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Supreme Court rejects Texas lawsuit to overturn Biden’s election victory

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Trump had called the lawsuit filed by Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin "the big one" that would end with the Supreme Court undoing Biden's substantial Electoral College majority and allowing Trump to serve another four years in the White House.

In a brief order, the court said Texas does not have the legal right to sue those states because it "has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections."

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have said previously the court does not have the authority to turn away lawsuits between states, said they would have heard Texas' complaint. But they would not have done as Texas wanted pending resolution of the lawsuit, and set aside those four states' 62 electoral votes for Biden.

Three Trump appointees sit on the high court. In his push to get the most recent of his nominees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed quickly, Trump said she would be needed for any post-election lawsuits. Barrett appears to have participated in both cases this week. None of the Trump appointees noted a dissent in either case.

Eighteen other states won by Trump in last month's election, 126 GOP members of Congress and Trump himself joined Texas in calling on the justices to take up the case that sought to stop electors from casting their votes for Biden.

The four states sued by Texas had urged the court to reject the case as meritless. They were backed by another 22 states and the District of Columbia.

Republican support for the lawsuit and its call to throw out millions of votes in four battleground states based on baseless claims of fraud was an extraordinary display of the party's willingness to subvert the will of voters. The House members backing the suit included House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

"This lawsuit is an act of flailing GOP desperation, which violates the principles enshrined in our American Democracy," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a message to Democrats on Friday.

A few Republicans have expressed concerns about the case. Many others have remained silent even as Trump endlessly repeated claims that he lost a chance at a second term due to widespread fraud.

"Texas is a big state, but I don't know exactly why it has a right to tell four other states how to run their elections. So I'm having a hard time figuring out the basis for that lawsuit," Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander told NBC's Chuck Todd in an interview for "Meet The Press" that will air Sunday.

To be clear, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.

The Texas complaint repeated false, disproven and unsubstantiated accusations about the voting in four states that went for Trump's Democratic challenger. The high court had never before been asked for such a dramatic remedy.

Two days after Paxton filed his suit, Trump jumped into the high court case. Hours later, the president held a meeting at the White House, scheduled before the suit was filed, with a dozen Republican attorneys general, including Paxton and several others who backed the effort.

"If the Supreme Court shows great Wisdom and Courage, the American People will win perhaps the most important case in history, and our Electoral Process will be respected again!" he tweeted Friday afternoon. Trump had spent the week relentlessly tweeting about the Texas case with the hashtag "overturn" and claiming, falsely, that he had won the election but was robbed.

Still, some of the top state Republican prosecutors who urged the court to get involved acknowledged that the effort was a long shot and sought to distance themselves from Trump's baseless allegations of fraud. North Dakota's Wayne Stenehjem, among the attorneys general supporting the case, said North Dakota is not alleging voter fraud in the four states at issue.

"We're careful on that," said Stenehjem, who noted that his office has received thousands of calls and emails from constituents asking the state to support the suit. "But it's worth it for the Supreme Court to weigh in and settle it once and for all," he said.

The case has inflamed already high tensions over the election. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said his office staff received two death threats Thursday after he signed onto the brief supporting the case.

The lawsuit has also divided officials in some states.

Montana Attorney General Tim Fox supported Texas' case, even though he said the suit was "belated" and its chances "are slim at best." Fox said the case raised "important constitutional questions about the separation of powers and the integrity of mail-in ballots in those defendant states."

But Gov. Steve Bullock, D-Mont., urged the court to reject the case. He said the fact that Texas is not suing Montana, which Trump won, even though the state similarly used mail-in ballots underscores that "this action is less about election integrity than it is about attempting to overturn the will of the electorate."

The litigation rankled Democratic attorneys general. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, co-chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, called the attempt to overturn votes "unconscionable." Support among other leading lawyers was disturbing, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who's also co-chair of the Democratic attorneys general group, told The Associated Press.

"I do think that these individuals are kowtowing to a president who has implemented some level of control and authority over the duly elected attorneys general in their states in a way that is unfortunate," he said.

Many of the attorneys general supporting the case have shown greater political ambitions.

In Kansas, Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who is considering a bid for governor in 2022, announced that he would back the effort only hours after former Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer - another potential candidate for governor - tweeted that Schmidt's office should.

Despite the political pressure, Idaho's Republican attorney general chose not to join Texas.

"As is sometimes the case, the legally correct decision may not be the politically convenient decision," Lawrence Wasden said in a statement. "But my responsibility is to the state of Idaho and the rule of law."

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Supreme Court rejects Texas lawsuit to overturn Biden's election victory - The Boston Globe

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Trump had called the lawsuit filed by Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin "the big one" that would end with the Supreme Court undoing Biden's substantial Electoral College majority and allowing Trump to serve another four years in the White House.

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I believe that racial injustice needs more attention because I think it's been a big issue these recent years and it's been occurring in both big and small societies all over the countries.

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NH#3) Trump seeks to stop voting, but only counting remains

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NH#3) Trump seeks to stop voting, but only counting remains

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“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court — we want all voting to stop,” Trump said

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President Donald Trump says he'll take the presidential election to the Supreme Court, but it's unclear what he means in a country in which vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end.

"We'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court - we want all voting to stop," Trump said early Wednesday.

But the voting is over. It's only counting that is taking place across the nation. No state will count absentee votes that are postmarked after Election Day.

Democratic challenger Joe Biden's campaign called Trump's statement "outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect."

