Dear Commons Community,

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie blasted President Trump’s legal team as it pursues its bumbling quest to overturn the November election.

“Quite frankly, the conduct of the president’s legal team has been a national embarrassment,” Christie said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Trump lost the Nov. 3 election to President-elect Joe Biden, but has launched a series of lawsuits seeking to claim victory in states narrowly won by the Democrat. But the cases have been largely dismissed, and judges have consistently rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

The Trump campaign lost one of its most important cases on Saturday night, when a federal judge in Pennsylvania both rejected a major Trump lawsuit in the state and excoriated the president’s legal team for its speculative arguments. In the decision, the Republican judge even mocked the Trump team for presenting a “haphazardly stitched together” argument, “like Frankenstein’s Monster.”

Despite the humiliating legal setback, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani issued a statement on Saturday claiming that the rejection “turns out to help us in our strategy to get expeditiously to the U.S. Supreme Court” through the appeals process.

Both Giuliani and fellow attorney Sidney Powell have advanced a number of conspiracies about the election, including last week at a surreal press conference in which they claimed a “massive influence of communist money” had been funneled into the election.

On Sunday, Christie cited the conduct of Powell in particular for her unsubstantiated claim that the Republican governor of Georgia is part of a conspiracy to rig the election against Trump.

“Sidney Powell [is] accusing Gov. Brian Kemp of a crime on television, yet [is] unwilling to … lay out the evidence she supposedly has,” said Christie, a former U.S. attorney. “This is outrageous conduct by any lawyer.”

Georgia is one of the states narrowly won by Biden; Trump is pursuing a recount unlikely to change the result.

Reuters reported late yesterday that Powell was no longer on Trump’s legal team.

Christie further praised Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., for clearly acknowledging Biden’s victory after the Pennsylvania judge’s ruling on Saturday night. In a statement, Toomey described Judge Matthew Brann as a “longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist.” Trump responded to the statement on Twitter, where he called Toomey “no friend of mine.”

Christie said he hopes more Republicans step forward.

“As much as I’m a strong Republican, and I love my party, it is the country that has to come first,” he said.

Republicans – come out, come out, wherever you are.  Don’t be afraid of the big, bad Trump!

Tony

 Riderless Horse at John F. Kennedy’s Funeral

Dear Commons Community,

We remember that on Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas.

Crowds of excited people lined the streets and waved to the Kennedys. The car turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza around 12:30 p.m. As it was passing the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly reverberated in the plaza.

Bullets struck the president’s neck and head and he slumped over toward Mrs. Kennedy. The governor was also hit in the chest. 

The car sped off to Parkland Memorial Hospital just a few minutes away. But little could be done for the President. A Catholic priest was summoned to administer the last rites, and at 1:00 p.m. John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead. Though seriously wounded, Governor Connally would recover.

The president’s body was brought to Love Field and placed on Air Force One. Before the plane took off, a grim-faced Lyndon B. Johnson stood in the tight, crowded compartment and took the oath of office, administered by US District Court Judge Sarah Hughes. The brief ceremony took place at 2:38 p.m.

The United States was never the same.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press reported yesterday that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will receive an International Emmy award for his once-daily televised briefings on the coronavirus pandemic that killed tens of thousands of New Yorkers this spring.

The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, whose members include media and entertainment figures from over 60 countries and 500 companies, announced  it plans to present the award to the Democratic governor in a live-streamed show tomorrow.

International Academy President & CEO Bruce L. Paisner said Cuomo is being honored with the academy’s Founders Award for using his briefings to inform and calm the public. Previous recipients include former Vice President Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey, and director Steven Spielberg.

“The governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure,” he said. “People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.”

Cuomo used his more than 100 Powerpoint-driven slideshows and his sometimes emotional, sometimes acerbic style to provide daily updates and detail his administration’s efforts to shutter the economy and avoid predictions of as many as 100,000 people hospitalized at once.

The pandemic peaked in early-to-mid April, when over 18,000 people were hospitalized at once and hospitals and nursing homes reported as many as 800 deaths in one day.

New York has reported at least 34,187 deaths of people due to COVID-19, according to data from John Hopkins University & Medicine. And at least 6,600 residents have died in nursing homes, according to state data, which doesn’t state how many nursing home residents died in hospitals.

The number of daily infections, hospitalizations and deaths plummeted as Cuomo slowly reopened the state’s economy this summer, when about 1% of tests were coming up positive.

New York is now seeing far fewer deaths and hospitalizations than this spring. Still, the state’s daily average of COVID-19 cases over the past seven days has more than doubled in two weeks as cases surge nationwide.

My wife and I watched Governor Cuomo regularly while isolating in our home.  We deeply appreciate all he has done in New York to help keep us safe.

