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      The madness of King Trump, America's sulky George III sequel | Ian Martin

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      “He went mad and lost America”. A conventional summary of King George III, the tragic figure who took on the colonies, sending in his troops to “dominate” the streets and crush resistance. Alas, the war of independence didn’t end well, for George anyway. Defeated, bipolar, suffering frequent manic episodes, he retreated to Windsor Castle having nevertheless amassed an impressive library and a reputation for cultured intelligence.
      A couple of centuries and 45 presidents later, Old King Trump sits barricaded in the White House doing nothing much. His face puckered into that trademark rosebud of petulance. Barking at underlings. Pretending HE won because a lot of Democrat votes were from dead people and very illegal. His sulky-toddler folded arms, like that time he refused to say a single kind word when fellow Republican and war hero John McCain died. There’s something almost majestic about Trump’s utter contempt for the office of president.
      Karl Marx – apparently the evil genius behind peaceful protest and Medicare – said that historical entities appear twice, “first as tragedy, then as farce”. That feels about right. More

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      Biden's first staff appointments include five women and four people of color

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      Joe Biden, the US president-elect, made another sharp break from Donald Trump on Tuesday by naming a White House senior staff that “looks like America”, including several women and people of colour.Trump has been criticised for running the most white and male administration since Ronald Reagan. There are currently four women and 19 men in cabinet or cabinet-level positions. Picks for the federal judiciary are also dominated by white men.But Biden and Kamala Harris, who will be the first female and first Black vice-president, have promised to build a team to reflect shifting demographics. Tuesday’s first wave of appointments included five women and four people of colour.Jen O’Malley Dillon will be White House deputy chief of staff. The 44-year-old, who as campaign manager was the first woman to lead a winning Democratic presidential bid, will work under Ron Klain, anointed chief of staff last week.Cedric Richmond, a national co-chair of Biden’s campaign and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, will quit the House of Representatives to join as a senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.Dana Remus, the campaign’s top lawyer, will be senior counsel to the president. Longtime advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti will be senior adviser and counsellor to the president respectively.Julie Chavez Rodriguez, one of Biden’s deputy campaign managers and the granddaughter of the farmworker union leader César Chávez, will be director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Annie Tomasini, currently Biden’s traveling chief of staff, will be director of Oval Office operations.In a statement, Biden’s transition team said: “These diverse, experienced, and talented individuals demonstrate President-elect Biden’s commitment to building an administration that looks like America.”It also quoted Biden as saying: “America faces great challenges, and they bring diverse perspectives and a shared commitment to tackling these challenges and emerging on the other side a stronger, more united nation.”The appointments reward many of the advisers who helped Biden beat Trump in the 3 November election. Biden won the national popular vote by at least 5.6m votes, or 3.6 points, and in the state-by-state electoral college secured 306 votes to 232.The announcement also reflected Biden’s determination to press ahead with a transition despite Trump’s increasingly tenuous effort to reverse the election.The former vice-president was due to discuss national security threats on Tuesday with his own advisers, rather than government officials, as the Trump administration has blocked him from receiving the classified briefings normally accorded to a president-elect.Emily Murphy, the general services administrator, has not yet recognised Biden as the “apparent winner”, which is needed to release funding and office space.Seeking to project calm, Biden told reporters on Monday: “I find this more embarrassing for the country, than debilitating for my ability to get started.”But he expressed frustration over the impact on his attempt to fight the coronavirus pandemic: “More people may die if we don’t coordinate … If we have to wait to 20 January to start that planning, it puts us behind over a month and a half. So it’s important that it be done, that there be coordination now or as rapidly as we can get it done.”Trump has not conceded and has repeatedly claimed without evidence he is the victim of widespread voter fraud. His campaign has filed multiple lawsuits in battleground states – without success. The president has remained defiant even as a minority of Republicans have said Biden should be considered president-elect.Election officials in both parties have said they see no evidence of serious irregularities.Trump campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine was asked on Tuesday what evidence the campaign had for its claims. She told Fox News: “That’s part of what our pursuit is at this point … There’s no silver bullet here. It’s going to take a little bit of time.”One of Trump’s legal challenges was due a hearing on Tuesday in a Pennsylvania federal court, where another setback would probably kill off his already slim chances. US district judge Matthew Brann will hear arguments in a Trump lawsuit that seeks to block the state’s top election official from certifying Biden the winner.Pennsylvania officials have said the dispute only affects a small number of ballots in a state where Biden is projected to win by more than 70,000.Georgia is undertaking a manual recount. Its top elections official, secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, said in TV interviews the audit was almost complete and the results would be largely unchanged.Raffensperger also repeated his assertion that fellow Republicans, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have pressured him to find ways to throw out legally cast votes.“I’ve always been a conservative Republican and I want to make sure we have a lawful process because I think integrity still matters,” he told CBS. “That’s what this audit is going to do.”Graham, a diehard Trump loyalist, denied the allegation. “No, that’s ridiculous,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I talked to him about how you verify signatures.”Asked why a senator from South Carolina was involving himself in Georgia, Graham replied: “Because the future of the country hangs in the balance.”The Rev William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, tweeted: “Lindsey Graham trying to get [the Georgia secretary of state] to not count legal votes is not a surprise. Graham has supported voter suppression tactics for years.“Election rigging is real, but it doesn’t suppress the Republican vote. It’s of Black, brown, Native American, & poor voters.” More