"If the president makes good on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the proper tabulation of votes, we have legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort," Biden Campaign Manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said in a statement. "And they will prevail."

Election law expert Richard Hasen wrote in Slate on Sunday that "there has never been any basis to claim that a ballot arriving on time cannot be counted if officials cannot finish their count on election night."

Ohio State University election law professor Edward Foley wrote on Twitter Wednesday: "The valid votes will be counted. SCOTUS would be involved only if there were votes of questionable validity that would make a difference, which might not be the case. The rule of law will determine the official winner of the popular vote in each state. Let the rule of law work."

In any event, there's no way to go directly to the high court with a claim of fraud. Trump and his campaign could allege problems with the way votes are counted in individual states, but they would have to start their legal fight in a state or lower federal court.

There is a pending Republican appeal at the Supreme Court over whether Pennsylvania can count votes that arrive in the mail from Wednesday to Friday, an extension ordered by the state's top court over the objection of Republicans. That case does not involve ballots already cast and in the possession of election officials, even if they are yet to be counted.

The high court refused before the election to rule out those ballots, but conservative justices indicated they could revisit the issue after the election. The Supreme Court also refused to block an extension for the receipt and counting of absentee ballots in North Carolina beyond the three days set by state law.

Even a small number of contested votes could matter if either state determines the winner of the election and the gap between Trump and Biden is so small that a few thousand votes, or even a few hundred, could make the difference.

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Trump seeks to stop voting, but only counting remains

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President Donald Trump says he'll take the presidential election to the Supreme Court, but it's unclear what he means in a country in which vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end.

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A moral I live by is treat others the way you want to be treated. 

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A moral I live by is treat others the way you want to be treated. 

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I think this moral is what everyone should live by because if everyone did this, the world would be an easier and safer place.

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NH#2.) Coronavirus Cases, Hospitalizations Are Increasing in Majority of States

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NH#2.) Coronavirus Cases, Hospitalizations Are Increasing in Majority of States

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"PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERTS are warning that the upcoming months could bring a difficult surge in the coronavirus as the majority of states are reporting increases in new infections."

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Public health experts are warning that the upcoming months could bring a difficult surge in the coronavirus as the majority of states are reporting increases in new infections.

The U.S. recorded roughly 58,000 new cases on Monday - the highest for a Monday in about three months. Monday numbers are typically one of the lowest of the week.

from Johns Hopkins University shows that over half of U.S. states are seeing increases in their new coronavirus cases. North Dakota, Wyoming, South Dakota and Wisconsin are some of the states seeing the largest jumps in cases.

Photos: Daily Life, Disrupted

More than 37,000 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, according to The COVID Tracking Project. An analysis from found that the weekly averages for hospitalizations across 37 states were growing 5% or more as of Sunday.

Some experts have warned that the U.S. has entered the of its coronavirus outbreak. As the U.S. heads deeper into fall and winter, and cold weather pushes more people indoors, researchers believe the virus will spread more easily. The challenge could also be compounded by the flu season.

Officials in the U.S. report more than 8.2 million cases and over 220,000 deaths. California, Texas and Florida report the most infections of any states, followed by New York, Illinois and Georgia.

Deaths have not increased in the same way infections and hospitalizations have, though fatalities tend to lag behind the other two metrics.

While President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. is "rounding the corner" on the coronavirus outbreak, leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci recently told "60 Minutes" that it is "impossible to say" where the outbreak stands.

"When you have a million deaths and over 30 million infections globally, you cannot say that we're on the road to essentially getting out of this," Fauci said.

The wide-ranging interview led to renewed criticism of Fauci from Trump, with the president calling him a "disaster."

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Coronavirus Cases, Hospitalizations Are Increasing in Majority of States

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Public health experts are warning that the upcoming months could bring a difficult surge in the coronavirus as the majority of states are reporting increases in new infections. The U.S. recorded roughly 58,000 new cases on Monday - the highest for a Monday in about three months.

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NH#4.) Biden Plans to Move Fast With a ‘Climate Administration.’ Here’s How.

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NH#4.) Biden Plans to Move Fast With a ‘Climate Administration.’ Here’s How.

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"“We have to re-establish American leadership globally on climate change, and re-establishing global leadership is going to require getting our house in order domestically,” said Ernest Moniz, a former energy secretary and adviser to Mr. Biden’s campaign."

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The Presidential Transition

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr's aggressive approach to climate change includes undoing years of President Trump's regulatory rollbacks at agencies like the E.P.A. Credit... Christie Hemm Klok for The New York Times

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., eager to elevate climate change issues throughout his administration, is already drafting orders to reduce planet-warming pollution and seeking nominees who will embed climate policy not only in environmental agencies but in departments from Defense to Treasury to Transportation.

Top candidates for senior cabinet posts, such as Michèle Flournoy for defense secretary and Lael Brainard for Treasury, have long supported aggressive policies to curb climate change. Mr. Biden's inner circle routinely asks "is the person climate-ambitious?" of candidates even for lower profile positions like the White House budget and regulatory offices, according to a person advising the transition.

Transition team members have been instructed to identify policies that can improve pollution levels in Black and Latino communities. And one of Mr. Biden's early executive orders is expected to require that every federal agency, department and program prepare to address climate change.

"We have to re-establish American leadership globally on climate change, and re-establishing global leadership is going to require getting our house in order domestically," said Ernest Moniz, a former energy secretary and adviser to Mr. Biden's campaign.

