comes on little cat feet”, norms “are rarely noticed until they are violated, as the nation has experienced on a weekly and often daily basis during the Trump presidency”.
      Those two axioms – that Trump’s offences are worse than others and that norms can easily be overcome by a determined president – show reform is essential.
      The first section of After Trump deals with the presidency itself: the dangers of foreign influence, conflicts of interest, attacks on the press and abuses of the pardon power.
      Here the reforms – political campaigns reporting foreign contacts, a requirement to disclose the president’s tax returns and criminalizing pardons given to obstruct justice – are generally straightforward. Regarding the press, where Trump has engaged in “virulent, constant attacks” and tried to claim his Twitter account was not a public record even as he happily fired public officials on it, the authors would establish that due process applies to attempted removal of a press pass and make legal changes to deter harassment of or reprisals against the media because “the elevation of this issue clarifies, strengthens, and sets up an apparatus for the enforcement of norms”.
      Goldsmith and Bauer’s second section focuses on technical legal issues, specifically those surrounding special counsels, investigation of the president, and the relationship between the White House and justice department.
      The American constitution is far more rigid that the British but it too has points of subtlety and suppleness. One example is the relationship between the president and an attorney general subordinate to the president but also duty bound to provide impartial justice, even when it concerns the president.
      The issues may seem arcane, but they are vital: “Of the multitude of norms that Donald Trump has broken as president, perhaps none has caused more commentary and consternation than his efforts to defy justice department independence and politicize the department’s enforcement of civil and criminal law.”
      And yet even as the attorney general, William Barr, sought a more lenient sentence for Roger Stone, stood by as Trump fired the US attorney in New York City, and kept up a “running public commentary” on an investigation of the origins of the investigation into the Trump campaign, the authors oppose those actions but remain cautious. They decline to endorse some of the more radical proposals, such as separating the justice department from the executive branch. More

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      in Elections

      Trump loses another case challenging election results in latest legal rebuke

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      [embedded content]
      Donald Trump lost a federal court challenge on Saturday in Wisconsin while judges said yet another case being fought there “smacks of racism”.
      The slap-downs came less than 24 hours after the abrupt dismissal by the US supreme court of the most audacious Republican attempt yet to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the election almost six weeks ago.
      But despite the latest stinging legal defeats and rebukes, Trump took to the skies in the Marine One presidential helicopter on Saturday on his way to an engagement in New York and flew above a protest of several hundred diehard supporters in Washington DC, who persist in bolstering his false claims that the election was “stolen” from him by fraud and conspiracy.
      This as the US electoral college will vote on Monday to confirm Biden’s resounding victory, alongside his Democratic vice president-elect, Kamala Harris.
      And a trickle of Republicans joined leading Democrats in speaking up about the increasing futility but also the insidiousness of the lame duck president’s aggressive clinging to power.
      After the supreme court decision, Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, said of the Trump campaign challenges to the election result: “It is now truly over. Trump and his acolytes need to stop all efforts to deny millions of votes.”
      More than 120 Republican members of the House of Representatives wrote an amicus brief to the supreme court last week in support of the lawsuit brought by Texas, which had been joined by Trump and aimed to overturn Biden’s victory in four key swing states, which the court on Friday night abruptly refused to consider.
      Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, called the effort “an affront to the country”.
      “It’s an offense to the constitution and it leaves an indelible stain that will be hard for these 126 members to wipe off their political skin,” he told the New York Times.
      In Wisconsin on Saturday, the US district judge Brett Ludwig dismissed one of Trump’s latest lawsuits there that asked the court to order the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to name him as the winner, whereas in fact Biden won Wisconsin on his way to winning the White House.
      Even as Ludwig said Trump’s arguments “fail as a matter of law and fact” an attorney for the president, Jim Troupis, was busy arguing in another case, before a skeptical Wisconsin state supreme court, a lawsuit that, if successful, would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin’s most diverse counties, Dane and Milwaukee, where Biden won.
      Trump is not challenging any votes in Wisconsin counties that he won.
      “This lawsuit, Mr Troupis, smacks of racism,“ the justice Jill Karofsky said to Trump’s attorney early in his arguments.
      “I do not know how you can come before this court and possibly ask for a remedy that is unheard of in US history … It is not normal,” she added.
      One of Karofsky’s fellow judges in that case, where a decision is now awaited, pointed out that Trump also did not make such challenges when he won Wisconsin on his way to the White House in 2016. More