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      Lindsey Graham condemned for allegedly pressuring Georgia to toss out ballots

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      Democrats and political observers were quick to condemn the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, after it was reported that he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to exclude ballots in the state’s presidential recount.
      In a tweet, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar called the alleged approach “insane and illegal”.
      Hakeem Jeffries, a US representative from New York, asked: “Did Lindsey Graham illegally pressure the Georgia secretary of state to rig the election after the fact? The justice department should find out.”
      Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said: “For the chairman of the Senate committee charged with oversight of our legal system to have reportedly suggested that an election official toss out large numbers of legal ballots from American voters is appalling.”
      Graham, from South Carolina, should resign his role as chair of the judiciary committee, Bookbinder said.
      Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Georgia by just under 15,000 votes, the first time the state had gone for a Democrat since 1996. A hand recount was ordered, and is expected to be completed by 20 November.
      It is unlikely to change the result. If it did, the state’s 16 votes would not change the overall result in the electoral college, which Biden won 306-232. The threshold for victory is 270.
      Nonetheless, Trump refuses to concede defeat and continues to peddle debunked conspiracy theories regarding voter fraud and electoral irregularities which election officials from both parties have dismissed as baseless.
      Raffensperger told the Washington Post Graham had indicated he should find ways to toss out legal mail-in ballots.
      “It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” he said.
      Counties administer elections in Georgia, making Raffensperger powerless to do what Graham apparently wanted.
      “It was just an implication of, ‘Look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out,’” Raffensperger told CNN.
      Graham told the Hill the claim was “just ridiculous” and that “if he [felt] threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem.
      “I actually thought it was a good conversation,” the senator said, adding that he was “surprised to hear [Raffensperger] characterized it that way”.
      On Tuesday, Graham said he had spoken to election officials in several battleground states, where a dwindling group of Trump allies continue to push his baseless claims.
      “Yeah, I talked to Arizona, I talked to Nevada,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill.
      He was forced to clarify that he had spoken to the Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, not Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state, after she said she had not spoken to Graham.
      Raffensperger has faced mounting criticism from his own party for defending the state’s electoral process. He told the Post he had received threatening messages from “people on [his] side of the aisle”, demanding that he “better not botch” the recount.
      Georgia’s two senators, David Perdue and Kelley Loeffler, have called for his resignation. Both face tight run-off elections.
      Graham’s alleged approach to Raffensperger prompted widespread criticism in the mainstream media.
      Writing for the Post, the conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin asked why Graham “would need to know this information and decide directly to contact Raffensperger.
      “Federal and/or state law enforcement should get to the bottom of this, requiring both parties to the conversation, and any witnesses, to preserve evidence. Graham’s actions have called into question his willingness to uphold the sanctity of elections.” More

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      How Trump’s presidency turned off some Republicans – a visual guide

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      After four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, many voters who typically vote Republican turned against him.
      For example, in Winnebago county, Wisconsin, about 72% of voters cast their ballot for the Republican House candidate – either Glenn Grothman or Mike Gallagher, depending on where they live. But just 52% cast their vote for Trump.
      This happened in county after county: Trump performed worse than other Republicans on the ballot. Here’s how Trump performed in each county compared with the Republican House candidate on the same ballot:
      House v Trump 2020 map
      This is why Trump lost the election, but why Republicans gained seats in the House.
      To be clear, Trump also underperformed other Republicans in 2016. But since the last election, the gap between Trump and other Republicans grew in all kinds of communities in the US. In other words, the election wasn’t just about Democrats rejecting Trump by turning out in record numbers. It was also about Republicans and independents who preferred the Republican party – but just without Donald Trump.
      White Republican counties turned away from Trump
      Trump’s appeal in 2016 was especially salient in very white counties, where he actually outperformed Republican House candidates.
      But this time around, Trump underperformed in these areas – and he did even worse everywhere else.
      Race chart
      For example in Christian county, Illinois, where about 95% of the population is white, Trump won about 73% of the votes. But the Republican house candidate, Rodney Davis, did 10 percentage points better.
      Meanwhile, Trump severely underperformed Republican House candidates in places with more people of color, which tend to be metropolitan areas. But these places aren’t a monolith. In fact, in a few areas with more people of color, Trump actually outperformed the House candidate.
      For example, in Zapata county, Texas, a predominantly Hispanic area near the southern border, Trump won with 53% of the votes. But the Republican House candidate, Sandra Whitten, lost by nearly 20 points.
      We can see that distribution in this chart showing how Trump did in every county:

