US elections 2020

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      Trump loses another case challenging election results in latest legal rebuke

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      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

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      After the fact: the five ways Trump has tried to attack democracy post-election

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      The decisive rejection by the US supreme court of an attempt by one state, Texas, to throw out election results in four other states might prevent the recurrence of such an effort in future presidential elections.But the Texas lawsuit was not the only unprecedented attack to be leveled on US democracy during the November presidential election, and other such efforts could escalate in, or echo through, future elections for an unknown time to come.Historians could mark 2020 as the moment when Republicans applied the same zeal they have used to attack democracy in advance of elections, through voter suppression and gerrymandering, to attacking democracy on the back end, by trying to deny and overturn the results.Here is a list of five post-election attacks on democracy by Donald Trump and Republicans that were new in 2020 but might haunt elections for years to come.Especially reckless and sustained election fraud chargesFalse accusations of election fraud are a fixture of US elections, but Trump has professionalized the enterprise, making more audacious and systemic claims of election fraud than ever before and coaxing more elected officials to go along with the lies than seemed possible before the Trump era.Republicans normalized Trump’s false charges by treating them as “legal challenges”. But by declining to acknowledge the election result, Republicans lent weight to the notion that something unusual was afoot apart from Trump’s effort to subvert the popular will, and they held open a months-long window for Trump’s lies to circulate, during which faith in US democracy was damaged.Political pressure on local elections officialsWill the certification of election results in key counties ever again be taken for granted? And will the partisan poison that reached down to the local level in 2020 corrupt the conduct of future elections at that level?This was the year for local officials from both parties to receive death threats as they worked to finish the vote counting and then certify the result. Many Republican officials, as in Philadelphia, Michigan and Georgia, reacted to the pressure with expressions of outrage and brave statements of principle. But other local Republican officials, as in Detroit, responded to the merest charm offensive from Trump by trying to retract their certification of the county results.In healthier times for the US democracy, no one paid much attention to the certification process because it was taken as an article of unexamined faith that the vote was the vote and the only role officials had was to stamp it. Now there is a plain chance that officials might take direction from the White House, the Republican National Committee or someone else instead of voters.External legal challenges to the certification of state election resultsLawsuits have developed around elections before, but never in US history has an election been followed by a legal battle of the scope mounted by the Trump campaign. Trump, the loser, sued in every state, with multiple lawsuits, where flipping the result could help him win.The fact that Trump lost basically all the lawsuits might not discourage future presidential campaigns from building a national post-election legal strategy into their victory plan: if you can’t win at the ballot box, try the courts.Internal political challenges to the certification of state election resultsGoaded by Trump, legislators in Pennsylvania asked the supreme court to prevent certification by the state of its result. Republican Senate candidates in Georgia demanded that the Republican secretary of state withdraw from the certification there. The Republican party in Arizona demonstrated extremely shrill behavior, demanding that the election not be certified and even challenging Twitter followers to express their willingness to die to prevent certification.On the whole, efforts by these state elected officials to respond to Trump’s sudden demand that they overthrow what everyone had previously recognized as a democratic process were half-hearted and ineffectual. But if state elected officials get serious about disrupting the certification process, they might come more prepared in future elections.The president’s roleShould a president of the United States, after an election, be calling up county election officials in charge of certifying the results? Should a president invite lawmakers weighing an intervention in their state’s certification process for lunch? Should a president call out the mob on Twitter against a local election official or a state secretary of state who has resisted his schemes?Whatever damage US democracy has sustained in 2020, much of it traces back to the source, to a president who did not see anything wrong in 2019 with coercing a foreign leader to try to take out a political opponent, who made the fealty of state governors a condition of pandemic aid, and who now has twisted the arms of elected officials across the United States in an effort to subvert the will of American voters.The role that Trump has played in attacking the integrity of the American system is the most outrageous and unprecedented of all the unholy perversions of democracy that 2020 has seen. Whether that role will be replicated or reprised in future White Houses, and in future elections, could make all the difference. More

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      Trump's coup is failing but American democracy is still on the critical list

