Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a former Auburn University football coach who defeated Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) in a landslide during the 2020 elections, apparently forgot to brush up on grade school-level U.S. history and civics before he decided to be a part of the government.
What To Know About Georgia’s Hand-Count Audit—And The GOP’s Attacks On It
As Georgia’s hand-count audit of its presidential contest gets underway, the state Republican Party is already making misleading complaints about how the state is handling the process — a sign of how committed the GOP is to sowing doubt about Joe Biden’s win, regardless of the thoroughness of the verification measures to confirm his victory.
Continue reading “What To Know About Georgia’s Hand-Count Audit—And The GOP’s Attacks On It”
Looking Back On 20 Years
Today, TPM is 20 years old. This December, as we close out one of the most exhausting, stressful, and bizarre years of our lives, we’ll be revisiting and celebrating some of the most interesting and noteworthy events from TPM’s history.
Firm Leading Trump’s Legal Crusade In PA Backs Out Amid Criticism Of Undermining Electoral Process
The law firm leading the Trump campaign’s efforts in Pennsylvania to cast doubts over the integrity of the vote in the state withdrew from a federal lawsuit that it filed for President Donald Trump just days earlier.
Porter Wright Morris & Arthur said in a court filing on Thursday that in talks with the Trump campaign it had “reached a mutual agreement that plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws.”
TPM at 20
So here we are: 20 years. I remember our 10 year anniversary. That feels not long ago at all. The beginning in many ways feels like a lifetime ago, a very different time in my life, a very different time in our politics and in the media and publishing world certainly.
Today I don’t want to say too much more than thank you. Thank you to all of our readers and especially our almost 35,000 subscribers who literally make it possible for us to do all of this and have made it possible for me to experiment and drive this forward since 2000. My ask for today is this. Share your TPM memories with us. Maybe it’s a special moment in your relationship with the site. Maybe it’s how you found TPM. Anything and everything. Our real history and existence is your experience of our collective work over these many years. So pop open your email and let us know what yours is. Use the subject line TPM20.
If you’d also like to share some part or version of it publicly on social media please use the hashtag #TPM20. Our existence as an organization has always been about leveraging and sharing your individual and collective insights. So send those in. It will mean the world to me and the whole team. We will of course be sharing many of them as part of our celebration of the team’s milestone.
China Finally Congratulates Biden On Election Victory
BEIJING (AP) — China on Friday became one of the last major countries to congratulate U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, who is expected to make few changes to U.S. policy in conflicts with Beijing over trade, technology and security.
China, along with Russia, avoided joining the throng that congratulated Biden last weekend after he and vice presidential running mate Kamala Harris secured enough Electoral College votes to unseat President Donald Trump.
Continue reading “China Finally Congratulates Biden On Election Victory”
Gov. Officials Laud Nov. 3 Election As ‘Most Secure In American History’
A group of government and industry officials who coordinate election cybersecurity on Thursday said that the election last week was “the most secure in American history” — sharply breaking with false claims by President Donald Trump and many of his GOP allies that his loss was due to widespread election fraud.
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” the coalition of officials wrote in a statement released late Thursday.
Among the statement’s authors were the presidents of the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State who manage elections of the state level.
Members of the executive committee of the government-industry coordinating council that includes all the major voting equipment vendors were also signatories to the statement and attested to pre-election testing, state certification of voting equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s certification of voting equipment.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” they said.
The message sharply contrasts Trump’s baseless claims of fraud that he has insisted cost him the election and comes as Arizona became the latest state to turn blue in calls from multiple networks of a projected win in the Grand Canyon State by President-elect Biden.
President-elect Biden has notably led Trump by margins wide enough that even a batch of ballot successfully subtracted from his opponent amid ongoing efforts to fight Biden’s win could not overcome his margins of loss in battleground states.
The coalition of officials appeared to tiptoe around naming President Trump, who has led the charge in brewing up a number of unfounded conspiracies around his relegation to a single-term.
“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” the group said.
Obama Warns Of ‘Dangerous Path’ With GOPers Refusing To Accept Trump’s Defeat
Former President Barack Obama raised the alarm over how a majority of the GOP is throwing its support behind President Donald Trump as he falsely denies that he lost the election to President-elect Joe Biden and spouts bogus accusations of voter fraud.
Continue reading “Obama Warns Of ‘Dangerous Path’ With GOPers Refusing To Accept Trump’s Defeat”
Rand Paul Thinks 11 Million Americans With COVID Should ‘Celebrate’
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Thursday said that the more than 11 million people who have been infected with COVID-19 in the United Stated should “celebrate” — falsely claiming that those people are now immune to coronavirus.
“We have 11 million people in our country who have already had COVID,” Paul told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum during an interview on Thursday night. “We should tell them to celebrate, we should tell them to throw away their masks, go to restaurants, and live again, because these people are now immune.”
Rand Paul: We have 11 million people in our country who have already had COVID. We should tell them to celebrate. We should tell them to throw away their masks, go to restaurants, and live again because these people are now immune(they are not immune) pic.twitter.com/Un2CQ1b5Tg
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) November 13, 2020
The comments, which suggest reinfection is not possible are not only incorrect, but also smack of insensitivity for the more than 242,000 people in the infected group who have already died from the virus and will be unable to “live again.”
The Centers for Disease Control And Prevention have warned against the line of thinking perpetuated by Paul and others in the Trump administration who have suggested once infected, there is no further need for caution, noting that the probability of reinfection likely increases over time due to “waning immunity” and what they’ve called “genetic drift.”
“As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we expect to see more cases of reinfection,” the CDC has noted on its website.
The GOP lawmaker also used the Fox News podium to advance another false claim, by pushing a conspiracy theory that President Donald Trump has peddled for months. He suggested as Trump did earlier this week, that in the wake of the election, public health officials who Trump believed were conspiring against his bid for reelection would be painting a much rosier picture about the virus that has now entered arguably one of its worst phases since the pandemic began.
“I want to believe he is well-intentioned,” Paul said of infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, before accusing the official of bias because he “believes that submission and lockdowns are fine.”
Paul, who was a physician before entering politics, also suggested that Fauci who has led the country through a number of public health crises “tends to gloss over the science,” using as evidence that Fauci won’t sign onto a widely disputed claim that children “may have preexisting immunity.”
“The bottom line is there’s a great deal of optimism that we should have out there,” Paul said.
His call for “optimism” comes as the country recently reported the most hospitalizations for the virus since the pandemic began earlier this week and topped previous records with more than 150,000 new infections on Thursday– just over a week after hitting the milestone of 100,000 cases in a single day.
Biden’s Chief Of Staff Says McConnell Still Hasn’t Spoken To President-elect
Ron Klain, whom President-elect Joe Biden has tapped as his chief of staff, stated on Thursday night that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has still not spoken to the Democrat amid President Donald Trump’s corrupt attacks on the election results.
Continue reading “Biden’s Chief Of Staff Says McConnell Still Hasn’t Spoken To President-elect”