Attention to the Unseen

CNN reports: As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office in January, nearly half of the transition team laying the groundwork for his administration is made up of people of color, and women are in the majority. Forty-six percent of the transition staff are people of color, according to new diversity data of the transition team provided to CNN, and 41% of the senior staff are people of color. The majority of transition staff — 52% — are women, and…

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David Boies and Theodore B. Olson write: Twenty years ago, we represented the opposing sides in Bush v. Gore. We still don’t agree about how the Supreme Court ruled, but we completely agree that nothing in that case — or in the Supreme Court’s decision — supports the challenges now being thrown about in an attempt to undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Yet, over the past week, we have heard repeated assertions that the outcome of this election is somehow…

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Edward B. Foley writes: President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated at noon on Jan. 20. President Trump can thunder incessantly about “this Rigged Election!” and dispatch his lawyers to court. His attorney general can try to generate accusations of voter fraud. Republican senators can act as if the result were not clear. For those who are filled with dread that this will somehow prevent Biden from taking office: Relax. It won’t. First, the Trump lawsuits are bogus. Trump hasn’t even…

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Benjamin Wittes writes: And so it has come to this: The president of the United States is trying to overturn the results of a national election he unambiguously lost with a combination of petulant whining, spiteful and flailing executive action, and magic. No, it’s not ultimately going to work, at least not if working is defined as allowing President Trump to maintain power in the face of expressed voter will. But it is working better than I would have believed…

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NBC News reports: There is a growing expectation among President Donald Trump’s advisers that he will never concede that he lost re-election, even after votes are certified in battleground states over the coming weeks, according to multiple people familiar with the president’s thinking. “Do not expect him to concede,” one top aide said. More likely, the aide said, “he’ll say something like, ‘We can’t trust the results, but I’m not contesting them.’” Another adviser said that after the legal battles…

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Timothy L. O’Brien writes: Donald Trump is the luckiest man alive. Unlike almost, well, everyone, he’s been protected from the consequences of his own mistakes his entire life. Born into a wealthy family, he was insulated from lukewarm academic prospects and serial business crack-ups by his father’s money. (“I often say that I’m a member of the lucky sperm club,” is how he put it in one of his books.) Emerging as a reality-TV star in the early 2000s, Trump…

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The New York Times reports: A little-known counterterrorism official named Christopher C. Miller flew to the Middle East last month to pursue a diplomatic idea: asking Qatar to help devise plans to buy off or otherwise marginalize some senior leaders of the Shabab, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia, who are more committed to attacking the West. Mr. Miller had obtained a blessing from Kash Patel, then a senior official at the National Security Council. President Trump’s national security adviser, Robert…

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The Daily Beast reports: The one-time leader of the Proud Boys’ most paramilitary arm is now trying to rebrand the far-right streetfighting group as a more explicitly racist entity. It’s the latest headache for an organization currently in denial about President Donald Trump’s re-election loss. Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman was once the leader of the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights, essentially the frontline shock troops of the group known for taking part in brawls across the country. The Proud Boys’…

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CNN reports: The Trump administration has carried out sweeping changes atop the Defense Department’s civilian leadership structure, removing several of its most senior officials and replacing them with perceived loyalists to the President. The flurry of changes, announced by the Department of Defense in a statement roughly 24 hours after President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, have put officials inside the Pentagon on edge and fueled a growing sense of alarm among military and civilian officials, who are…

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The Washington Post reports: A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee. Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter…

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The New York Times reports: Election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role in the outcome of the presidential race, amounting to a forceful rebuke of President Trump’s portrait of a fraudulent election. Over the last several days, the president, members of his administration, congressional Republicans and right wing allies have put forth the false claim that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump…

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