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      Nearly four decades after the publication of A Very British Coup, a popular novel by member of parliament Chris Mullin, America is in the throes of a very Trumpian coup – desperate, mendacious, frenzied and sometimes farcical and, most importantly, doomed to failure.
      But even as Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election result face a knockout blow when the electoral college meets on Monday, the president is winning in other ways that could cause profound collateral damage.
      Trump has raised more than $170m since losing to Joe Biden by requesting donations for an “election defense fund”. He has reasserted his dominance of the Republican party, many of whose members have either advanced his lies about a rigged election or maintained a complicit silence.
      And his war on democracy, amplified by rightwing media to millions of Americans, threatens to burn long after Joe Biden takes the oath of office on 20 January. There are already signs of a new grievance movement rising from the ashes of Trump’s defeat to shape the future of Republican politics. It is driven by disinformation, rage and the core premise that Biden is an illegitimate president.
      “What was a fracture in our democratic process is now a break,” said Kurt Bardella, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project. “The Republican party has shown itself to be completely immune to facts, truth and common sense. There is not going to be a moment where it collectively decides, ‘Oh, my gosh, what have we been doing all this time?’
      “There is not going to be a great epiphany. They are going to continue down this path of dismantling the country as we knew it because their ideology isn’t about an issue or a specific public policy. Their identity is only the pursuit of power and the means to try to hold on to it and get more of it.” More

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      Supreme court rejects Trump-backed Texas lawsuit aiming to overturn election results

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      The US supreme court has unanimously rejected a baseless lawsuit filed by Texas seeking to overturn the presidential election result, dealing the biggest blow yet to Donald Trump’s assault on democracy.In a brief, one page order, all nine justices on America’s highest court dismissed the longshot effort to throw out the vote counts in four states that the president lost: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.The decision hammers another nail in the coffin of Trump’s increasingly desperate effort to subvert the will of the people and deny Joe Biden the presidency.The suit filed by Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, sought to invalidate the results in four swing states, asking the court to extend the deadline for election certification so alleged voting irregularities could be investigated.It was backed by Donald Trump, 17 other states and 126 Republicans in the House of Representatives – more than half the caucus – including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, and the minority whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana.Trump had long expressed hope that a disputed election would go before the supreme court, to which he appointed three justices during his term, ensuring a 6-3 conservative majority. Earlier on Friday he tweeted: “If the Supreme Court shows great Wisdom and Courage, the American People will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our Electoral Process will be respected again!”But hours later, his hopes of a political miracle were all but extinguished. The supreme court wrote: “The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”Officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin had derided the suit as a publicity stunt. More than 20 other attorneys general from states including California and Virginia also filed a brief on Thursday urging the court to reject the case.Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania, welcomed the court’s ruling. “Our nation’s highest court saw through this seditious abuse of our electoral process,” he tweeted. “This swift denial should make anyone contemplating further attacks on our election think twice.”Democrats in Congress also expressed gratitude. Eric Swalwell of California tweeted: “The Supreme Court, a mix of conservative and liberal members, united to defend your vote against @realDonaldTrumpand his democracy deniers in Congress.”And Senator Ben Sasse, one of relatively few Republicans to acknowledge Biden’s victory, signalled that it was time for the party and government to move on. He said: “Since Election Night, a lot of people have been confusing voters by spinning Kenyan Birther-type, ‘Chavez rigged the election from the grave’ conspiracy theories, but every American who cares about the rule of law should take comfort that the Supreme Court – including all three of President Trump’s picks – closed the book on the nonsense.”Courts have dismissed numerous of lawsuits and appeals by the Trump campaign and its allies in various states. William Barr, the attorney general and a staunch Trump ally, has said the justice department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the election.Saturday will mark the 20th anniversary of the court resolving the 2000 election in Republican George W Bush’s favour but that was a much closer contest that came down to one state: Florida. Biden gained 306 votes in the electoral college – the same as Trump in 2016 – and leads the national popular vote by 7m.Some Democrats have accused Trump and his Republican backers of sedition. Chris Murphy, a senator for Connecticut, said in a floor speech on Friday: “Those who are pushing to make Donald Trump president for a second term, no matter the outcome of the election, are engaged in a treachery against their nation.” More

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      Nearly two-thirds of House Republicans join baseless effort to overturn election

