Michael Steele’s Comments Come at the 2:18 Mark

Dear Commons Community,

Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, could barely contain his contempt as he talked about people who are donating to President Donald Trump’s futile bid to overturn the 2020 election results.

Steele used one word to describe the donors ― “suckers” ― as he warned them that the reported $170 million contributed so far “ain’t going to no recount” but instead is being put into a so-called “leadership” PAC whose rules on spending are not massively regulated.

“The great little dirty part of this is Donald Trump right now is raising money at a faster rate to, sort of, steal the election than he did when he was trying to win the election,” Steele told MSNBC’s Joy Reid.

“And that’s what people need to understand. All right?” he added. “He’s raising more money now than he did when he was actually running for the job that he’s now trying to say that they stole from him! So, look, the grift is on, baby! It is just on. You need to understand it.”

Steele ran the RNC from 2009 to 2011 and has been a vocal Republican thorn in Trump’s side throughout his presidency.

He acknowledged that people can give Trump all the money they want.

“That’s on you,” he said. “But know what it’s going to.”

Steele’s comments echoed those of CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who on Tuesday described Trump’s fundraising effort as “another con.”

Those of us who live in New York have seen Trump’s scams for decades.  He is a grifter who takes advantage of others whether they be business partners, tenants in his buildings, or even his family.

Tony

Mitt Romney Interview Starts at the 1:00 mark.

Dear Commons Community,

Mitt Romney during an interview (see video above) decried the “great human tragedy” that has resulted from Donald Trump’s lack of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic and criticized fellow Republicans for politicizing mask-wearing.

“The extraordinary loss of life is heartbreaking,” the Utah senator told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday evening. “And in some cases unnecessary. … We’ve relaxed our standards as individuals, some states haven’t had mask mandates, and from Washington we have not had a constant, consistent plan and plea for people to wear masks, to social distance, to take all the measures that would reduce the spread of this disease.”

When asked about Republican governors dragging their feet on instituting mask mandates or social distancing measures, Romney said they needed to take the pandemic “very seriously and communicate that this is not a political matter; this is not a matter of liberty. This is a matter of safety and public health.”

Touching on the month’s long struggle within the Senate to approve a COVID-19 relief bill, Romney said he was “quite confident” that a package of some sort would be passed before the end of the year.

On Tuesday, the senator backed a bipartisan $908 billion proposal as a compromise between the $500 billion package supported by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the $2.2 trillion one pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). McConnell reportedly shot down the compromise proposal, but Romney still said he was still optimistic that portions of it would be utilized.

“We’ll see what [McConnell] incorporates in the final proposal,” Romney said. “We have a $900 billion bill; whether it becomes 800 or 700 or what the final number is uncertain. … But I do believe that key provisions extending unemployment insurance, extending support for small businesses, vaccine distribution funds ― these elements are going to be included.”

Before the interview ended, Romney ― who was the sole Republican senator who voted to convict Trump for abuse of power in February ― added that the president’s unproven claim of widespread election fraud “strikes at the very foundation of democracy here and around the world.”

“People watch America,” Romney said. “If we can’t have a free and fair election, how can they have it in other nations of the world? This is critical for the whole cause of democracy. Russia and China have to be just laughing, smiling from ear to ear.”

Thank you Senator Romney!  Where are your fellow Republican senators?

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction, or CASP, is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction that has taken place every two years since 1994.  CASP provides research groups with an opportunity to test their structure prediction methods and delivers an independent assessment of the state of the art in protein structure modeling to the research community and software users. Even though the primary goal of CASP is to help advance the methods of identifying protein three-dimensional structure from its amino acid sequence, many view the experiment more as a “world championship” in this field of science. More than 100 research groups from all over the world participate in CASP on a regular basis and it is not uncommon for entire groups to suspend their other research for months while they focus on getting their servers ready for the experiment and on performing the detailed predictions.  Past winners have chipped away at problem but a solution has eluded the scientific community. Last week at this year’s competition,  the CASP was not won by academics, but was won by a team at DeepMind, the artificial intelligence (AI) lab owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Incorporated.  Science  is reporting today that it was DeepMind’s  algorithm that not only won the competition this year but has actually solved the problem which had never been solved.

DeepMind’s victory in this development portends the future of biochemical research, one that will increasingly be driven by AI  infused technology and the people who oversee this technology.  One researcher said “It is not that machines are going to replace chemists and biologists, but that those who use machines will replace those that don’t.”

Congratulations to DeepMind.

