Steve Vladeck writes:

For all of the (many) lawsuits that President Donald Trump and his supporters have filed challenging the 2020 election results, the new winner for hubris and cynicism may be the action that the state of Texas filed directly in the Supreme Court late Monday night, asking the justices to throw out the results in four (but only four) battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So far, 17 states have filed motions backing the Texas attorney general, and Trump has asked the Supreme Court to let him join the lawsuit, as well.

The new winner for hubris and cynicism may be the action that the state of Texas filed directly in the Supreme Court late Monday night.

Texas is relying on an obscure source of the Supreme Court’s power — its ability to hear disputes between states immediately without having them go through lower courts, known as “original jurisdiction.” But the claim at the heart of the suit has nothing to do with interstate relations — like a border dispute or litigation over water rights. Nor does it have anything to do with fraud. Rather, Texas is arguing that coronavirus-related changes to election rules in each state violate the federal Constitution, never mind that most states (including Texas) made such changes this cycle.

But hypocrisy aside, the suit is also a perfect microcosm for so many of the other cases we’ve seen filed in the past month: It is lacking in actual evidence; it is deeply cynical; it evinces stunning disrespect for both the role of the courts in our constitutional system and of the states in our elections; and it is doomed to fail. [Continue reading…]