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      More than 120 Republican members of the US House of Representatives formally asked the US supreme court this week to prevent four swing states from casting electoral votes for Joe Biden to seal his victory in the November election, a brazen move that signals how the Republican party has embraced Donald Trump’s baseless attacks on the American electoral system.The request from 126 GOP members – nearly two-thirds of the Republican caucus – came in support of a lawsuit Texas filed earlier this week that sought to block the electoral votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia, all states Biden won in November. The lawsuit also won support from top House Republicans.The suit was ultimately rejected by the supreme court on Friday. The US constitution gives states clear authority to set their own election and does not give other states the right to interfere. Texas’s argument in the suit was also based on unsupported claims of fraud that have been dismissed in lower courts.“The lawsuit has so many fundamental flaws that it’s hard to know where to start. It misstates basic principles of election law and demands a remedy that is both unconstitutional and unavailable,” Lisa Marshall Manheim, a law professor at the University of Washington, wrote in an email. “At core, it’s an incoherent amalgamation of claims that already failed in the lower courts.”Despite its ultimate failure the lawsuit represented a troubling case that was unprecedented in American history: a quest to overturn a presidential election on the basis of unsubstantiated claims by an incumbent who soundly lost his re-election bid.It also became a test of fealty for the president’s party that pitted Republican governors, lawmakers and elected officials against one another.One supreme court brief, filed by prominent Republicans in opposition to the Texas lawsuit, said the arguments “make a mockery of federalism and separation of powers”.Among the 126 lawmakers who signed on to the brief is a particularly puzzling group: 19 Republican members of Congress who represent districts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin.Those members all appeared on the same ballot as the presidential candidates and all but one were elected under the same rules to which they are now objecting.(Meanwhile, Doug Collins, a Georgia congressman, ran for a US Senate seat and lost. Collins conceded his race, thereby accepting his defeat in a statewide election, and was later chosen by the Trump campaign to lead its recount effort in the state.)By signing on to the brief, those lawmakers are essentially arguing that their own results could have been tainted by the same irregularities they say cost Trump the election in their state.The Guardian contacted the offices of all 18 of those Republicans who won re-election to ask if they believed there should be further investigation into their electoral victories in November. None of them responded to a request for comment.Most of the lawmakers who supported the effort are far-right conservatives from deep red districts that voted for Trump. But collectively, their support for the lawsuit meant that more than a quarter of the House, including the California congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader, believe the supreme court should invalidate the votes of tens of millions of Americans.Seventeen Republican attorneys general have also signed on in support of the last-ditch legal bid to overturn the 2020 presidential contest before states’ electors meet on Monday to officially declare Biden the victor.Biden won the election with 306 electoral votes, the same number that Trump won in 2016, and he leads the popular vote by more than 7 million. The four states targeted by the Texas lawsuit represent 62 electoral votes.Biden soundly defeated Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania, part of the “blue wall” that Trump shattered in 2016. Biden also clawed back a third “blue wall” state – Wisconsin – while eking out a surprise victory in Georgia, where multiple recounts have affirmed his win despite an audacious attempt by the president to pressure the Republican governor and secretary of state to reverse the result.Dozens of lawsuits brought by Trump’s campaign and allies in state and federal court were unsuccessful, with the cases so lacking in evidence of the widespread voter fraud they alleged that judges summarily dismissed, derided and even denounced them as meritless. Election law experts have also roundly criticized the Texas lawsuit, pointing to what they say are substantial legal flaws in the argument brought forth by the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton.Paxton, a staunch ally of the president, is under indictment in a long-running securities fraud case and faces a separate federal investigation related to allegations that he abused the power of his office in connection with a political donor. He has denied the allegations. Yet Paxton’s attempts to override the election results have raised speculation that he may be angling for a presidential pardon, though he insists that is not his motivation. More

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      States targeted in Texas election fraud lawsuit condemn 'cacophony of bogus claims'

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      Attorneys general from both parties reject baseless allegations in case filed with US supreme courtGeorgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Thursday urged the US supreme court to reject a lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by Donald Trump seeking to undo Joe Biden’s victory, saying the case has no factual or legal grounds and makes “bogus” claims.“What Texas is doing in this proceeding is to ask this court to reconsider a mass of baseless claims about problems with the election that have already been considered, and rejected, by this court and other courts,” Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general, wrote in a filing to the nine justices. Continue reading… More

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      US records over 3,000 Covid deaths in a day for first time – live updates