The entire Science article is below!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton said  they’d be willing to take a coronavirus vaccine publicly, once one becomes available, to encourage all Americans to get inoculated against a disease that has already killed more than 275,000 people nationwide.

Former President Barack Obama said during an episode of SiriusXM’s “The Joe Madison Show” airing Thursday, “I promise you that when it’s been made for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it.”

“I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed,” Obama added, “just so that people know that I trust this science.”

[That may not be possible for a while. The Food and Drug Administration will consider authorizing emergency use of two vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna later this month, but current estimates project that no more than 20 million doses of each vaccine will be available by the end of this year. Each product also requires two doses, meaning shots will be rationed in the early stages.

Health care workers and nursing home residents should be at the front of the line, according to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. That encompasses about 24 million people out of a U.S. population of around 330 million.}

Former President Bill Clinton would “definitely” be willing to get a vaccine, as soon as one is “available to him, based on the priorities determined by public health officials,” spokesman Angel Ureña said.

“And he will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same,” Ureña said in a statement yesterday.

Ureña declined to say whether Clinton’s team has been in touch with other former presidents about perhaps setting up a joint public immunization session, whenever that might be possible.

Former President George W. Bush’s chief of staff, Freddy Ford, told CNN that Bush recently asked him to meet with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, to let them “know that, when the time is right, he wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated.”

“First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations,” Ford told the network. “Then, President Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.”

The only other living former president, Jimmy Carter, who at 96 is the oldest ex-president in U.S. history, also encouraged people to get vaccinated, but stopped short of pledging to do so himself in public.

“Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, said today that they are in full support of COVID-19 vaccine efforts and encourage everyone who is eligible to get immunized as soon as it becomes available in their communities,” the Carter Center said in a statement.

The voice of support comes as the U.S. recorded more than 3,100 COVID-19 deaths in a single day, far outpacing the record set last spring. The number of Americans hospitalized with the virus also has eclipsed 100,000 for the first time.

President Donald Trump was asked this summer if he would consider being the first to take the vaccine to send a message that it was safe. The president said that going first could also lead to accusations that he was being selfish, but that he would take it if recommended to do so.

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris also indicated that they would take the vaccine publicly. Biden added  half -jokingly “only if Dr.  Anthony Fauci approves it.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Joe Biden said yesterday (see video above) that he will ask Americans to commit to 100 days of wearing masks as one of his first acts as president, in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus which is raging out of control in parts of our country.

The move marks a notable shift from President Donald Trump, whose own skepticism of mask-wearing has contributed to a politicization of the issue. That’s made many people reticent to embrace a practice that public health experts say is one of the easiest ways to manage the pandemic, which has killed more than 275,000 Americans.   As reported by the Associated Press.

“The president-elect has frequently emphasized mask-wearing as a “patriotic duty” and during the campaign floated the idea of instituting a nationwide mask mandate, which he later acknowledged would be beyond the ability of the president to enforce.

Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Biden said he would make the request of Americans on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

“On the first day I’m inaugurated, I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask — not forever, just 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction” in the virus, Biden said.

The president-elect reiterated his call for lawmakers on Capitol Hill to pass a coronavirus aid bill and expressed support for a $900 billion compromise bill that a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced this week.

“That would be a good start. It’s not enough,” he said, adding, “I’m going to need to ask for more help.”

Biden has said his transition team is working on its own coronavirus relief package, and his aides have signaled they plan for that to be their first legislative push.

The president-elect also said he asked Dr. Anthony Fauci to stay on in his administration, “in the exact same role he’s had for the past several presidents,” as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert.

He said he’s asked Fauci to be a “chief medical adviser” as well as part of his COVID-19 advisory team.

Regarding a coronavirus vaccine, Biden offered begrudging credit for the work Trump’s administration has done in expediting the development of a vaccine but said that planning the distribution properly will be “critically important.”

“It’s a really difficult but doable project, but it has to be well planned, ” he said.

Part of the challenge the Biden administration will face in distributing the vaccine will be instilling public confidence in it. Biden said he’d be “happy” to get inoculated in public to assuage any concerns about its efficacy and safety. Three former presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — have said they’d also get vaccinated publicly to show that it’s safe.

“People have lost faith in the ability of the vaccine to work,” Biden said, adding that “it matters what a president and the vice president do.”

In the same interview, Biden also weighed in on reports that Trump is considering pardons of himself and his allies.

“It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice,” Biden said.