Interviews with more than two dozen advisers and members of Mr. Biden's transition team reveal an incoming administration acutely aware of the challenges ahead, with a narrowly divided Congress and the outsized expectations that some voters have for action on climate change after four years of regulatory rollbacks and presidential hostility.

"There's no doubt that Covid is the issue of the moment which has to be addressed right out of the box," Mr. Moniz said. "But we're going to see climate addressed right out of the box as well."

Republicans insist they want bipartisan climate legislation, not a return to executive action, but their visions of capturing carbon from coal-fired power plants and expanding nuclear energy do not align with Mr. Biden's promise to phase out fossil fuel-powered electricity and move to solar, wind and other renewable fuel sources.

"There are ways we can protect our environment without punishing our economy. Free market innovation, not government taxation or heavy-handed regulations, is the best way to deal with climate change," said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, who is expected to take the helm of the Senate Energy Committee.

Transition team members named to coordinate the handover of power from the Trump administration include dozens of climate change experts - including at agencies that are not at the forefront of environmental policy, such as the departments of Justice, Agriculture and Defense.

The president-elect has raised climate change in all of the congratulatory calls he has taken with foreign leaders, as well as with Pope Francis. Advisers said he planned to make climate change an explicit focus of every regional bureau at the State Department. He also is considering Mr. Moniz; John Kerry, the former secretary of state; or Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist; for a new international climate envoy post.

"It won't happen in just one or two agencies," said Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, who is on Mr. Biden's list to head up the Interior Department. "It's going to be a whole government approach."

Tim Profeta, a Duke University professor and former Senate climate policy aide, said in past transitions, such planning has been effective. George W. Bush's transition created a fossil fuel- focused Energy Task Force. The Obama transition's focus on economic stimulus helped lead to passage of a $787 billion relief measure in the first month of the administration.

"That's the opportunity that's here," said Mr. Profeta, who was a co-author of a recent blueprint for how a Biden White House could beef up climate expertise across cabinet agencies.

The Biden team is considering either the creation of a separate new White House office devoted to climate change or a coordinating council modeled after the national security and economic councils. Three people close to the incoming administration said the Biden team was expected to tap Ali Zaidi, a former climate adviser in the Obama White House who now serves as deputy secretary of energy in New York state, to a top position advising the president and coordinating work among agencies.

A spokeswoman for the Mr. Biden's transition declined to comment on personnel.

"The single most important thing that they need to do is start making key appointments to all the relevant agencies," said John Holdren, a former Obama science adviser who worked closely with the Biden campaign.

Mr. Holdren said one of Mr. Biden's earliest executive orders would revive an Obama-era mandate that every agency in the government incorporate climate change into its policies.

The Environmental Protection Agency will still be the new president's most powerful weapon in his push to reinstate and strengthen climate change regulations.

The Presidential Transition

After four years in which Mr. Trump rolled back every major climate change rule and weakened the E.P.A., the agency under Mr. Biden is expected to grow in size and authority, with its new administrator taking the lead in writing rules to rein in greenhouse gases.

Mr. Biden's top candidate to lead the agency is Mary D. Nichols, California's climate and clean air regulator, according to at least four people familiar with the matter. She said in an interview that she would eagerly accept the job.

Ms. Nichols has become a celebrity in global warming politics as architect of her state's cap-and-trade climate change law and its tough regulations on climate-warming auto emissions. Those California rules served as a model for Mr. Obama's federal climate policies, only to be rolled back by Mr. Trump.

"It's going to be important to quickly reverse and stop a very large number of actions that were done by the Trump administration, and then to restore the agency's scientific basis for its work," Ms. Nichols said.

Advisers to Mr. Biden's transition also say they see a newly climate role for the Transportation Department, which would be expected to partner with the E.P.A. in drafting stringent new rules on auto pollution and fuel efficiency, while promoting electric and hybrid vehicles. Among the top candidates for the post is Los Angeles Mayor Eric M. Garcetti, who last year introduced a plan to transition his city to 100 percent electric vehicles by 2050.

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Traffic in Los Angeles. A Biden administration could put new, more stringent rules in place on auto pollution. Credit... Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

The Pentagon is also likely to take on a much larger climate change portfolio.

Ms. Flournoy, the top candidate for defense secretary, was an under secretary of defense in the Obama administration and has often spoken of climate change as a national security threat. In an opinion article for CNN last month, Ms. Flournoy wrote that the Pentagon should be a key player on climate change, both because of the role planetary warming plays in driving conflict around the world and because the Defense Department could help accelerate the research and development of cleaner technologies, as it has done for jet engines and telecommunications.

Mr. Biden's Pentagon transition team includes Sharon A. Burke, who as assistant secretary of defense for operational energy, pushed to reduce the military's dependence on fossil fuels.

"We've lost a generation of leadership in the career ranks, and we never had the political leadership. Both of those have to be rebuilt across all parts of the Department of Defense," said Sherri Goodman, who served as the Pentagon's first deputy under secretary of defense for environmental security under President Bill Clinton and has been a national security adviser on climate to the Biden campaign.

As the Biden administration presses forward with regulations that will very likely end up before the Supreme Court, the Justice Department will have to defend and preserve the rules. To that end, the Justice Department transition team includes Richard J. Lazarus of Harvard Law School, a prominent expert in climate change litigation.

Among the candidates for attorney general is Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, who has spearheaded more than 50 lawsuits against Mr. Trump's environmental rollbacks. In an interview in September, Mr. Becerra predicted of Mr. Trump: "I don't think much of what he's done will stick, because much of what he's done hasn't taken hold legally. I believe his legacy will be very short and his tenure will be considered the nadir for environmental policy in the history of this country."

