The usual suspects

Gaetz. Jordan. Gohmert. You know their names. It's probably no great shock that they would sign on to an amicus brief backing the Texas Attorney General's lawsuit to overturn the election result in four states that certified President-elect Joe Biden as the winner. However, the original group of 106 Republicans joining the brief has grown today to include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. With McCarthy and others now on board, fully 126 of the 196 Republicans currently serving in the House officially support the effort to vacate the votes of millions of Americans and effectively reject both our federalist electoral system and democracy itself.

• — The defendant states fight back. In a brief, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel addressed the lawsuit with strong language. "The election in Michigan is over. Texas comes as a stranger to this matter and should not be heard here," she wrote. "The challenge here is an unprecedented one, without factual foundation or a valid legal basis."
•  
• — A "surreal alternate reality." Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a court filing, "Texas' effort to get this Court to pick the next president has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated."
•  
• — MYOB, Texas. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr emphasized the federalism implications of Texas' lawsuit in his filing. "Texas presses a generalized grievance that does not involve the sort of direct state-against-state controversy required for original jurisdiction," he wrote. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul similarly cast the lawsuit as an "extraordinary intrusion into Wisconsin's and the other defendant states' elections, a task that the Constitution leaves to each state." —CNN

Wu: There's no alternative to civic virtue

"Structural checks can be overrated. The survival of our Republic depends as much, if not more, on the virtue of those in government, particularly the upholding of norms by civil servants, prosecutors, and military officials. We have grown too jaded about things like professionalism and institutions, and the idea of men and women who take their duties seriously. But as every major moral tradition teaches, no external constraint can fully substitute for the personal compulsion to do what is right." —Tim Wu in The New York Times

Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia University and the author of "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age."

MORE: CST Ed Board: Without a doubt, the 2020 election was fair. Now how do we ensure future elections are, too? —Chicago Sun-Times

Feds investigate threatening website

The harassment campaign against U.S. election officials following President Trump's defeat took an ominous turn yesterday after a website surfaced that accused the officials of "treason" and included their home addresses. The site, along with several associated social media accounts, featured photographs of the officials with rifle crosshairs superimposed on them. The FBI said it is aware of the issue, and U.S. intelligence agencies are looking into the website and its origins.

• — Republican, Democratic, and nonpartisan election authorities nationwide have faced intimidation, harassment, and outright threats since the vote. Despite losing by more than 7 million votes, Trump has refused to concede and has challenged the outcome with lawsuits in multiple states, which courts so far have rejected. 
  
  — Supporters of Trump in recent weeks have staked out election offices in Georgia, mounted armed protests in Arizona, and left intimidating telephone messages for election officials across the country, in a campaign of harassment and menacing unlike any other in modern U.S. history. Officials have urged Trump and Republican officials to unequivocally denounce it.
•  
• — "If anyone needs to be reminded that public calls for violence beget violence, this is the clarion call. If blood is spilled, it is on the hands of the president, his campaign, his lawyers, and the silent Republicans standing in the president's shadow," said Jim Walden, a lawyer for Christopher Krebs, who oversaw cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security until he was fired by Trump after the election. —Reuters

YouTube takes action against election disinfo

YouTube announced this week that it will take down new videos that claim President-elect Joe Biden won the presidential election due to fraud or error. The social media platform will remove any video uploaded after Dec. 8 that "misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election," the company said in a blog post.

• — YouTube came under fierce criticism for allowing content advancing President Trump's baseless voter fraud claims to remain on the platform long after the election was decided. The policy not only served as a "loophole" that outlets like One America News Network used to push Trump's allegations of rampant voter fraud, but also allowed YouTube to directly profit off of the claims through advertising.
•  
• — The company says it waited to take action until the "safe harbor" deadline—which allows states to lock in their certified results with Congress—passed on Tuesday. As of Wednesday, all 50 states and Washington, D.C., certified their election results, officially pushing Biden over the 270-vote threshold needed to win the Electoral College.
•  
• — Prior to the new policy, YouTube had already removed "thousands" of videos and more than 8,000 channels for election-related content that violated its existing policies, which ban "spam, scams, or other manipulated media, coordinated influence operations, and any content that seeks to incite violence," the company said. —Forbes

Rondeaux: What's the real target in the NDAA?

