The neverending election heist

As of last night, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had certified their presidential election results ahead of the meeting of the Electoral College next Monday. But for Donald Trump and his followers, the election is still in full swing. Yesterday, the president and 17 U.S. states threw their support behind a long-shot lawsuit by Texas seeking to overturn his election loss by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the voting results in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Officials from those states have called the lawsuit a reckless attack on democracy.

• — Too many Biden voters? No fair! The Texas suit argues that changes made by the four states to voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic to expand mail-in voting were unlawful. Texas asked the Supreme Court to immediately block the four states from using the voting results to appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College.
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• — Lose with Cruz. Trump has asked Sen. Ted Cruz to argue the case if the Supreme Court agrees to hear it. He has already indicated his interest in participating. Cruz's fellow senator from Texas, John Cornyn, on the other hand, has questioned the "legal theory" behind one state suing another over how it conducts its elections.
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• — A case with no legs. "Both procedurally and substantively, it's a mess," Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Law School in California, said of the Texas lawsuit. "There's zero chance the court agrees to take the case." Let's hope not. —Reuters

Rubin: Don't forget how we got here

"As Trump methodically assaulted democratic norms, constitutional restraints (e.g., the emoluments clause), basic standards of civility, and objective reality, his Republican enablers remained silent or encouraged his misconduct. Not every infraction is of constitutional significance, but minor infractions if not addressed multiply. Small breaches of decorum lead to more serious violations. And 20,000 lies later, the MAGA crowd will buy just about anything, no matter how convoluted and incoherent." —Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post

Jennifer Rubin is an attorney and political opinion columnist at The Washington Post.

MORE: Adam Serwer: If you didn't vote for Trump, your vote is fraudulent —The Atlantic

This should be the top story

More than 3,000 Americans died from COVID-19 yesterday. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the Wednesday coronavirus death toll was 3,049—higher than the number of people killed in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The grim benchmark has gone unacknowledged by the President of the United States, who has been distracted by his effort to overturn the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden last month.

• — Yesterday's death toll marks the first time any country on the planet has recorded more than 3,000 deaths on a single day since the pandemic began. The U.S. also reached record-high hospitalizations, with more than 106,000 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the Covid Tracking Project. Health officials warn the situation is likely to get much worse in the coming weeks. 
  
  — So far, the U.S. has logged nearly 15.4 million coronavirus cases, with more than 289,000 deaths. Both figures are, by far, the highest in the world, largely as a result of a disastrous federal response to the pandemic.
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• — Still, there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, as the U.S. is getting closer to its first vaccinations. A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is reviewing the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech today. If it is approved as expected, the first vaccines could be administered within days. —Market Watch

This week on the Hill

If you're waiting for a coronavirus stimulus package from Congress, you'll have to wait a little longer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that she believes the bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers engaged in negotiations over a coronavirus relief bill are nearing a deal. The $908 billion proposal is not a concrete bill yet, however, and lawmakers remain divided over the scale and scope of a relief package. Time is running out for Congress to pass any relief proposal, as it also must negotiate and approve an omnibus government funding bill before Dec. 18 to avert a government shutdown. —CBS News

• — One-week funding extension. Yesterday, the House approved a one-week extension in funding for the federal government in an effort to give lawmakers more time to hammer out agreements on spending bills and emergency economic relief. Appropriators have continued to make progress on a set of spending bills to fund federal agencies, with only a few outstanding policy issues left to be resolved by congressional leaders. —The Washington Post
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• — Defense policy bill passes. On Tuesday, the House voted by a veto-proof majority to pass the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, after reaching an agreement on terms with the Senate last week. The bill authorizes a 3% pay increase for members of the armed services and expands civilian federal employees' access to paid-leave benefits. Lawmakers are preparing to come back after Christmas to vote on it again, if necessary, since President Trump has threatened to veto the legislation when it reaches his desk. —Government Executive
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• — Senate backs arms sale. The Senate has defeated a congressional effort to block the Trump Administration's controversial transfer of $23 billion in advanced fighter jets and drones to the United Arab Emirates. Trump had issued a formal threat to veto the effort to block the sale of F-35 fighter jets and Reaper drones, but two procedural votes failed to gain a majority of the Senate, meaning the transfer will go forward. —Al Jazeera

Idaho Press Ed Board: The spiral of intimidation must end

"When dissenters target the homes of our public servants, intimidating their families and neighbors, the best and the brightest will be discouraged from serving. It is already happening when you see so many highly qualified and bright people avoid public service, or leave it. That's not how it's always been in our country, and our country's future is at stake if this downward spiral continues." —Idaho Press

MORE: 'We are not going to stand for that any longer': Idaho group wants intimidation of public officials to stop —KTVB

Hunter Biden under investigation

President-elect Joe Biden's son Hunter revealed yesterday that he is under investigation by the Department of Justice. "I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs," Hunter Biden said in a statement. "I take this matter very seriously, but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisers."

• — The investigation into Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings has been underway since 2018, and involves not only the DOJ but also the Internal Revenue Service. The probe is specifically focused on his business dealings with China. Joe Biden is not a target of the probe.
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• — It's not clear how far investigators have gotten, or if they plan to bring an indictment. However, when prosecutors do bring a case, they almost always win. The DOJ Criminal Tax Division had a 97% conviction rate in fiscal year 2019, according to department data. 
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• — Some Republican lawmakers seized on the disclosure of the investigation to call on Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter—a move that would ensure the probe carries at least into Joe Biden's early presidency. To date, no evidence has surfaced to back President Trump's claims that the president-elect benefited from, or participated in, any of his son's ventures. —Bloomberg

Stiglitz: A chance to repair democracy's cracks

"Reconstructing our democracy will be daunting, but it will also lift us up. Democracies are about more than elections every four years. Successful ones entail broad-based civic engagement with an array of civil society's institutions; collective action is about more than just the government or public institutions. It doesn't destroy individuality or freedom, but can strengthen them and enable all of us to flourish." —Joseph Stiglitz in The New York Times

Joseph Stiglitz is an economist, public policy analyst, Columbia University professor, and the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute, a nonprofit think tank. He is the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

"What do Milosevic in Serbia (2000), Yanukovich in Ukraine (2004), Lukashenko in Belarus (2020), and Trump (2020) have in common? They're all leaders who tried to #OVERTURN the will of the people as expressed in free and fair elections. So shameful that a U.S. president is on this list." —Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia (@McFaul)

I challenge anyone who is going along with this assault on democracy to look back 80-90 years ago and pull up the accounts of how Adolf Hitler came to power. "Hitler's Circle of Evil" is a good reference. Watch the throngs of tens of thousands of gullible and ignorant Germans who shouted and screamed their adoration and support for one of the most deranged figures in history. LOOK...HARD. What you see is a mirrored reflection of yourselves. —Mike C., Utah

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