Well-deserved recognition!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump aka Typhoid Trump or “Patient Zero” in the White House continues to spread coronavirus among family and friends.  Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy’s son, Andrew Giuliani (a White House Aide), are in quarantine.  Trump Jr. and Andrew Giuliani tested positive for the virus.  It was not clear whether Rudy Giuliani was tested.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The short piece below appeared in the Boston Globe on Tuesday in its opinion section.  It is a call for the American press to make Donald Trump irrelevant and to allow our country to heal from his mean-spirited divisiveness.  The cable news and other media have to forgo their ratings and profits and allow our country to come together under Joe Biden’s leadership.  Stop covering Trump’s ridiculous news conferences and stop spending hours of coverage on his tweets no matter what he says unless he apologizes for his behavior during these past four years.

Tony

—————————————————————————-

Boston Globe

November 17, 2020

If a presidency falls in the forest, does it have to make a sound?

Journalists: Leave your chairs empty in the White House press briefing room.

There has been more than enough coverage of the Trump-estuous toddler masquerading as presidential. Bullies and bigots hunger for attention. It’s Donald Trump’s biggest success.

He’s been extolled or excoriated, psychoanalyzed, politically dissected, trounced over unfulfilled promises, and called out on prevarications. The media have put his every tweet, rant, and crumb of disinformation on record. This contributes to the brainwashing of what can only be called his cult following, who are fueled by his continuing presence in the news.

Stop. Please. Leave him to rant alone, like one would a 4-year-old, sent to his room until he can behave and rejoin the adults.

No more investigative decoding of his moral imperviousness, his ineptitude, his speciousness, his national and international abominations. The media’s analytical prowess and journalistic courage are spun, by the Trumplicans who bow to him, as vicious and vain attacks on their idol. This media attention helps him build his wall — between red and blue states, between the United States and its allies, between caring for the planet and destroying it.

Dear Commons Community,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday advised Americans not to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Dr. Henry Walke, the CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager, said there is “no more important time than now for each and every American to redouble our efforts to watch our distance, wash our hands and, most importantly, wear a mask.”

“CDC is recommending against travel during the Thanksgiving period,” he said. “For Americans who decide to travel, CDC recommends doing so as safely as possible by following the same recommendations for everyday living.”

Walke added that the CDC is concerned “about the transportation hubs.” He said he’s worried people won’t be able to maintain social distancing while waiting in line, for example, to board buses and planes.

“We’re alarmed,” Walke said, adding that the country has seen an “exponential increase” in cases, hospitalizations and deaths recently. “One of our concerns is that as people over the holiday season get together, they may actually be bringing infections with them to that small gathering and not even know it.”

Roughly 30% to 40% of Covid-19′s spread is driven by people without symptoms, he said.

“From an individual household level, what’s at stake is basically increased chance of one of your loved ones becoming sick and then hospitalized and dying,” Walke said. “We certainly don’t want to see that happen. These times are tough. It’s been a long outbreak.”

Dr. Erin Sauber-Schatz, the CDC’s community intervention and critical population task force lead, said “we are asking people to be flexible,” adding that those who are visiting at-risk people should be especially careful.

Thanksgiving celebrations should be limited only to those people living in the same household, a definition the CDC clarified yesterday. Sauber-Schatz said only people who have been living in the house for the 14 days before the gathering should be considered a member of the household. That would exclude college students and members of the military who planned to go home for the holidays.

Show your love for your family by staying home!

Tony

Republican Senators Mitt Romney, Joni Ernst, and Ben Sasse

Dear Commons Community,

Some small cracks are beginning to appear in the support from Republican Senators for Donald Trump’s sickening claims of election fraud.  Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) yesterday said directly what no other current Republican elected official is willing to say about Donald Trump: that the president is actively seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s historic victory in the 2020 presidential election.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Romney condemned Trump for pressuring local GOP officials in states that Trump clearly lost to appoint pro-Trump electors ― overruling the will of the people ― in a last-ditch effort to tilt the Electoral College in his favor and steal the election.

“Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, said in a statement.

“It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President,” the senator added.

It was the sharpest denouncement of Trump’s incendiary conduct by an elected GOP official yet, but like so many times before, it came from a frequent Trump critic ― not someone in the Republican leadership. 

Trump yesterday summoned Michigan’s Republican legislative leaders to the White House for an extraordinary meeting as his campaign’s legal team falsely claimed he won in a “total landslide” and openly urged state legislatures in states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia to appoint their own slate of electors. 

The election “in all the swing states should be overturned, and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump,” Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell said during an appearance last evening on Fox News.

The so-called Hail Mary option has been dismissed by legal experts in both parties as undemocratic and dangerous. Even if it fails, experts fear that it would falsely propagate the notion among millions of Trump supporters that the election was unfairly conducted and that Biden is an illegitimate president.