"[Trump's] tweeted tantrums in recent weeks have been filled with all manner of grievance against Twitter and Facebook for their alleged bias against conservative causes. His defense of all things Confederate is, of course, well known. But it is probably not a coincidence that the president, who is also a wealthy Manhattan real estate developer known for selling luxury properties to foreign investors and limited liability companies with unknown owners, is protesting loudly against the [2021 National Defense Authorization Act]. Its proposed provisions for fighting financial crimes—by making public the otherwise shadowy ownership and beneficial interests of most registered corporations—obviously pose a serious threat to anyone whose primary business model is to look the other way when kleptocrats and other crooks are looking for ways to hide their money." —Candace Rondeaux in World Politics Review

Candace Rondeaux is a senior fellow and professor of practice at the Center on the Future of War.

MORE: Trump officials reviewing DOD support to CIA —Defense One

This week in foreign affairs

President Trump announced yesterday that Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalize relations, restoring diplomatic and other ties, including the reopening of liaison offices in Tel Aviv and Rabat, the eventual opening of embassies, and joint overflight rights for the two nations' airlines. As part of the deal, the U.S. agreed to recognize Morocco's claim over the long-disputed Western Sahara region. The agreement builds on the "Abraham Accords," which won broader recognition of Israel in the Arab world, but it's a blow for those in the Western Sahara, who have fought for independence and want a referendum on the territory's future. —Associated Press

• — China. After strongly criticizing China earlier this week for intellectual property espionage on U.S. college campuses, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday announced sanctions against 17 government officials and their immediate family members in China and other foreign countries for "gross violations of human rights." Officials in El Salvador and Jamaica were also targeted. —Voice of America
•  
• — Turkey. Trump spent much of his time in office nurturing a relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But now, with just weeks left in office and Congress' frustration with Turkish moves that run counter to U.S. interests growing, the administration appears to be acting on one of the most serious disputes, sanctioning Ankara for its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air-defense system, which is seen as a threat to the F-35 fighter-jet program and to NATO operations. —Business Insider
•  
• — Ghana. The U.S. formally acknowledged Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo as the winner of the West African country's presidential election earlier this week, even as his opposition has rejected the election results. Ghana has had seven peaceful transitions of power since the return of democracy almost 30 years ago, as any post-electoral grievances have until now been pursued through the courts—a rarity in the otherwise troubled region. This time, five people have been killed in election-related violence, marring what observers said was a well-organized poll. —Al Jazeera

Abramowitz & Thier: Restoring global democracy

"[T]o be a credible leader in the world again, the United States must demonstrably improve its own democracy. Our freedoms of speech and assembly, our striving for equality and innovation, our welcoming of new generations of Americans from abroad—these have been the engines that have made our economy and military strong, not the other way around. The Biden Administration should pursue a series of domestic reforms to ensure access to the ballot, address racial injustice, confront disinformation, reduce polarization, strengthen accountability, and rebuild confidence in the integrity of our elections." —Michael Abramowitz and Alex Thier in Democracy Without Borders

Michael Abramowitz is the president of Freedom House in Washington, D.C. Alex Thier is the co-director of the Task Force on U.S. Strategy to Support Democracy and Counter Authoritarianism and a senior democracy fellow at Freedom House.

MORE: Biden puts focus on domestic policy with rollout of newest picks —Bloomberg

"Some of these people are actually ignorant enough or deceived enough to believe that the Texas lawsuit has merit. Many absolutely know it does not. They're doing this for craven political purposes, believing SCOTUS will save them from the consequences of their own malice." —David French, attorney, senior editor at The Dispatch, and author of "Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation" (@DavidAFrench)

I'm sick, tired, and disgusted of continually hearing about all the Republicans who speak behind closed doors about Trump but won't do so publicly because they are afraid of him. Afraid of Trump? Really, they are that cowardly? Either they are cowards afraid of a coward, or they are just like him and approve of his nonsense. It is truly that simple.

Along those same lines, I am sick of Democrats, journalists, etc., making excuses for those Republicans who they claim speak up off the record. They are in a tough spot? Really? A tough spot was being in Pearl Harbor 79 years ago. I had an uncle there who survived that day. My father then went to Europe, and other uncles to the Pacific. And many others had the same—family who were in a real tough spot, whether in the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, and so on. Those are and were "tough spots." As a veteran who took an oath to defend the Constitution and protect this country, as did so many others, I call BS on these cowards.

There is power in numbers. If they really don't support what Trump is doing, if they don't approve of the death threats, then take a stand as a group. Publicly. Otherwise, step down and let leaders lead. We don't need, nor should we have, cowards afraid of tweets in higher office. —Bill T., Arizona

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Stand Up Republic Foundation.