      Still, the overarching takeaway is that even the Republican base in racially homogeneous parts of white America moved away from Trump this election.
      Trump lost ground with Republicans in metropolitan areas
      Metropolitan areas tend to skew Democratic, but there are still a huge number of Republicans. In those areas, Trump underperformed the House candidate with those voters by four points in 2016. This time around, he underperformed by more than 12 points.
      urban/rural chart
      This tracks with the data on how Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Democrats made huge gains in the suburbs of big cities, like Philadelphia and Milwaukee. But not only did they get big turnout there; many Republicans also didn’t vote for Trump.
      Meanwhile, in rural areas Trump actually performed better than he did in 2020.

      But if Republicans are doing electoral math here, just 8 million presidential voters live in what this analysis categorizes as rural counties. Even though Trump won those areas by 3.5 million votes, it’s only a fraction of the amount by which Trump underperformed in more populous areas.
      Trump did far worse than Republicans down-ballot in areas with more college degrees
      One of the biggest determinants of how an area voted was the portion of the population that has a college degree.
      In places with more degrees, Trump largely kept up with ballot Republicans in 2016. In 2020, that gap widened.
      Education chart
      For example in Madison county, Mississippi – a Jackson suburb where nearly half the residents over 25 have college degrees – Trump won 58% of the vote. But the Republican House candidates in the county got 73% of the vote.
      Meanwhile, in the parts of America with the lowest rate of college degrees, Trump did quite well compared with the Republican House candidate. In fact, in the majority of these counties, which tend to be more rural, Trump actually outperformed down-ballot Republicans.

      One caveat of this analysis is that it uses county-level data, which means some of the nuances in larger counties are left unexplored. These metropolitan areas are categorized as having more college degrees. But these areas also have high levels of inequality, which means there are also a lot of people who don’t have high-school diplomas.
      Trump may have less appeal – but Trumpism isn’t gone
      This data hardly means Trumpism is fading away in the party.
      After all, Trump is trying to stage a coup by insisting he won an election that he clearly lost – and many Republicans officials are staying silent or parroting his argument. In addition, 70% of Republicans agree with Trump and they say the election was not “free and fair” despite no evidence backing up this claim.
      Still, what this means is that four years of Trump pushed away a significant swath of Republican and independent voters.
      So how do Republicans perform without Trump on the ballot? The first test will be in the Georgia special elections in January which will determine the balance of the US Senate. Even though Trump lost Georgia by a few thousand votes, both House and Senate Republicans outperformed Trump – and could do so by even bigger margins in the special election without Trump weighing them down. More

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      Trump lawyer contesting election result said 'litigation will not work'

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      [embedded content]
      A lawyer fighting for Donald Trump in the US president’s attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden said shortly after election day that “no bombshells” would derail the Democrat’s victory, and “the litigation will not work”.
      Trump has not conceded to Biden, despite losing the electoral college 306-232 and trailing by 5.5m ballots in the popular vote. While the president seeks redress in the courts in multiple states, the lack of a concession is delaying transition work, with detrimental effects for national security and the fight against Covid-19.
      Marc Scaringi, 51 and from Harrisburg, was retained by the Trump campaign on Monday, to replace attorneys who dropped out of the attempt to overturn the result in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by about 70,000 votes.
      Scaringi has previously run for a Republican Senate nomination and volunteered for the Trump campaign. On election day, he posted to Twitter a picture of people watching results in Washington DC, with the comment: “Biden’s people ready for a coup if he loses.”
      He also has his own conservative talkshow on iHeartRadio. Broadcasting on 7 November, four days after election day and shortly after Pennsylvania put Biden over the top, he said: “In my opinion, there really are no bombshells that are about to drop that will derail a Biden presidency, including these lawsuits.
      “I’ve been saying since Wednesday morning that Biden would win.”
      He also said that though some Trump legal challenges “had merit … at the end of the day, in my view, the litigation will not work. It will not reverse this election.”
      On Saturday 14 November, Scaringi said it was “up to the Trump lawyers to get some good results in these lawsuits to try to flip the vote count”.
      On Monday, he was retained in that effort. Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to Trump, said the move to retain local counsel was “consistent with routine managing of complex litigation”.
      The judge in the Pennsylvania case, however, denied Scaringi’s request for a delay to a hearing set for Tuesday afternoon, at which the state will attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed.
      The Washington Post, meanwhile, said a blogpost on Scaringi’s law firm website entitled “How President-Elect Joe Biden’s Plan Could Affect Your Taxes” appeared to have been taken down. More