Already, legal experts on Mr. Biden's transition team have begun preparing the legal dismemberment of Mr. Trump's environmental policies and laying the groundwork for new rules.

"A Biden administration would come in and take a fresh look at all these environmental lawsuits," Mr. Becerra said. "In some cases you could drop the lawsuit. In some cases you may not be able to do that - you have to understand the rules."

The Biden administration may also use financial regulations to impose climate-related rules on Wall Street. Ms. Brainard, the candidate for Treasury secretary, who is currently a member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, has gained notice for her speeches and statements about climate risks to the financial system. This month, the Fed assessed climate change risks in detail in a financial stability report, a first for the twice-yearly document. "Climate change poses important risks to financial stability," she wrote, and addressing such concerns "is vitally important."

Financial regulators in a Biden administration are likely to use a recent report commissioned by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission on the risks of climate change to the financial system as a road map. Among the report's top recommendations would be a new rule requiring companies to disclose to shareholders their financial risks from climate change.

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Biden Plans to Move Fast With a 'Climate Administration.' Here's How.

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The Presidential Transition WASHINGTON - President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., eager to elevate climate change issues throughout his administration, is already drafting orders to reduce planet-warming pollution and seeking nominees who will embed climate policy not only in environmental agencies but in departments from Defense to Treasury to Transportation.

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NH#5.) Time Person of the Year: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

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NH#5.) Time Person of the Year: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

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"The Biden-Harris Administration is on track to be one of the most diverse in the nation’s history"

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Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Are TIME's 2020 Person of the Year

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Together, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offered restoration and renewal in a single ticket. And America bought what they were selling

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Knows and Want to Knows about the Covid-19 Pandemic

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Knows and Want to Knows about the Covid-19 Pandemic

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Knows
-The virus was discovered in Wuhan, City, China on December 2019.
-About 95% of people who have been sick with Covid-19 have recovered or are recovering.
-Children and adolescents have been far less affected b Covid-19.
-Although the Covid-19 is mild, it spreads very quickly

Want to Knows
-When will there a vaccine available for the United States?
-Is it true the virus existed in America before the Chinese discovery?
-Will the Coronavirus Era be the deadliest event in world history?

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Brown v. Board of Education - Landmark Supreme Court Case

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Brown v. Board of Education - Landmark Supreme Court Case

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The Brown v. Board of Education case challenged the Supreme Court in deciding whether colored and white students should no longer be separated in schools.

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1.) Needs to be acknowledged of past occurrences of the federal court cases. Both failures and accomplishments.

2.) Needs to be understanding of the accused without being racist, sexist, or biased in any way.

3.) Needs to be fair as well as understand what it means to receive justice in the best way possible.

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Brandon Bernard - Current Supreme Court Case

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Brandon Bernard - Current Supreme Court Case

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Brandon Bernard was executed on December 20, 2020 for his second degree murder charge in 1999 after being denied a delay by the US Supreme Court. Many are stating how this is flaw in the system and was a mistake.

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brandon bernard executed after supreme court denies request for a delay - cnnpolitics

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Brandon Bernard executed after Supreme Court denies request for a delay

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Brandon Bernard was executed by the federal government on Thursday at the Federal Correctional Center in Terre Haute, Indiana, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

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A law I feel is in need of revision is the "Fines for Minor Infractions"

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A law I feel is in need of revision is the "Fines for Minor Infractions"

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I believe this law needs to be revised because there are many instances where slight incidents or accidents occur and people are received unnecessary punishments that are worsened over time which make problems worse. There was a case where a woman named Latrice Harry was  forced to pay $1,400 for an unpaid parking ticket and also had his license suspended which resulted in her not being able to go to work or see her children. I believe that minor cases like these need to be looked deeper into or should not worsen over time as bad as they do.

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California's steep penalties help generate funding for government programs. But they've come with an additional cost.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Losing the right to drive in December upended Latrice Harry's life. She'd been pulled over by police six months before, and after failing to pay an initial ticket-she says she got it for not being able to quickly find proof of insurance among her belongings-the debt kept accumulating. By her telling, a series of errors in the local court-being told she couldn't protest the ticket immediately, delays in its processing, all notices being sent to a very old address-added up to a $1,400 penalty and the suspension of her license.

Without it, she lost her job. Harry, a 55-year-old black woman from Vallejo, California, worked for $1,900 a month as an in-home care provider for three elderly clients, whom she drove to doctor's appointments and on errands. The loss of reliable transportation also limited her contact with her children, including a son still recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle accident and living some 45 minutes away. "I started having anxiety, depression," Harry said. "I didn't know what way to turn."

The threat of driver's-license suspension to compel violators to pay traffic fines has long been viewed as an essential tool. Harry's home of California is one of 29 states to use it, according to Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior counsel at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice. But the size of the fines levied has ballooned in recent decades, as lawmakers came to use them as a regular source of revenue for government programs.

More in this series

In California, increased attention on how this punishment disproportionately affects low-income residents has led lawmakers there to consider mitigating penalties, starting with a bill now working its way through the state Senate. Indeed, when it comes to low-income Californians, revoking licenses would seem to do more to keep them in a cycle of poverty than encourage them to pay debts they cannot afford. Yet lawmakers are finding that disentangling this revenue from the state's spending is complicated, as the bill's opponents argue it funds valuable initiatives.