Yesterday, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, held a bizarre press conference alongside Powell at the Republican National Committee in Washington, where they both spouted conspiracy theories about supposed voter fraud in the Nov. 3 presidential election. The allegations were too far-fetched even for Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a steadfast Trump ally, who noted during his program that Powell “never sent us any evidence” to support her baseless claims and “got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”

“Wild press conferences erode public trust. So no, obviously Rudy and his buddies should not pressure electors to ignore their certification obligations under the statute. We are a nation of laws, not tweets,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said in a statement that did not directly mention Trump.

The Nebraska senator noted that even as Trump’s legal team has sought to portray some vast electoral scheme against the president in public, they’ve refused to actually allege fraud in court filings “because there are legal consequences for lying to judges.”

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate GOP leadership who was reelected this month, offered a mild rebuke of Trump’s voter fraud claims in an interview with conservative radio host Guy Benson.

“They have to be able to show that proof. I haven’t seen proof yet. There are a lot of allegations out there. That’s why we have the court system,” Ernst said.

The Iowa senator did, however, condemn Powell after she falsely insinuated that political candidates of both parties pay off election officials to win, calling the statement “absolutely outrageous.”

“That is an offensive comment for those of us who do stand up and represent our states in a dignified manner. We believe in honesty. We believe in the integrity of the election system,” Ernst added.

We need more of the Republican leadership to show a little guts and denounce Trump’s allegations.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As Donald Trump and his Republican allies continue to try to undermine the election, the certification of the vote totals in each state is the next major step in formalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

A key part of Trump’s strategy has been to delay certification processes in battleground states that Mr. Biden won, in the hopes that, if state officials miss their deadlines, legislators will subvert the popular vote and appoint pro-Trump slates to the Electoral College.

Below is a breakdown of the certification deadlines and other key dates in battleground states, and what will happen between now and Inauguration Day as provided by the New York Times yesterday.

Tony

————————————————–

Friday, Nov. 20: Georgia

There is a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for officials to certify election results in Georgia, which Mr. Biden won in a rare Democratic victory in the Deep South that has left Republicans deeply frustrated.

The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has said the state will meet the Friday deadline despite having conducted a time-consuming hand recount of the five million ballots cast there.

Mr. Raffensperger is responsible for certifying the results, and he has fiercely defended the state’s electoral process against attacks from Mr. Trump. And on Thursday, a federal judge in Georgia — Steven Grimberg, whom Mr. Trump appointed — rejected a request to block certification.

Mr. Trump’s campaign could still ask for a machine recount of the vote, but Mr. Biden’s lead is far larger than such a recount could be expected to overcome.

Monday, Nov. 23: Michigan, Pennsylvania

Mr. Biden won these two states.

Monday is the deadline for counties in Pennsylvania to certify their totals and send them to Kathy Boockvar, the secretary of the commonwealth, who will certify the state results. Pennsylvania doesn’t have a hard deadline for when Ms. Boockvar must sign off, but there is no reason to expect a delay.

In Michigan, the Board of State Canvassers has scheduled a meeting on Monday to review and certify the results previously certified by canvassing boards in each county. Despite Republican protests over the certification of results in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, the state is expected to certify on time.

Mr. Trump has invited Michigan Republican lawmakers to the White House on Friday, and his campaign is openly trying to block the certification process in the hopes of getting Republican state legislators to overrule millions of Michigan voters and appoint a pro-Trump slate to the Electoral College.

On Politics with Lisa Lerer: A guiding hand through the political news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

Legislators aren’t likely to do that. But even if they did, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, could certify a separate, pro-Biden slate of electors. It would then be up to Congress to choose between the two slates, and election lawyers say federal law would favor the governor’s, including if Congress deadlocked. Congress could also, in theory, toss out Michigan’s electoral votes altogether — in which case Mr. Biden would still win the Electoral College.

Tuesday, Nov. 24: Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio

This is the certification deadline for Minnesota, North Carolina and Ohio, none of which are expected to be contentious. Mr. Biden won Minnesota; Mr. Trump won North Carolina and Ohio.

Monday, Nov. 30: Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska

Arizona has to certify its results by this date, as do Iowa and Nebraska. Mr. Biden won Arizona, Mr. Trump won Iowa, and in Nebraska, Mr. Trump won statewide but Mr. Biden won one electoral vote in the state’s Second Congressional District.

The Arizona Republican Party asked a court to postpone certification in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, but a judge rejected the request on Thursday.

Given this, counties are expected to certify on time and Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state and a Democrat, is expected to sign off on the final, statewide certification.

No disputes are expected in Iowa or Nebraska that could delay certification.

Tuesday, Dec. 1: Nevada, Wisconsin

This is the deadline for Nevada and Wisconsin, both of which Mr. Biden won, to certify their results.