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      Key events

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      4.43pm EST16:43
      Texas attorney general files 11th-hour election lawsuit against four states to the supreme court

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      Biden says ‘Defund the Police’ gave momentum to GOP to ‘beat the living hell out of us’ in election

      1.09pm EST13:09
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      10.34am EST10:34
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      8.36am EST08:36
      853,000 Americans applied for jobless insurance last week

      7.52am EST07:52
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      4.43pm EST16:43

      Texas attorney general files 11th-hour election lawsuit against four states to the supreme court

      The supreme court today is deliberating a lawsuit filed by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton against four battleground states – Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan – in an attempt to have million of votes tossed out on claims that the states did not seriously investigate voter fraud, though there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election.
      Donald Trump and 17 Republican-led states backed the lawsuit, which is a clear 11th-hour attempt at trying to overturn the election in Trump’s favor, though all 50 states have certified their election results. The Trump campaign and local Republican parties have been instigating lawsuits in attempts to change the election since the results were announced over a month ago, but the vast majority have died in court.
      Though Trump has suggested he hopes the three conservative judges he appointed to the court will side with him in an election dispute, the supreme court has so far shown no interest in intervening with the results of the election. The court quickly denied its first chance to give a win to the Trump campaign after it rejected a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to block the state’s certification of votes.
      The four states targeted by the lawsuit have already responded to the filing. The court may wait for Texas’ response to those or it could make a ruling before the state gets a chance to file such a response.
      While the GOP has already run out of time to fight the election, next week will be the last official step to Joe Biden becoming the next president as the electoral college is scheduled to meet 14 December to finalize the results of the election.

      Updated
      at 4.49pm EST

      4.21pm EST16:21

      Jessica Glenza

      Let’s go through some of the details of the vaccine being considered by the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory committee.
      The FDA advisory panel is considering whether to recommend the vaccine for emergency use authorization, often called EUA. That would allow the vaccine to be distributed to the public, but is a lower bar than full approval and only valid during the public health emergency – in this case the Covid-19 pandemic.
      Supplies will be very limited at first. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has already recommended the first people to receive the vaccine – health workers and long-term care residents.
      The vaccine appears highly effective. According to data published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, the vaccine appears to be 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 a trial of more than 43,000 people. The study looked at a two-shot regimen.
      The vaccine is a messenger RNA vaccine, which provokes immunity by introducing the immune system to the spike protein on the coronavirus.
      The trial was a randomized, placebo-controlled observer-blinded trial that split participants evenly between people who received two shots of a placebo, and two shots of the vaccine – currently called “BNT162b2”.
      The study looked specifically at people 16 years and older. In future studies, Pfizer intends to look at vaccine safety and efficacy in children as young as 12.
      Side effects included headache, fatigue and fever, which resolved within a couple days. The government intends to use several surveillance programs to collect information on side effects, called “adverse events”, for years after the vaccine is distributed. It will also begin a surveillance study on healthcare workers specifically.
      The FDA recommended continued surveillance for Bell’s palsy, or facial paralysis. There is no current evidence that the vaccine causes facial paralysis, but four cases among vaccine recipients in the trial.
      The FDA found only one possible serious adverse effect related to the vaccine, which was a shoulder injury. Other serious adverse events, such as a case of appendicitis, were found not to be unrelated to the vaccine.
      Trial participants were followed for a median of two months after they received either the vaccine or a placebo. Most adverse vaccine reactions take place within six weeks.
      Scientists are still studying how long immunity lasts, a concept known as “durability”, and the rate of asymptomatic disease in people who receive the vaccine.
      There is very little data on safety and efficacy in pregnant and lactating women, but there is also no evidence it is harmful to pregnant women or the fetus. For that reason, FDA officials suggest pregnant women should discuss the vaccine with their healthcare provider, when it becomes available to them.
      The panel is expected to recommend an emergency use authorization, and the FDA is expected to grant emergency use rights. The New England Journal of Medicine, which published Pfizer’s results today, called the new vaccine a “triumph” of science.