Proponents of reform argue that issuing steep fines and fees for minor infractions isn't good fiscal policy, beyond what they see as inherent ethical concerns. Last year, Californians owed the state $9.7 billion in traffic debt. As a recent budget summary from Governor Jerry Brown notes: "There does not appear to be a strong connection between suspending someone's [driver's] license and collecting their fine or penalty." In Harry's case, the state never did get her money: On a tip from a debt collector, she found her way to a grant-funded community court that helps low-income residents take care of tickets. A judge there appeared to find her case credible-that she'd had proof of insurance in her car during the traffic stop-and ruled that Harry didn't have to pay the debt and reinstated her license.

Between 2006 and 2015, there were over four million Californians, or 17 percent of the state's adults, with licenses suspended because they did not pay citation fines and fees. Seventy-eight percent of Californians regularly drive to work, a share that's about 10 percent lower than the national average. The state's traffic-ticket costs, however, are among the country's highest, according to a report released last week by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, a legal-aid group. A comprehensive national comparison is difficult because nearly half of states do not have a uniform fee structure; what is charged varies by locality or court. But this report shows that among those with statewide regulations, California ranks at or near the top for every type of traffic citation.

California's high rates stem from its steep "add-on fees," which are earmarked for the State Penalty Fund and used in part to finance programs. For example, a $100 ticket for running a red light becomes $490 once the fees are taken into account. If a person fails to pay on time or misses a court appearance, the debt jumps to $815. Other states also pad tickets with these extras, but most do so at a much lower cost. Sticking with the red-light example, Oregon charges the next highest fine, at $260. The average cost for this citation in states with a uniform fee structure is $154, less than a third of what California charges.

Compounding concerns about the financial burden on low-income Californians is a civil-rights one: Though the report doesn't include comprehensive numbers on rates of traffic stops by race, it points to small studies performed in Fresno, San Diego, and Sacramento that show higher rates of African Americans and Latinos being pulled over for small traffic violations.

The legislation that the state legislature is weighing, Senate Bill 185, would take "the biggest step towards reform that any state has taken" when it comes to traffic fines, said Elisa Della-Piana, legal director at LCCR. The bill is essentially an extension and expansion of an amnesty program for low-income Californians that Brown instated in 2015. The original program, which expired last month, eased old traffic-ticket debt: Any incurred before 2013 was reduced by 50 percent to 80 percent, depending on household income. People who can afford to pay tickets generally do off the bat, and debt notoriously becomes harder to collect as it ages. Though a poor person who once ran a red light is no more a threat behind the wheel than a wealthy one who did the same, the former bears the biggest brunt of the current system.

Brown's program was an attempt to clear the docket and allow people who'd had their licenses suspended to drive again. Newer debt wasn't reduced and neither were fines, but debtors could get on payment plans ensuring they paid no more than 5 percent of their family's monthly income per month. (Harry had taken steps to enroll before trying the community court.)

The new legislation goes even further: eliminating license suspension as a penalty for accruing traffic-ticket debt and reducing base fines by 80 percent. It also retains the payment-plan mechanism. The bill easily passed through the state Transportation and Housing Committee, as well as Public Safety, and is currently in Appropriations.

Brown's original amnesty program wasn't instituted in a vacuum. Rather, it followed a high-profile scandal halfway across the country about government's use of fines. In March 2015, the Department of Justice issued a scathing report on Ferguson, Missouri, where the year before a police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. In its investigation of local police practices there, department officials discovered that the city deliberately generated funds by regularly imposing costly penalties on citizens for minor infractions-blurring the line between law enforcement and fiscal agencies.

As Walter Johnson wrote in this magazine: "[T]he cash-starved municipality relies on its cops and its courts to extract millions in fines and fees from its poorest residents, issuing thousands of citations each year. Those tickets plug a financial hole created by the ways in which the city, the county, and the state have chosen to apportion the costs of public services." The Justice Department reported that police practices were guided "by the city's focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs" and that "many officers appear to see some residents, especially those who live in Ferguson's predominantly African American neighborhoods, less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue."

Governor Brown, a Democrat, came to see his state's traffic-ticket system as an iteration of the same problem. Two months after the Ferguson report's release, he referred to the financial precariousness of low-income Californians with ticket debt as a "hellhole of desperation." Brown's comment echoed existent concerns about the system: that even with billions evidently uncollected, the government was profiting off its more financially vulnerable residents, just as a different government had just outside St. Louis.

But even opponents of the new legislation who are sympathetic to the systemic problems balk at the potential loss of revenue. That loss fuels one of the more common arguments against decreasing fines and sanctions: California's already cash-strapped court system will buckle without this source of income, and other government programs where the money is funneled will hurt, too.

Perhaps unexpectedly, state officials have been frank about how crucial fines are to government operations. When the Senate bill was introduced in January, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said that she worried it would impede the courts' ability to collect about $2 billion annually: "Sixty percent or over goes to state and local government programs-all worthy programs." In California, 16 of them receive financing from the State Penalty Fund, the largest of the state's coffers that siphon revenue from criminal fines and fees, according to a recent report by the state Legislative Analyst Office. They include rape crisis centers, certification courses for police officers, and traumatic brain-injury rehabilitation services. This coming fiscal year, a total of $94 million is expected to be deposited into the fund. Representatives contacted for specific programs, some of which are overseen by local police departments, could not be reached for comment.

Law-enforcement agencies echo Cantil-Sakauye's concerns. Designing an appropriate punishment should involve both the need for accountability and the "critical programs that rely on those resources to exist," Ed Medrano, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, wrote in a statement.