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      Why US ballot count live streams became misinformation magnets

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      At a vote-counting center in Montgomery county, Maryland, a man sat in a room with other election workers, wearing a grey hat and dark purple rubber gloves. He unfolded a ballot, looked around and leaned forward to mark it. The man appeared on a Yahoo Finance livestream of the center. The video went viral, one version ending up on YouTube, where the narrator said they found it on 4chan.“Do you notice that, folks?” said the narrator. “How he looks around to see if anyone is watching him – as if he’s about to commit a crime?”The video spread across social media, viewers claiming the election worker was committing fraud. Then election officials launched an investigation and found the voter hadn’t used a dark enough pen to mark their ballot; the worker was darkening their selections – a routine practice.Live streams of the ballot count aren’t a new phenomenon. But this year the practice exploded as Donald Trump cast doubts on the integrity of the vote and the pandemic made in-person options of observing the vote difficult. In the aftermath of a fraught election, many are still grappling to figure out if this method of achieving transparency is too vulnerable to being manipulated or taken out of context to further a political agenda.When Paul Andrews was elected auditor of Kitsap county, Washington, two years ago, the first thing he did was implement a live stream of the ballot count. It was a no-brainer to Andrews, and with his IT background, easy to facilitate. Some people, he said, looked at their favorite vacation spot from their computer during their lunch break. Andrews, instead, watched the count.But this year was different. The 2020 election had occupied Andrews’ mind for years leading up to the count, and he not only led the livestreaming effort, but also hired and trained more staff and upgraded equipment so election day could run without controversy. “Everything we’ve done over these last couple years has been in preparation for this,” Andrews said.Election officials across the country, like Andrews, began to prepare even before the pandemic. In Arizona, state legislators passed a law in 2019 requiring that each county have a live stream. As pro-Trump protesters convened outside vote-counting centers in Maricopa county, demanding that the vote be counted, the live streams became a way for the public to observe the count themselves.“Arizona does a lot of things wrong,” said the Arizona state senator Martín Quezada, from Maricopa county, who introduced the bill. “But the way we run our elections, I think we’ve been doing it very, very well.”The concerns from officials about the general election were legitimate: Trump has refused to concede the election to Joe Biden and in many states, Republicans have challenged the results. Some claims can directly be refuted by the live streams.“It’s a real testament to how transparent [election officials] wanted this process,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “The Trump campaign is continuing to say that observers weren’t allowed in … We’ve got 24/7 video evidence of the counting process that anyone could watch showing observers in these locations.”But while thousands tuned into the live streams, these efforts sometimes backfired.In Delaware county, Pennsylvania, a video was taken from the live stream showing a woman filling in ballots. It went viral, proliferating further after Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point, a rightwing student organization, showed it during his election live stream.A spokesperson told USA Today the video had been misleadingly cropped; there were election observers at the end of the table and the worker was manually transcribing damaged ballots, a common and lawful practice.“The issue comes where information can be picked up, cut, taken out of context and reframed or reinterpreted,” said Kate Starbird, associate professor at the University of Washington and cofounder of the Center for an Informed Public. “That just becomes raw material for people trying to create conspiracy theories.”Counties can take precautions, according to Starbird, like adding the date and location on the feed. Some do this already – it was written into the Arizona law, for example, that feeds must include the date and time.Back in Kitsap county, Andrews breathed a sigh of relief that election day operations went smoothly, but things are not quite back to normal yet. In the past, he said, election workers would take time off and go on vacation in December, after the election was certified.But this year, Washington state is headed into a second lockdown due to a surge in coronavirus cases, and the president has yet to concede the election. So the workers may have to take advantage of a different type of streaming.“It doesn’t sound like anybody’s going to go anywhere,” Andrews said. “Maybe their couch and Netflix.” More