Biden committed that his Justice Department will “operate independently” and that whoever he chooses to lead the department will have the “independent capacity to decide who gets investigated.”

“You’re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons, nor are you going to see in our administration the approach to making policy by tweets,” he said.

In addition to considering preemptive pardons, Trump has spent much of his time post-election trying to raise questions about an election he lost by millions of votes while his lawyers pursue baseless lawsuits alleging voter fraud in multiple states.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, have largely given the president cover, with many defending the lawsuits and few publicly congratulating Biden on his win.

But Biden said yesterday that he’s received private calls of congratulations from “more than several sitting Republican senators” and that he has confidence in his ability to cut bipartisan deals with Republicans despite the rancor that’s characterized the last four years on Capitol Hill.

Trump aides have expressed skepticism that the president, who continues to falsely claim victory and spread baseless claims of fraud, would attend Biden’s inauguration. Biden said Thursday night that he believes it’s “important” that Trump attend, largely to demonstrate the nation’s commitment to peaceful transfer of power between political rivals.”

Our country desperately needs a president who can lead during this pandemic crisis.  Biden is the one!

Tony

Mary Trump

Dear Commons Community,

Mary Trump was interviewed last night by CNN’s Chris Cuomo,  during which she said she doesn’t think her uncle, Donald Trump, will run for president again — despite his teasing this week of a 2024 campaign.

Ms. Trump, the author and clinical psychologist — who released the tell-all memoir Too Much and Never Enough about her uncle in July ― doesn’t expect him to step away from politics altogether either.

Instead, she thinks the outgoing president will “take the position of spoiler because he lost so decisively” to President-elect Joe Biden and “because he cannot bear the thought of losing.”

“He’s going to put considerable energy, as least as long as he’s able to, into delegitimizing Biden’s win and his administration,” she warned during the interview. 

It would be “terrible” for the United States, she told Mr. Cuomo.

“At that point, we need to look at the Republicans in power and lay the blame at their feet at that point because they would be in a position to stop this insanity and thus far they seem not to be willing to do that because they know they need Donald’s base,” said Trump.

“The ReTrumplicans,” Cuomo responded.

Good name for what was once a proud group of politicians!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Katina Rogers, a colleague here at the CUNY Graduate Center, has an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning,  recommending ten useful steps to reform graduate education in the humanities.  Below is the entire article, it says it all!

Tony

10 Steps to Reform Graduate Education in the Humanities

Desperate times call for big changes. Here’s what professors and administrators should do to fix a broken graduate system.

By Katina L. Rogers

December 2, 2020

Covid-19 and its effects on higher education make this a particularly difficult moment for doctoral students in the humanities, where the job market has gone from bad to worse. Certainly they need faculty help as they look for career pathways in academe, as well as outside of it. But individual support is not enough. This is also a moment of reckoning for graduate programs — a moment when change is both possible and desperately needed.

My book, Putting the Humanities Ph.D. to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom, published in August by Duke University Press, is aimed at helping doctoral students explore their options. Here is my wish list of 10 major reforms that could improve the career outlook of the Ph.D.s whom universities produce. In some of the following suggestions, I also offer specific advice to graduate students.

The pandemic is showing that publicly relevant research and teaching are key to our humanity. Whether you are a student, a faculty member, or an administrator, these suggestions offer ideas to help move toward more sustaining, creative, joyful practices in graduate education and beyond.

Make space in graduate training for career exploration. Graduate school can be all-encompassing. Despite that reality (or, perhaps, because of it), it is also deeply valuable for graduate students to stay connected to skills, interests, and activities that are not necessarily part of traditional academic work.

• Graduate students: Think about the things that energize you, that you’re willing to make time for, that help you feel grounded — those can be useful indicators of what may one day become a fulfilling career path. Making space for priorities outside the university can bring greater perspective to your scholarly work.

Faculty members and administrators, you can make space for this kind of career reflection by encouraging students to lead balanced lives. One way to do that is by asking questions — from the earliest stages of graduate school — making clear that it is a good and normal thing to have commitments outside of the department. Ask open-ended questions and help students to see possible connections between their emerging scholarly interests and the things that motivate them in other ways.

For instance, you can ask about how a student’s research topic might be of use to a particular community group, or whether a student is involved in a relevant nonprofit agency. While talking about personal information can be delicate, sharing a bit about your own outside commitments can also be valuable. It can help students imagine their own futures if they know that the professors they admire have lives outside the university as well.