Under current law, it is not mandatory for California courts to suspend driver's licenses as an incentive to pay-and a punishment for failure to do so. Recently, a few have voluntarily ceased the practice citing the effect on low-income residents. The first was San Francisco County Superior Court in November 2015. Yet removing the penalty does appear to have taken a toll on the court's traffic collections, and thus the State Penalty Fund. The court collected 23 percent less from July to December 2016 than it did during the same period a year earlier, according to information provided by the court.

The law's supporters, like the Brennan Center's Eisen, say efficiency at generating revenue is beside the point. "From a public-policy standpoint it's unjust," she said. "What we're doing is criminalizing poverty." Yet LCCR's report suggests there may be an economic argument to be made for the Senate's bill. It alleges the state may be able to collect more money when people are charged amounts that they can reasonably handle. Its analysis of all court-ordered collections during California's two-year amnesty period under Brown showed low-income residents on payment plans scaled to household income paid their dues at rates 2.5 times higher than people who were mandated to pay a flat fee. There was a two-fold effect: As of December, the most recent numbers available, over 200,000 Californians had regained driving privileges, and the state collected over $35.5 million.

"Courts are more likely to collect more money and from more people, if they give people fines they can afford to pay," Della-Piana said. "That's what we want people to realize." The question for any officials on the fence about the Senate's bill might be this: Given how it would lower fines substantially and remove the driver's license incentive, can it come close to producing a similar result? In Latrice Harry's case, her fine crept up to $500 below her monthly take-home pay from work. Though she was later absolved, had she gotten on a payment plan instead, perhaps she would have paid some of the fines instead of nothing at all.

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Should States Charge Low-Income Residents Less for Traffic Tickets?

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California's steep penalties help generate funding for government programs. But they've come with an additional cost. Losing the right to drive in December upended Latrice Harry's life. She'd been pulled over by police six months before, and after failing to pay an initial ticket-she says she got it for not being able to quickly find proof of insurance among her belongings-the debt kept accumulating.

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I believe that a law regarding racism other assault's of people's sex, gender, religion, or other characteristics should be enforced to prevent it in the future. I also think we should enforce acknowledging that people shouldn't do this to younger people.

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I believe that in regards of the dangerous Covid-19 virus, the country must adapt to the minor and major changes for the presidential election of 2020 to ensure the safety of American citizens by switching to Absentee voting rather than In-Person Voting. Despite the competitive nature of the presidential election, we cannot ignore the safety regulations that keep us safe from the virus.

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Democrat results (Democratic Election Info)

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Democrat results (Democratic Election Info)

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"One piece of evidence that this narrative shift is taking hold is the hero treatment afforded certain public figures by Democrats and the reality-based community."

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Gabriel Sterling, Georgia's voting system manager, speaks with the news media in Atlanta on Dec. 7. (Erik S. Lesser/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Donald Trump lost the presidential election, but his fantastic claims of voting fraud have succeeded in transforming how we talk about elections. For years, it's been clear that American democracy faces a real threat: voter suppression policies (generally implemented by Republican state legislatures or governors) that place obstacles between poor people and racial minorities and voting. But today, Trump has shifted the frame: Many of his supporters believe the conspiracy theories he tweets and retweets, forcing Democrats and state election officials to declare that the electoral process is healthy and robust simply because it is not contaminated by widespread fraud.

For the next four years, it's likely that debates about elections will focus on the nonissue of whether the 2020 presidential election was stolen. In the meantime, real voter suppression will continue, largely out of sight and out of mind. That dynamic redounds to the benefit of Republicans.

One piece of evidence that this narrative shift is taking hold is the hero treatment afforded certain public figures by Democrats and the reality-based community. Take Gabriel Sterling, the (Republican) Georgia voting system implementation manager, who vaulted into prominence last week with an impassioned appearance calling out Trump for inciting attacks on state election officials and lambasting Republican senators for saying nothing to stop him. This week, Sterling followed that up with a news conference he called " Disinformation Monday," at which he systematically rebutted false claims made by the president and his allies.

Sterling deserves credit for speaking out. He is a conservative Republican speaking truth to power, taking on the bullying president and his army of followers willing to believe the fantasies concocted by Rudy Giuliani and spread by One America News, Newsmax and Facebook.

But there's another side to Sterling and his boss, Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who has also gotten glowing press for rejecting the president's claims. Last year, their office purged the registrations of about 300,000 Georgians on the grounds that they likely had moved. (Voters are flagged for possible removal if they file a change of address request, their election-related mail is returned as undeliverable or they do not have contact with elections officials for three years). This followed a similar but bigger purge of 560,000 people in 2017 (under then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was elected governor the following year). The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed that the 2017 purge was excessive by identifying more than 87,000 of these voters - more than 15 percent - who successfully re-registered in Georgia, many at their former address. (Recall that Joe Biden won Georgia by roughly 12,000 votes.)

Texas can't block votes cast in other states. Absurdly, it's trying.

The error rate for the purge could be much higher. An investigation for the American Civil Liberties Union by journalist Greg Palast found that, of the 300,000 or so people stricken from the rolls in 2019, almost 200,000 were still at their original addresses the following year. And those who were purged were disproportionately young, poor and members of racial or ethnic minorities.

That investigation was the basis for a lawsuit filed last week by the Black Voters Matter Fund and other organizations against Raffensperger. Asked after the filing whether his office had wrongly purged almost 200,000 voter records, Sterling glibly said, " I'm going to go with no." Needless to say, the state disputes that the motivation for the purge involved anything other than electoral efficiency.

