Violence erupts after SCOTUS decision

It all started on Friday evening. The Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated verdict on the case brought by the attorney general of Texas, seeking to overturn the presidential election results in four states: dismissed. That brought immediate calls for war and secession from outraged MAGA adherents, who were expecting a win and felt betrayed by the justices appointed by President Trump. The next day, Trump supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., to march in protest. As night fell, the demonstrations turned violent. Amid the chaos, at least four people were stabbed in the vicinity of a crowd of "Proud Boys," a White nationalist group that supports the president. —The Washington Post

• — Wisconsin hands Trump another loss. Not to be outdone by the SCOTUS, on Saturday, U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig, who was appointed by Trump, threw out a lawsuit in Wisconsin that sought to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election victory in the state. Ludwig said that if Trump's argument that disagreements over the conduct of an election by state officials created a federal claim were correct, "any disappointed loser in a presidential election, able to hire a team of clever lawyers, could flag claimed deviations from the election rules and cast doubt on the election results." —Bloomberg
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• — Last-ditch effort. A small group of Trump's most loyal backers in Congress is plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives on Jan. 6 to try to reverse Biden's victory. The effort is being led by Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, who is eyeing challenges to the election results in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He's not likely to get much support in the Senate, however, as several Senate Republicans, including Lamar Alexander, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, and Pat Toomey, have publicly rejected the idea of overturning the results. —The New York Times
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• — Violence fears close Michigan legislature. Ahead of today's meeting of Michigan's 16 electors at the state Capitol in Lansing, officials announced the state legislature's office buildings will be closed due to "credible threats of violence." The decision to close the state House and Senate offices—while the presidential electors convene in the Senate chamber to cast their votes for Biden—came from a recommendation from law enforcement, officials said. —ABC News

McCarthy: There's no there there

"It has become an article of faith among ardent Trump followers that the election was stolen. The president continues to insist that this is the case, and these flames were further fanned by 19 Republican-controlled state governments, along with 126 Republican members of Congress, who joined the meritless Texas lawsuit, tossed out by the Supreme Court on Friday. The rationalization behind that stunt was that the president has been denied his day in court. But every time a court offers him an opportunity to establish by proof what he is promoting by Twitter, Team Trump folds. Why is that?" —Andrew McCarthy in National Review

Andrew McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute.

MORE: Kimberly Wehle: There's a way to halt Trump's baseless election fraud cases —Politico

Coronavirus vaccinations begin in the US

As the nation eclipsed 300,000 deaths from COVID-19, a critical care nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York City, made history this morning. She became the first person in her state and among the first people in the United States to get a shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, authorized on Friday by the Food and Drug Administration.

• — Sandra Lindsay was administered the vaccine during a live video event at about 9:20am ET today. Dr. Michelle Chester, the corporate director of employee health services at Northwell Health, delivered the shot. "I feel hopeful today, relieved. I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history," said Lindsay.
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• — Michael Dowling, the president and CEO of Northwell Health, who was also in attendance, noted that the regional hospital system has seen over 100,000 patients with COVID-19. "This is a special moment, a special day," Dowling said. "This is what everybody has been waiting for."
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• — The first batch of the vaccine was shipped out from a Pfizer plant in Portage, Mich., yesterday, headed for over 600 sites across all 50 states. State and local authorities make their own decisions on who gets vaccinated and when. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that frontline healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities get the vaccine first. —CNN

Russian hackers strike federal agencies

The Trump Administration acknowledged yesterday that hackers acting on behalf of a foreign government—almost certainly Russia, according to federal and private experts—broke into a range of key government networks, including in the Homeland Security, Treasury, and Commerce departments, and had free access to their email systems. The hunt is now on to determine if other parts of the government had been affected by what looked to be one of the most sophisticated, and perhaps among the largest, attacks on federal systems in the past five years.

• — The timing suggests that while the government was focused on preventing Russian intervention in the 2020 election, key agencies working for the administration—and unrelated to the election—were actually the subject of a sophisticated attack that they were unaware of until recent weeks.
  