Expand the notion of what constitutes meaningful scholarship, and how to evaluate it. Peer-reviewed journal articles and scholarly monographs are not the only way to share research — far from it. Graduate students and faculty members have many opportunities to push the boundaries of meaningfully sharing research (though the career risk in doing so varies widely).

• Graduate students: It’s important to find faculty advisers who will support you if your dissertation falls outside your department’s usual parameters, and to be ready to point to examples of similar projects. Be flexible with your approach; systems and requirements do not change overnight, and some measure of compromise might help you to avoid getting stuck.

Professors in a position to do so should help pave the way for junior scholars to work creatively. Lobby for the acceptance of nontraditional dissertations that allow students to assemble and present their research in a way that makes sense for their goals, and for the nature of their particular project. Train other faculty members in how to evaluate innovative work by drawing on tools developed by scholarly societies like the Modern Language Association. Support tenure cases for scholars who take risks, engage with different audiences, and connect with varied communities.

Finding way to formally value public-oriented work and reintegrate that work into scholarly conversations is essential — both to reward scholars’ work and to signal that creative applications of research are meaningful.

Build partnerships outside the university. Which organizations and industries are important to the region where your institution is located? Find ways to connect with them, formally or informally.

Think about public-oriented project ideas that align with your own or your students’ research interests and would also benefit a local organization. Rather than simply making that organization an object of study, invite its staff members to join you as collaborators and co-creators. From single projects, work toward longer partnerships that are mutually beneficial. Over time, these connections could evolve to offer internships, resource networks, and new ways of understanding the public impact of scholarly work.

Find small ways to incorporate professional development from the earliest days of the graduate-school trajectory. For many graduate students, professional development (skill-building workshops, job-search support, networking opportunities) often comes too late, when expectations for a career trajectory are already set and anxieties are high. A better approach is to bring the topic into advising, departmental events, and classrooms from Day 1.

For instance, rather than evaluate students exclusively on their individual scholarly writing, develop collaborative project assignments that allow students to work together in a variety of roles and to communicate research findings to an array of audiences. Advisers might talk about their own work experiences and plans, and help their doctoral students reframe the skills and interests of graduate school for different career contexts.

• Graduate students: If you are not getting the professional-development support you need, ask for it — both individually and collectively with your peers.

Seek outside resources. Sometimes the best resources may take a bit of digging to find, so students and faculty members alike should apply their research skills in looking for support. Faculty advisers should be more intentional about getting to know their institution’s career center, especially if it includes counselors who focus on graduate students. Explore online resources and tool kits from professional organizations. Investigate early, so that you have ideas and resources at hand when you or your students need them.

• Graduate students: Listen in on Twitter and in other informal online spaces. If you think you may need (or want) to develop a specific skill — like web design or a programming language — consider waiting to do a workshop or online tutorials until you have a project under way, so that you have something concrete to work on as you learn. If possible, attend workshops and conferences in an area outside your usual field, to build skills and develop a network. Sometimes different departments share different resources, so you might also consider organizing an interdisciplinary professional-development meet-up with other graduate students at your institution to share suggestions or frustrations.

Tune your program’s curriculum to make the most of required courses. If your graduate program has required introductory or research methods courses, take a close look at the skills, values, and paradigms that it introduces to new students. Consider reshaping such courses to offer students opportunities to think about their programs of study translate to other professions besides the professoriate. How might core research methods be applied in other contexts outside of academe, for instance?

Without sacrificing rigor or content, embedding the course in a broader context that reaches beyond the discipline and even beyond academe can lead to deeper connections. The course can be more powerful if it adds a public-facing or collaborative project component, as students will begin to learn the power of working together toward a common goal that has a clear potential impact.

Recognize the importance of good models. Universities value innovative work, but they also stand on precedent and tradition. To support scholarship that appears risky or unusual, students and administrators alike need to be able to point to others who have done similar work or pursued a similar path. Each graduate student who is hired into a high-level position or a job with a great potential trajectory is one more person who can be a voice for the importance of higher education.

But for that to be true, those career pathways must be visible and celebrated.

To establish strong models within a department, reach out to alumni and feature their achievements and career paths on the department website. Invite speakers who represent a wider range of expertise and possible futures to help students gain ideas and build their networks. Build collaborations with like-minded programs at other institutions. Staying connected with and highlighting the work of former students is one of the simplest and least resource-intensive things that a graduate program can do.