The issue isn't whether Sterling and Raffensperger are heroes (for standing up to Trump) or villains (for suppressing votes). That's a false choice. They are who they are: conservative government officials who are perfectly content with Republican hardball tactics on voting, yet who apparently have some reservoir of integrity and human decency.

For years, Democrats have striven to highlight voter suppression by Republicans - the Georgia purges, barring people in Florida with felony convictions from voting (despite a popular referendum reversing the practice), limiting ballot drop-off locations in Texas, fighting no-excuse-necessary absentee voting everywhere. For their part, Republicans have tried to change the subject by making vague accusations of "voter fraud," for which there is minimal evidence.

Now Trump has truly hijacked the conversation - one thing for which he has a talent. Genuine Republican voter suppression, in its many forms, probably stole a non-trivial number of down-ballot elections this year. And yet the tens of millions of people who are worked up about "stolen elections" are Trump supporters. By taking traditional Republican rhetoric about voter fraud and turning it up to 11 - an international conspiracy! secret computer algorithms! massive ballot drops in the middle of the night! corrupt big-city Democratic politicians! - the president has probably made the "stolen election" a central theme of politics for years to come.

Thanks to Trump, the public debate is now between people who think that a dead Venezuelan president and the Republican governor of Georgia conspired to throw the election for Joe Biden, and the reality-based camp, who insist that the 2020 elections were free and fair. When Trump launches another barrage of tweets complaining about election fraud, Democrats respond with some version of "The United States just conducted the fairest election in history." The few Republicans who agree, such as Sterling and Raffensperger, are lauded as heroes.

I understand; if Trump says the election was fraudulent, we want to say it wasn't. But we can't let ourselves be tricked into overly praising an electoral system with deep structural problems.

Whenever anyone claims that Democrats stole the election, people who care about electoral integrity should list the ways that Republicans suppress the vote and undermine our democratic system. Defending the outcome of the 2020 election is fine - indeed, crucial - but it's not enough. We risk spending the next four years caught in an endless, unwinnable debate about nonexistent voter fraud. If that happens, the issue of voter suppression will fade into the background - exactly where Republicans want it to be.

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Perspective | Democrats lavishly praising U.S. elections are overlooking a major weakness

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Donald Trump lost the presidential election, but his fantastic claims of voting fraud have succeeded in transforming how we talk about elections. For years, it's been clear that American democracy faces a real threat: voter suppression policies (generally implemented by Republican state legislatures or governors) that place obstacles between poor people and racial minorities and voting.

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NH#1.) Early Voting: At Least 52 Million Americans Have Already Voted in the 2020 Election

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NH#1.) Early Voting: At Least 52 Million Americans Have Already Voted in the 2020 Election

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"Early voting in the 2020 presidential election is on track to shatter records, potentially transforming the way Americans cast ballots for years to come."

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Early voting in the 2020 presidential election is on track to shatter records, potentially transforming the way Americans cast ballots for years to come.

As of Friday, At least 52 million voters have cast ballots in the 2020 election, according to Michael McDonald, an Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Florida who specializes in elections, and the U.S. Elections Project.

That figure accounts for over a third of all votes cast in the 2016 presidential election (38.1%), with less than two weeks to go until Election Day.

Another eye-popping number? With over 6.3 million votes cast, Texas surpassed 70% of its total 2016 voter turnout.

What You Need To Know

Early voting in the 2020 election looks to shatter records for early voting

At least 56 million voters have cast their ballots in the 2020 election, according to University of Florida professor Michael McDonald and the U.S. Elections Project

That figure accounts for over 40% of all votes cast in the 2016 presidential election

Multiple states have crossed the 50% mark of their total 2016 turnout, including Texas, Vermont, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, and Montana

With over 6.8 million votes cast, Texas has surpassed 76% of its total 2016 voter turnout

Americans' rush to vote is leading election experts to predict that a record 150 million votes may be cast and turnout rates could be higher than in any presidential election since 1908.

"It's crazy," McDonald told the Associated Press. "We can be certain this will be a high-turnout election."

On Thursday, the voter turnout hit a significant milestone for McDonald: It surpassed the 47.2 million number of the pre-election early voting period that he tracked during the 2016 election.

"I stopped updating #earlyvote statistics on Election Day in 2016," he wrote on Twitter, "so the 47.2 number is a pretty good benchmark as it does not include mail ballots that arrived on or after Election Day, which other sources may report for total 2016 'early vote.'"

Of note, over 38.6 million of those are mail-in ballots, and over 17.5 million are in-person votes, though the U.S. Elections Project notes that "some states do not differentiate between mail ballots and in-person votes."

Texas leads the way with over 6.8 million ballots cast, followed by California (Over 6.3 million), and Florida (Over 5.2 million).

Other states to cross the 1 million voter threshold as of Saturday:

North Carolina (Nearly 3 million)

Georgia (Over 2.3 million)

New Jersey (Over 2.3 million)

Michigan (Over 1.9 million)

Virginia (Over 1.8 million)

Washington State (Over 1.8 million)

Ohio (Over 1.8 million)

Illinois (Over 1.8 million)

Colorado (Over 1.5 million)

Tennessee (Over 1.4 million)

Pennsylvania (Over 1.4 million)

Massachusetts (Over 1.4 million)

Wisconsin (Over 1.3 million)

Arizona (Over 1.2 million)

Florida's number represents 55% of their total 2016 turnout. California sits at 43.6%.

