ICYMI: Your TPM Weekend News Roundup

Barr On The Ropes?

• Attorney General Bill Barr told the truth this week. And for that he may lose his job.
• On Tuesday, the attorney general told the AP that the Justice Department had not uncovered the sort of mass voter fraud that would overturn the results of the presidential election.
• Soon after Barr’s interview was published, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said the nation’s top law enforcement officer simply hadn’t looked hard enough.
• White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dodged on Wednesday afternoon when asked whether President Trump still had confidence in Barr after the attorney general’s comments.
• On Wednesday night, news broke that Trump was considering firing Barr over the comments. Aides have reportedly urged Trump not to fire his attorney general.
• On Thursday morning, CNN reported that Barr had a particularly rough meeting with Trump at the White House after his AP interview.
• And later on Thursday, Trump himself said that Barr hadn’t looked very hard for the sort of widespread fraud Trump’s campaign has baselessly claimed. Asked whether he still had confidence in Barr, Trump told reporters to check back with him in a few weeks.

Georgia On Our Minds

• Control of the Senate, and thus Joe Biden’s ability to govern, is on the line in the two Georgia Senate runoff elections, set for Jan. 5.
• But President Trump’s bogus election fraud conspiracies may be backfiring on the two Republican senators fighting for reelection.
• But Georgia GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler defended Trump’s antics in a pair of similar statements.
• Georgia Republicans were forced to confront the conundrum of their own creation on Thursday night: convincing Georgians to vote in the runoffs after crying fraud about the Nov. 3 elections.
• TPM’s Kate Riga took a look at Georgia’s runoff system’s roots in the Jim Crow south.
• Trump is scheduled to rally on behalf of Perdue and Loeffler on Saturday. But local officials, including Georgia’s lieutenant governor, don’t seem especially eager for the President’s visit.
• The runoff races are expected to attract massive spending, with much of that money funneled into ads. Here’s a rundown of the political attack ads besieging Georgians ahead of the election.

Trump’s Census Scheme Isn’t Going Well

• The conservative Supreme Court did not seem convinced to go along with President Trump’s push to exclude undocumented immigrants from the decennial census count, TPM’s Tierney Sneed reported on Monday.
• During the Supreme Court hearing, U.S. Solicitor General Jeff Wall made clear the Census Bureau would not be able to meet a year-end deadline to deliver apportionment numbers.
• The scope of the routine data issues in the census data collection, first reported by TPM last month, has grown, according to whistleblower documents obtained by the House.

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