Work toward reform in multiple areas at once. A thoughtful and comprehensive approach to reforming graduate education and equipping students for a wider range of professional paths requires consideration of questions related to the changing landscape of higher education. Issues such as academic-labor practices, public investment in higher education, changes and opportunities in scholarly communication and digital pedagogy, and broad social-justice issues such as racism and gender bias all affect the training that graduate students receive and the career paths they pursue.

Professors in every graduate program should strive to maintain awareness of the broad landscape of higher education and how issues in one area affect all other elements. All of these areas matter, but our energies are finite. So choose one thing that you care about — where you feel you can make a difference — and start there. It is almost certainly connected to the broader aim of creating a healthy and sustainable educational system that is both rigorous and inclusive.

Work against racism, sexism, and other forms of bias. White scholars, especially, must learn to notice and work against systemic racism and sexism in their institutions and in academe. Graduate students are under intense stress, which can damage their physical and mental health, not to mention their academic performance. This is even truer for students whose identities are historically underrepresented in the academy — women and nonbinary people of all races and ethnicities, people of color of all genders, first-generation college students, and LGBTQ+ people, among others. Advisers can be a first line of support, helping students to thrive, reach their goals, and pursue career pathways of their choosing.

Critically examining problematic tendencies within a graduate program is an important initial step to develop a more fully inclusive institution that welcomes diverse backgrounds, varied perspectives, and new forms of knowledge. Systemic racism and widespread bias make it more difficult for people from marginalized groups to thrive, so faculty members, students, and the public are generally learning from those in dominant cultural positions. To educate students in the fullest sense of the term, universities must become places where people from all backgrounds can question, challenge, explore, and articulate new views without fear of retribution.

Be a voice for change in your department, on your campus — up to whatever is the biggest platform you can obtain. Higher education needs your support, so join others in working toward meaningful reform. Try putting your research and writing skills to use in new ways that allow you to go beyond your subfield to articulate the value of your work — and that of your colleagues — in a broader context.

What has your education enabled you to do, and what difference does your research make in the world? Write op-eds that connect to current events or local issues. Go to conferences and give presentations not only on your research, but also on structural issues that you care about. Use opportunities for speaking and writing to lift up the work of those around you. If you have a union, get involved so that you can get a sense of how your goals and concerns fit in with those of the wider campus. Speak up about departmental policies that may be problematic.

However you choose to get involved, and even if change is hard to see, know that your voice matters every step of the way. The time for change is now. Let’s get started.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer

Dear Commons Community,

As the coronavirus rages throughout the country, claiming more victims, a stimulus package proposal sits on Mitch McConnell’s desk.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said they would back a $908 billion bipartisan proposal introduced by a group of lawmakers as a way to restart negotiations. As reported by Yahoo News.

“In the spirit of compromise, we believe the bipartisan framework introduced by Senators yesterday should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations,” they said in a letter yesterday. “Of course, we and others will offer improvements, but the need to act is immediate and we believe that with good-faith negotiations we could come to an agreement.”

Their support comes as the two parties began exchanging offers again after talks stalled before the election. Pelosi and Schumer sent Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) a new stimulus offer with an undisclosed price on Monday evening, with Schumer calling it “a private proposal to help us move the ball forward.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., conduct a news conference to discuss the House passed Heroes Act and coronavirus relief legislation in the Capitol Visitor Center on Thursday, November 12, 2020. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The $908 billion bipartisan proposal the Democratic leaders support has a significantly lower price tag than the $2.2 trillion version of the HEROES Act they were pushing throughout the most recent phase of negotiations.

The compromise proposal includes $160 billion for state and local governments, $180 billion for additional unemployment benefits, $288 billion for a second round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses, short-term liability, among other provisions.

The proposal doesn’t include a second round of stimulus checks, a provision supported by the White House and Democrats in the previous phase of the stimulus negotiations.

Only $348 billion in the bipartisan proposal would be new funding; the other $560 billion would be repurposed from the CARES Act.

McConnell unveiled his own $333 billion stimulus proposal yestyerday, similar to the two previous bills he introduced in September and October, both of which were rejected in the Senate. Schumer said that McConnell’s most recent proposal “will be even more insufficient than the previous two attempts.”

When asked about the compromise proposal, McConnell said that “we just don’t have time to waste time.”

“The place to start is, are we actually making a law or are we just making a point,” he said. “The way you make a law for sure is you’ve got a presidential signature.”

McConnell said his proposal is a way to quickly pass relief in the lame-duck session and that it’s a package that will likely be supported by the president. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed on Wednesday that President Trump would sign McConnell’s most recent proposal.