  — Last night, the Department of Homeland Security ordered all agencies to shut down any use of a network management software made by a company called SolarWinds and installed on networks belonging to government agencies and American corporations. The order was so urgent that it gave a deadline of noon today for "a completion report" confirming that the software was no longer in use.
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• — Though a specific motive for the attack remains elusive, government officials say it is too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were and how much material was lost. According to several corporate officials, the attacks had been underway as early as this spring, meaning they continued undetected through months of the pandemic and the election season. —The New York Times

Bershidsky: How Russia's guerilla media targets Putin

"An investigative media outlet in today's Russia needs to be light on its feet and hard to pin down. The smaller its footprint in the physical world, especially in Russia, the better it can do its job—and the fewer no-go zones designated for the traditional media matter to it. The journalists who work in these small, flexible, mobile teams are technically savvy. They can work from anywhere, and they can handle data that has been intentionally scrambled to defy analysis. They are creatures of a world deeply alien to Putin, who does not use the internet on his own and often appears to prefer the late 20th century to the modern version of reality." —Leonid Bershidsky in Bloomberg

Leonid Bershidsky is a Russian Berlin-based journalist and a columnist for Bloomberg View.

Barr becomes unlikely Trump target

A tax reporting issue appears to be at the heart of the Department of Justice investigation of President-elect Joe Biden's son Hunter. The investigation, which began in 2018, wasn't publicly disclosed until last week. Why? Because in keeping with department policy, Attorney General Bill Barr warned DOJ prosecutors against issuing subpoenas or taking other public investigative steps before the election. The move has infuriated President Trump.

• — Hunter Biden was subpoenaed last week to provide information about his work on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company where he sat on the board. He was also asked to turn over documents related to business dealings in China and other financial activities. On Saturday, a 2017 e-mail emerged from Hunter's former business partner saying he did not disclose on his tax returns $400,000 in income from Burisma.
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• — Trump considered firing Barr during a White House meeting on Friday and unloaded on him over the weekend on Twitter and in a Fox News interview. The president has reportedly been unhappy with Barr for months for his failure to deliver on an investigation targeting former Obama officials over the FBI's Russia probe, and for publicly confirming that the DOJ had no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
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• — Barr, meanwhile, has reportedly shrugged off Trump's remarks as being those of a "deposed king ranting." A CNN source said that Barr "cannot be intimidated" by Trump, and The Wall Street Journal reports that he intends to stay on at the department unless he's fired. —Business Insider

Ghitis: US at epicenter of global war over democracy

"On a global scale, the battle between democracy and authoritarianism is the defining political contest of our time. Authoritarianism comes in many colors. It is not much of an ideology. Along with its populist mechanisms, it is above all a way for individuals or parties to hold power. That's why we see it on the left—as in Venezuela—and on the right—as in Hungary, Poland, the Philippines—as well as in countries where it’s hard to even position a regime on the left-right continuum, as in Nicaragua. Just as Trump's 2016 election came as a blow to democrats (small d) around the world, his defeat felt like a major victory in that global battle. The battle in the United States is not over. But if the U.S. can solidify and strengthen its democracy enough to withstand the forces attacking it from within, the world's 14-year trend of democratic decline may just begin to reverse." —Frida Ghitis in INSIGHT

Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist and analyst. She is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television."

MORE: GOP efforts to overturn election may do lasting harm to democracy, political scientists warn —The Washington Post

Paying it forward

There's no question about it: this year has been tough for so many. But at a Dairy Queen drive-thru in Brainerd, Minn., about 100 miles north of Minneapolis, people stepped up in a small way to show one another that they care. What started as a random act of kindness from one man paying for the car behind him resulted in hundreds of cars also taking part in the pay-it-forward chain.

• — A man came by the drive-thru window on Thursday and asked if he could pay for his meal and for the car behind him. When the next customer came to the window, store manager Tina Jensen explained what the man in front of them had done—and the acts of kindness continued to multiply.
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• — Jensen told her cashier this tends to happen once in a while, but at most it lasts for 15 or 20 cars and fizzles out. This time, the chain continued for two and a half days with more than 900 cars participating, raking in $10,000 in sales.
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• — Heidi Bruse experienced the act of kindness on Friday evening during a dinner run. "During times like these it kinda restores your faith in humanity a little," Bruse said. "The way the world is now, you see a lot of anger, tension, and selfish behavior. What we witnessed was pure kindness, and it was a breath of fresh air really." —CNN

So, if Trump's legal team can file lawsuit after lawsuit, based on often delusional fabrications, and completely devoid of facts when asked to swear to them in a court of law, why can't poll workers file lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani? He has accused them of federal crimes. He has refused to provide sworn evidence to back up his claims. Many election officials, both Republican and Democrat have been subjected to harassment and threats, even to their spouses and children because of his unproven claims.

If ever there was just cause for lawsuits, Trump, Giuliani, and other Trump sycophants, including several elected officials, have provided it. After he leaves office, could Trump also be liable for damages? When he was running for office, he would not have been acting in his official capacity as president. The people who were defamed by his words are not all public figures. Why can't he be sued for libel? —Bill M., Pennsylvania

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