      Updated
      at 4.36pm EST

      4.00pm EST16:00

      Joan E Greve

      More than 100 female leaders in the Native American community and entertainment industry have signed on to a letter calling on Joe Biden to nominate congresswoman Deb Haaland as interior secretary.
      “As women who have worked to protect our democracy and advance the promise of this country, we are hopeful and relieved that you will be leading us into a bright future,” the letter says.
      “It is in this spirit that we, Native American women and Indigenous peoples’ allies, write to urge you to appoint Congresswoman Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Department of the Interior.”
      Among those who have signed on to the letter are singer Cher, actress Kerry Washington and feminist activist Gloria Steinam.
      If nominated and confirmed, Haaland, a progressive congresswoman from New Mexico, would be the first Native American to lead the interior department.
      “We believe it is critical at this time for the first Native American to serve in the President’s Cabinet, so we can begin to shift the focus back to caring for future generations and returning to a value system that honors Mother Earth,” the letter says. “We believe that person is Congresswoman Deb Haaland.”
      Progressive groups have pushed for Haaland’s nomination, but some Democratic leaders have expressed hesitation about pulling another House member into Biden’s cabinet, given the party’s very narrow margin in the chamber after last month’s elections.

      3.37pm EST15:37

      The New Hampshire House Speaker, Dick Hinch, who was sworn into his role just last week, died yesterday from Covid-19.
      News of Hinch’s death yesterday was unexpected. A statement announcing his death did not include a cause of death, but said that Hinch, who was 71, was “a loving husband, father, family man, and veteran who devoted his life to public service”. Hinch’s office said his death was an “unexpected tragedy”.
      A medical examiner today announced that Hinch had died from Covid-19.
      In response, the state’s acting Speaker Sherman Packard and Senate President Chuck Morse said they are “committed to protecting the health and safety of our fellow legislators and staff members who work at the statehouse in Concord”. Their statement said they will be working with the state’s health department to see if there are any additional Covid-19 protocols that can be put in place “to ensure the continued protection of our legislators and staff”. More

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      in US Politics

      Fight to vote: is the US election finally in its endgame?

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      Hello Fight to Vote readers,It feels like this election has lasted about 20 years, but we’re finally in the last few days. Tuesday was the “Safe Harbor” deadline, when most election disputes must be resolved. And on Monday, the electoral college will finally cast its votes, all but securing the president-elect’s position.In these final days, it’s clear that Republican officials who support Trump’s “the election was rigged against me” claims are taking their final gasps of air.Let’s take a trip back to TexasAfter a tumultuous year, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has decided to sue the battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. His claim? That all of their pandemic election changes violate federal law. Paxton claims that the attempts to increase access to the polls left open a window for “voter fraud” and weakened “ballot integrity”.Reminder: even Trump’s own attorney general found no evidence of widespread tampering or voter fraud in the election.So what happens now?Probably nothing. As with most of the Trump campaign’s lawsuits, legal experts are saying Paxton’s will have no real impact. However, these challenges serve to create an impression that our elections aren’t secure or fair – and that only further degrades trust in US democracy among the American people.How about the other last-ditch attempts?The supreme court decisively rejected a lawsuit by Pennsylvania’s Republican congressman Mike Kelly arguing that no-excuse absentee voting was illegal. The case was the first 2020 election legislation to reach the highest court in the US.
      Representative Alex Mooney, from West Virginia, introduced a resolution on Tuesday to condemn any lawmakers who call on Trump to concede “prematurely”, though the president lost the election by a significant margin. Many Republicans have distanced themselves from this kind of rhetoric, however, and the resolution isn’t likely to move forward in any meaningful way.
      Representative Kelly Loeffler, the Republican senator running for re-election in Georgia’s heated January runoff, refused to accept Trump’s defeat in a debate on Sunday. The current polls have Loeffler losing by a small margin.
      Here’s what to watch in the coming weeks:14 December: Electors will meet in their respective states and cast votes for US president. Each state gets two votes for its senators and one vote for each member of the House of Representatives. Some Republicans have said they will challenge the count.23 December: Electoral votes must arrive in Washington by this date.6 January: Electoral votes are counted. If there are objections, the House and Senate consider how they should move forward and count the votes. It’s unlikely that the objections will have an impact on the election since both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to sign off.20 January: Inauguration day. The new president takes the oath of office at noon.Meanwhile, if you missed it, Saturday Night Live had a brilliant sketch on Trump’s failed lawsuits last weekend. More