The bipartisan proposal is supported by four Republican and five Democratic senators, which are not enough Republicans to put pressure on the party to reach an agreement or enough additional votes for a bill to pass in the Senate, according to Mark Harkins, a former congressional staffer and senior fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute.

“That bipartisan coalition is only nine people,” he told Yahoo Money. “If you had a partisan deal on one side or the other, and those people came with you, you’re still looking at 53 to 56 votes. That’s still not 60.”

I doubt that anything will happen with a stimulus package until after Joe Biden assumes the presidency in January.  In the meantime, a delayed stimulus package will cause more damage to American households and the broader economy.

Tony

Gabriel Sterling

Dear Commons Community,

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican elections official in Georgia,  lashed out angrily at the rhetoric surrounding the election and the threats of violence that have resulted, specifically calling on President Donald Trump to rein in his supporters.

Gabriel Sterling oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system. During a routine news conference at the state Capitol to provide an update on the recount of the presidential race requested by Trump, he admonished the president and Georgia’s two U.S. senators, who are both locked in tight runoff races against Democrats and have called on GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign over claims that he mishandled the election.

“Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions,” Sterling said, visibly angry. “This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some.”

People have been driving in caravans past Raffensperger’s home, have come onto his property and have sent sexualized threats to his wife’s cellphone, said Sterling. Raffensperger and Sterling both have police stationed outside their homes, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said it’s investigating possible threats against officials to determine their credibility.

Sterling said his anger boiled over when he learned that a contractor with Dominion Voting Systems helping with the recount effort in suburban Gwinnett County received death threats after someone shot video of him transferring a report to a county computer and falsely said the young man was manipulating election data.

“There’s a noose out there with his name on it. That’s not right,” Sterling said, adding that the contractor didn’t seek the spotlight by taking a high-profile position like Sterling or run for office like Raffensperger. “This kid took a job. He just took a job.”

Trump last week called Raffensperger an “enemy of the people,” Sterling noted, adding, “That helped open the floodgates to this kind of crap.”

Sterling urged the president to step up and tell his supporters not to commit acts of violence. “Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed,” Sterling said.

The campaigns for Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler both issued statements Tuesday evening condemning violence but also criticizing election officials, according to news outlets.

“Like many officials, as someone who has been the subject of threats, of course Senator Loeffler condemns violence of any kind. How ridiculous to even suggest otherwise,” Loeffler campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson said. “We also condemn inaction and lack of accountability in our election system process — and won’t apologize for calling it out.”

Thank you, Mr. Sterling for showing some courage.  Too bad that most of your Republican colleagues, especially those in the U.S, Senate, have been cowards in not standing up to the bullying that Trump has used during his entire time in the White House.

Tony

Attorney General William Barr

Dear Commons Community,

Attorney General William Barr said yesterday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

His comments come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen, and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.

The comments are especially direct coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voter fraud could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.

Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified, despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud. That memorandum gave prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election was certified. Soon after it was issued, the department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that position because of the memo.

The Trump campaign team led by Rudy Giuliani has been alleging a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to dump millions of illegal votes into the system with no evidence. They have filed multiple lawsuits in battleground states alleging that partisan poll watchers didn’t have a clear enough view at polling sites in some locations and therefore something illegal must have happened. The claims have been repeatedly dismissed including by Republican judges who have ruled the suits lacked evidence. Local Republicans in some battleground states have followed Trump in making similar unsupported claims.

Trump has railed against the election in tweets and in interviews though his own administration has said the 2020 election was the most secure ever. Trump recently allowed his administration to begin the transition over to Biden, but has still refused to admit he lost.

The issues Trump’s campaign and its allies have pointed to are typical in every election: Problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost.

But they’ve also requested federal probes into the claims. Attorney Sidney Powell has spun fictional tales of election systems flipping votes, German servers storing U.S. voting information and election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chavez,” – the late Venezuelan president who died in 2013. Powell has since been removed from the legal team after an interview she gave where she threatened to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” court filing.

Barr didn’t name Powell specifically but said: “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.

He said people were confusing the use of the federal criminal justice system with allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits. He said such a remedy for those complaints would be a top-down audit conducted by state or local officials, not the U.S. Justice Department.

“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,’” Barr said.

He said first of all there must be a basis to believe there is a crime to investigate.

“Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations and. And those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”

Barr might be trying to clean up his legacy a bit considering all the subservience he has shown Trump in the past. The President does not take honesty among his top appointees lightly.  Ask the former head of Homeland Security, Chris Krebs!

Tony