FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn on Sunday reiterated his denial that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reportedly pressured him into granting an emergency use authorization for Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine by the end of Friday, or else he would have to resign. Continue reading “‘Untrue Representation’: FDA Chief Denies WH Pressured Him Into Approving Vaccine”
Azar Dismisses Bipartisan Report On Govs Urging More Fed Funding On COVID As ‘Partisan Sniping’
HHS secretary Alex Azar on Sunday dismissed a bipartisan report by the National Governors Association last week, which found that governors requested at least $8.4 billion in federal funds to conduct COVID-19 vaccination program activities, as “partisan sniping” during an interview on CBS. Continue reading “Azar Dismisses Bipartisan Report On Govs Urging More Fed Funding On COVID As ‘Partisan Sniping’”
NIH Chief Pleads For Public To Ditch ‘Conspiracy Theories’ On Approved Vaccines
Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, on Sunday urged the public to put skepticism surrounding approved COVID-19 vaccines aside as polls have shown that a significant amount of Americans are hesitant about getting vaccinated, even as the country nears 300,000 deaths from the pandemic. Continue reading “NIH Chief Pleads For Public To Ditch ‘Conspiracy Theories’ On Approved Vaccines”
Christie Rips Trump And His Lawyers For Their ‘Absurdity’ In Contesting Election Results
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Sunday issued a blistering rebuke of President Trump and his legal team by calling out their flailing attempts to contest the election results even after the Supreme Court rejected Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) lawsuit suing four swing states that President-elect Joe Biden won. Continue reading “Christie Rips Trump And His Lawyers For Their ‘Absurdity’ In Contesting Election Results”
Trump Revives Grudge Against Barr For Being Tight-Lipped On Hunter Biden Probes
Adding to his crusade of spouting falsehoods about the election, President Trump continued having a meltdown over Attorney General Bill Barr keeping him in the dark about ongoing federal probes involving Hunter Biden that pre-date last month’s general election, during an interview that aired on “Fox and Friends” Sunday morning. Continue reading “Trump Revives Grudge Against Barr For Being Tight-Lipped On Hunter Biden Probes”
First Shipments Of COVID-19 Vaccine Depart Pfizer Plant In Michigan
KALAMAZOO, Michigan (AP) — The first trucks carrying a COVID-19 vaccine for widespread use in the United States pulled out of a Michigan manufacturing facility Sunday, with the shots that are critical to stopping the nation’s coronavirus outbreak beginning in earnest a day later. Continue reading “First Shipments Of COVID-19 Vaccine Depart Pfizer Plant In Michigan”
At Least Four Stabbed After Thousands Swarmed DC During Pro-Trump Rally
Two days before the electoral college is set to make President-elect Joe Biden’s return to the White House official, a rally in Washington D.C. on Saturday featuring thousands of maskless rallygoers who won’t accept that President Trump lost grew increasingly violent, with at least four people stabbed at a gathering point for the Proud Boys. Continue reading “At Least Four Stabbed After Thousands Swarmed DC During Pro-Trump Rally”
Where’d Sidney Powell Come From?
TPM Reader MA flagged something for me last night. Sidney Powell, pardon-play attorney for Mike Flynn and now Trump election steal lawyer, seems to go back a ways in the Trump world. MA notes that she wrote with some frequency in The New York Observer, then owned by Jared Kushner. She even co-bylined one piece on criminal justice reform with Bernard Kerik, a top and perpetual Rudy Giuliani crony in addition to being an ex-con.
Trump Flies Over Stop The Steal Rally Where Supporters Chant ‘Destroy The GOP!’
“Stop the Steal” supporters cried “Destroy the GOP!” on Saturday in a demonstration that appeared to antagonize even the Republican Party amid President Donald Trump’s loss in last month’s election.
Continue reading “Trump Flies Over Stop The Steal Rally Where Supporters Chant ‘Destroy The GOP!’”
Trump Is Defeated In Wisconsin Case While Arguing Another One In Streak Of Court Losses
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — President Donald Trump lost a federal lawsuit Saturday while his attorney was arguing his case before a skeptical Wisconsin Supreme Court in another lawsuit that liberal justices said “smacks of racism” and would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters only in the state’s most diverse counties.
U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig, a Trump appointee, dismissed Trump’s federal lawsuit asking the court to order the Republican-controlled Legislature to name Trump the winner over Democrat Joe Biden. The judge said Trump’s arguments “fail as a matter of law and fact.”
The ruling came as Trump attorney Jim Troupis faced a barrage of questions about his claims from both liberal and conservative justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Troupis asked the court to toss more than 221,000 absentee ballots, including his own, saying they were cast fraudulently based on incorrect interpretations of the law by elections officials.
“What you want is for us to overturn this election so that your king can stay in power,” said liberal Justice Jill Karofsky. “That is so un-American.”
Conservative justices appeared to be sympathetic to some issues raised by Trump, but also questioned how they could fairly disqualify ballots only in the two counties where Trump sought a recount and not other counties where the same procedures were followed.
Biden attorney John Devaney said tossing any ballots in just those two counties would be a violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Trump is challenging ballots only in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the state’s most liberal counties with the largest non-white populations. He is not challenging any votes in more conservative counties where he won.
“This lawsuit, Mr. Troupis, smacks of racism,” Karofsky said. “I do not know how you can come before this court and possibly ask for a remedy that is unheard of in U.S. history. … It is not normal.”
Justice Rebecca Dallet, another liberal justice, questioned why Trump didn’t raise his same concerns about the absentee ballot process in the 2016 election that he won in Wisconsin. Troupis said Trump was not an aggrieved party that year.
Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, a conservative, voiced concerns with ballots that the city of Madison collected over two weekends at parks, saying that appeared to be the same as early voting, which had not started yet.
Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley also implied that the court must not allow for ballots to be counted if they were cast contrary to the law. But she questioned how the court could fairly disqualify more than 28,000 ballots cast by people who said they were indefinitely confined, given that some were.
The court in March said it was up to individual voters to determine whether they were “indefinitely confined,” a designation allowed voters to cast absentee ballots without showing a valid photo ID.
During Saturday’s arguments, other conservative justices raised concerns with allowing election officials to fill in missing information on envelopes that contain absentee ballots. And Troupis, who voted that way, said that he believes his vote was cast illegally and should be discounted.
Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,600 votes, a margin of 0.6% that withstood a Trump-requested recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties.
Biden’s attorney asked the court to rule before Monday, when Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes are scheduled to be cast for Biden. Trump asked for a ruling before Jan. 6, the day Congress counts the Electoral College votes.
Trump and his allies have suffered dozens of defeats in Wisconsin and across the country in lawsuits that rely on unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud and election abuse. On Friday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Texas lawsuit that sought to invalidate Biden’s win by throwing out millions of votes in four battleground states, including Wisconsin.
Also Saturday, former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a federal case she lost in Wisconsin seeking to order the GOP-controlled Legislature to declare Trump the winner. Powell has lost similar cases in Georgia and Arizona.