In Nevada, the first step is for county commissioners to certify the results and send them to the secretary of state, who will present summaries to the Nevada Supreme Court. Ultimately, the governor will need to confirm the outcome. The Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit baselessly claiming that Mr. Trump actually won Nevada, and conservative groups are trying to nullify the results, but these claims are highly unlikely to lead anywhere.

Wisconsin has already completed county-level certification, but the Trump campaign is seeking a partial recount, which, if it proceeds, should be complete by the deadline and is not expected to alter the results significantly. Once the recount is completed, the Wisconsin Elections Commission will meet to certify the results statewide.

Tuesday, Dec. 8

This is a key date in the democratic process: If states resolve all disputes and certify their results by Dec. 8, the results should be insulated from further legal challenges, ensuring that states won by Mr. Biden will send Biden delegates to the Electoral College.

The certification processes leading up to this date vary from state to state, but the final step is the same everywhere under federal law: The governor of each state must compile the certified results and send them to Congress, along with the names of the state’s Electoral College delegates.

Monday, Dec. 14

Electors will meet on Dec. 14 in their respective states and cast their votes. This vote is, constitutionally, what determines the next president.

Mr. Biden has 306 electoral votes to Mr. Trump’s 232. Many states formally require their electors to vote for the candidate they pledged to vote for, generally the winner of the state’s popular vote. Historically, rogue electors have been few and far between, and have never altered the outcome.

Wednesday, Jan. 6

Congress is ultimately responsible for counting and certifying the votes cast by the Electoral College, and it is scheduled to do so on Jan. 6.

If there are still disputes at this point — if Republican legislators in a state were to appoint a pro-Trump Electoral College slate in opposition to voters’ will, for instance, and the Democratic governor of the state were to appoint a pro-Biden slate — it would be Congress’s job to resolve them. Election law experts say that under federal statute, the governor’s slate should be favored.

Wednesday, Jan. 20

Mr. Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.

Dear Commons Community,

The United States hit a grim milestone yesterday when Johns Hopkins University reported that 250,000  Americans have died from COVID-19.  This horrific statistic was reached following a stunning surge in cases in the past two months, with the country repeatedly shattering records for daily new case numbers and several states reporting record high hospitalization rates.

President Donald Trump’s unwavering insistence that the coronavirus is on its way out couldn’t be further from the truth. Less than two weeks after Trump lost his bid for a second term to President-elect Joe Biden, the U.S. surpassed 11 million cases ― about a fifth of all infections worldwide.   As reported by The Huffington Post:

“We’re still facing a very dark winter,” President-elect Biden warned Americans last week, predicting that the death toll will climb as people congregate indoors more and Trump finishes his final weeks in office while downplaying the severity of the disease, dismissing the need for masks and other basic safety measures, refusing to issue national guidelines, insisting that states reopen their economies, and blaming testing for the high rate of cases. 

The 250,000 dead-and-counting are the Trump administration’s legacy: America’s grim mortality statistics are the direct result of political decisions by the country’s leaders. Every non-political explanation has steadily fallen away as other countries proved this disease could be managed.

Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong, among the most densely populated places in the world, have had vanishingly small outbreaks and are now returning to their pre-coronavirus activity. Within the United States, the severe initial outbreak in New York City seemed to indicate that density was to blame, but the country’s second densest city, San Francisco, had a much smaller outbreak. Caseloads have spiked in states that are heavily suburbanized and rural, including Idaho, North Dakota and Arkansas. 

And while America’s status as a transportation hub did indeed result in the early arrival of the virus, other countries even closer to the genesis of the outbreak in China have fared far better. Mongolia, which shares a border with China, hadn’t reported a single COVID-19 death by November. Vietnam, China’s neighbor to the south, had recorded just over 30 fatalities. Germany, Australia and Japan also host large numbers of international travelers, and all have had far less severe outbreaks than the United States.

Since the first confirmed case in late January, Trump has alternated between pretending the virus doesn’t exist, downplaying its significance and blaming others for its effects. While the country was under quarantine — an act of collective self-sacrifice unparalleled in post-World War II history — Trump did next to nothing to develop testing and contact tracing infrastructure.

The incoming Biden administration has its work cut out. Trump has spent most of his final year in office discrediting public health experts, refusing to wear a mask and holding large super-spreader events at the White House. He led by example, and America followed. Biden has vowed to deploy a national mask mandate, but how effective will that be when Trump has politicized safety measures and convinced so many Americans ― including state and local leaders ― that masks aren’t important?”

Hope for recovery in the U.S. now almost entirely hinges on the development and deployment of a coronavirus vaccine. There’s a lot of optimism around trials showing that Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are upward of 90% effective, and public health experts say that some people could receive them by the end of the year.

May God be with us!  Surely our president isn’t!

Tony