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Category: Politics

Raffensperger: Trump could face investigation over election call

Raffensperger: Trump could face investigation over election call

Politico reports: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that it was unlikely his office would open an investigation into his weekend phone call with President Donald Trump, but suggested a criminal probe could still be launched by an Atlanta-area district attorney. Because Trump personally spoke with Raffensperger on Saturday and recently had a conversation with the chief investigator in the secretary of state’s office, Raffensperger told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview Monday morning that “there may…

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All Pence can do is count

All Pence can do is count

Alan Charles Raul and Richard Bernstein write: Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert has argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is unconstitutional. Therefore, he claims, Vice President Mike Pence is empowered by the 12th Amendment to reject 73 Biden-Harris electoral votes from five states when Congress meets to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6. A dozen Republican senators and many more House members also argue that Congress has this power. They are all wrong. Neither the vice president…

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How the Department of Defense could help win the war on climate change

How the Department of Defense could help win the war on climate change

Politico reports: President-elect Joe Biden has warned that climate change will pose future threats for the U.S. military as it worsens unrest in volatile regions and creates new dangers to its facilities from rising seas, powerful storms and harsh droughts. But the Defense Department also offers a silver lining on climate change for the new president: a huge appetite for clean energy sources and a massive budget to help accelerate the development of new technologies needed to curb greenhouse gases…

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Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to tamper with the election result

Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to tamper with the election result

The Washington Post reports: President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at…

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Involving the military in election disputes would threaten our republican, says every former defense secretary

Involving the military in election disputes would threaten our republican, says every former defense secretary

Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld write: As former secretaries of defense, we hold a common view of the solemn obligations of the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Department. Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party. American elections and the peaceful transfers…

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Trump challenge to Biden win exposes massive democracy flaw

Trump challenge to Biden win exposes massive democracy flaw

Chris Truax writes: If members of Congress vote to reject valid presidential electors for invalid reasons, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. While we’ve never fully appreciated it until now, the ugly truth is that, despite a nationwide vote fenced with elaborate legal and technical safeguards, the president of the United States is actually elected on the honor system by 535 members of Congress. Despite the unprecedented number of Republicans willing to uphold a challenge, the House is controlled…

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Leading health officials reject Trump’s false claim that the Covid death toll is exaggerated

Leading health officials reject Trump’s false claim that the Covid death toll is exaggerated

CNN reports: US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams on Sunday said he has “no reason to doubt” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 death toll, contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim that the agency has “exaggerated” its numbers. “From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers,” Adams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked about Trump’s claim. “And I think people need to be very aware that it’s not…

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Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers

Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers

The Observer reports: Israel is celebrating an impressive, record-setting vaccination drive, having given initial jabs of coronavirus shots to more than a 10th of the population. But Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza can only watch and wait. As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push – with people in richer nations first to be inoculated – the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example…

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As understanding of Russian hacking grows, so does alarm

As understanding of Russian hacking grows, so does alarm

The New York Times reports: On Election Day, General Paul M. Nakasone, the nation’s top cyberwarrior, reported that the battle against Russian interference in the presidential campaign had posted major successes and exposed the other side’s online weapons, tools and tradecraft. “We’ve broadened our operations and feel very good where we’re at right now,” he told journalists. Eight weeks later, General Nakasone and other American officials responsible for cybersecurity are now consumed by what they missed for at least nine…

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With limited surveillance of Covid-19 variant, it’s déjà vu all over again

With limited surveillance of Covid-19 variant, it’s déjà vu all over again

Helen Branswell writes: As health officials in the United States announced a second and possibly a third person infected with a new, more transmissible strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, infectious diseases experts are feeling a sense of déjà vu all over again. A little less than a year ago, the early response to the coronavirus crisis was stifled by an inability to scale up testing to detect the virus and curb its spread. Now, once again, it’s unclear how prevalent…

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Covid-19 vaccine’s slow rollout could portend more problems

Covid-19 vaccine’s slow rollout could portend more problems

The Wall Street Journal reports: Three weeks into the most ambitious vaccination campaign in modern U.S. history, far fewer people than expected are being immunized against Covid-19, as the process moves slower than officials had projected and has been beset by confusion and disorganization in many states. As a result, the federal government came nowhere close to vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020, as it had promised. Of the more than 12 million doses of vaccines from…

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Airline workers battle mask resistance with scant government backup

Airline workers battle mask resistance with scant government backup

The Washington Post reports: As the man returned from the lavatory with a mask dangling from one ear, a flight attendant asked him to put it on properly. “Why? Is something going on that I should know about?” the passenger asked, before grabbing the mask and ripping the string. “Damn it, I guess I can’t wear it now.” Other passengers have verbally abused and taunted flight attendants trying to enforce airline mask requirements, treating the potentially lifesaving act as a…

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Britain’s departure from the EU, decades in the making

Britain’s departure from the EU, decades in the making

John Harris writes: Our step away from the EU confirms that any idea of Britain as a country with an essentially European destiny is over, for a generation at least. The UK’s institutional arrangements are now in line with the vision of Britain that narrowly won the 2016 referendum – what Brexiters see as a proudly sovereign country, and their adversaries malign as an inward-looking, crabby place, eternally fixated on its past. If you ever had a hopeful vision of…

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Once a model, California now struggles to tame Covid-19

Once a model, California now struggles to tame Covid-19

The Associated Press reports: Ambulances waited hours for openings to offload coronavirus patients. Overflow patients were moved to hospital hallways and gift shops, even a cafeteria. Refrigerated trucks were on standby, ready to store the dead. For months, California did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge from the pandemic. But by the time Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Dec. 15 that 5,000 body bags were being distributed, it was clear that the nation’s most populous state…

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Virus numbers are surging. Why is New York’s vaccine rollout sluggish?

Virus numbers are surging. Why is New York’s vaccine rollout sluggish?

The New York Times reports: As the final hours ticked away in a harrowing year, New York City on Thursday once again found itself in a worrying position in the pandemic: Hospitalizations were climbing for the fourth consecutive month, the positive test rate in some areas had doubled and vaccinations that were supposed to bring normalcy had gotten off to a slow start. Across the city, where the positive test rate over a seven-day average reached 8.87, the virus continued…

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Trump administration falls far short of vaccination goals as new virus variant looms

Trump administration falls far short of vaccination goals as new virus variant looms

The Washington Post reports: Logistical problems at the heart of the federal government’s faltering rollout of coronavirus vaccines came into sharper view Thursday as the Trump administration fell vastly short of its goal of delivering an initial shot to 20 million people by the end of December. On the final day of a bleak year, only about 2.8 million people had received the shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the first of two doses needed…

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