For Texas, the state's massive turnout accounts for 76.4% of their total 2016 turnout.

The following states have crossed the 50% threshold:

In Pennsylvania, half of the requested mail-in ballots have been returned, according to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.

Notably, according to McDonald, registered Democrats have returned the ballots at a significantly higher rate (55.3% compared to 39.9%). In Pennsylvania, Democrats have returned over 1 million ballots (out of over 1.8 million requested) compared to over 295,000 returned out of over 740,000 requested by registered Republicans.

The Republican return rate is the same as those who have no party affiliation at 39.9% - over 125,000 returned compared to over 313,000 requested.

"It's not just that half of PA's mail ballots have been returned, its also that registered Democrats have returned them at a much higher rate than Republicans, a pattern happening across the U.S.," McDonald wrote on Twitter.

One of the only states to not report any data thus far, New York, began early voting for the first time in a presidential election Saturday. Long lines were spotted in New York City and across Upstate New York.

New York City council member Mark Levine tweeted a video of people waiting in line to vote in Manhattan.

"Line goes all way around block and now starting to wrap around second time. This is unprecedented in NYC. We are in a whole new world," said Levine.

SEE IT

100s in line to vote, some there for hours, ahead of opening of polls for early voting, at 168th St. in Uptown Manhattan. Line goes all way around block and now starting to wrap around 2nd time.

This is unprecedented in NYC. We are in a whole new world. pic.twitter.com/c07hkYf8Uy
- Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) October 24, 2020

Lengthy waits have been seen in early voting states across the country, but it doesn't seem to be deterring turnout. In fact, many voters said they were glad to see so many people voting early.

Jackie Burton and her son Lanair visited a polling site on the north side of Raleigh, North Carolina, late Monday morning. Although the line stretched for at least 75 yards out the door, they were able to get through in about 20 minutes. She said she didn't mind the wait.

"Many have died for this right for us to vote, and we by all means need to take advantage of it because every vote does count," she says.

More than 900,000 North Carolinians visited the polls during the first four days of in-person early voting. That led to waits of an hour or more to cast a ballot in some parts of the state. Read more about early voting in the Tar Heel State.

The same was true in Florida last week. In Orange County, Florida, lines at several of the polling places stretched around buildings and blocks and even out into the streets. Some people reported waiting for hours, even as it started raining.

Christa Ruvolo said it took her 2 hours 15 minutes to vote, but she was willing to wait as long as needed.

"I know there's been a lot of stress on the Post Office with early mail-in ballots, so I wanted to be sure it was counted. I wanted to get a head start and give the Post Office a break," she said.

Scott Smith, who lives in downtown Orlando, said he has not missed an opportunity to vote in a presidential election.

"It's your right that you have, it's the only way you get your voice heard is to vote," he said.

Evidence of long lines was also found in Seminole, Flagler and Brevard counties. Read more about early voting in Florida.

Historically, in Texas, voter turnout has not been anything to brag about. The 2020 general election, however, is a whole new ballgame.

In Travis County, home of Austin and where 97% of eligible voters registered in time for the presidential election, 31,946 voted on Monday alone, and as of 10 a.m. Tuesday 7,000 people had already voted.

In Harris County, which is Texas' most populous county and includes Houston and the surrounding area, more than 100,000 voters came to the polls for four straight days, which works out to an average of 9,000 votes per hour. Read more about early voting in the Lone Star State here.

In Wisconsin, More than 75,000 people in Wisconsin cast ballots on the first day of early in-person voting, according to the state elections commission.

Voters waited in lines around the state on Tuesday for a chance to cast their ballots in person. Early in-person voting will be an option through Nov. 1 in the state. Because of potential delays with mail delivery, the state elections commission has recommended that mail-in ballots be sent no later than Oct. 27 to ensure they arrive in time.

The highest in-person turnout was seen in the state's largest city, Milwaukee, where 4,025 people took advantage of the option. That was followed by Madison, with 1,821, and Eau Claire, where 1,283 voted early and in person.

The Elections Commission reported that 75,519 in-person absentee ballots were cast on Tuesday. As of Wednesday morning, that number had risen to 79,774. The total number of absentee ballots cast, both in-person and by mail, was 1,021,397 as of Wednesday.

Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, and the race looks to be a close one again.

In West Virginia, residents turned out in droves to cast their ballots on the first day of early in-person voting Wednesday, less than two weeks before the November election.

Long lines were reported in several polling places throughout the state.

Todd Dorcas of Cross Lanes waited for more than an hour to vote in his hometown in Kanawha County, the state's largest county, which had the most early voting locations with eight.

The nation's turbulent political climate had him chomping at the bit to vote.

"There definitely needs to be some change. We need some change," Dorcas said. "We're going in the wrong direction."

In Charleston, the line at a downtown polling place office wrapped around a city block.

More than 91,000 voters had returned absentee ballots in West Virginia as of Tuesday, or 66% of the ballots requested. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is Oct. 28.

In addition, more than 1,000 voters have cast ballots using an electronic absentee method that is limited to active military and overseas voters as well as those with a qualifying disability.

Requests for absentee ballots have surpassed 2016 levels in Mississippi with two weeks left before Election Day.

The Clarion-Ledger reported Wednesday that the Statewide Election Management System reported that more than 120,200 absentee ballots had been requested as of Sunday compared to fewer than 111,000 four years ago. Almost 116,000 had been sent, also above the total for 2016.

Secretary of State Michael Watson said Monday about 89,500 completed ballots had been received at election offices. That compares to 103,000 ballots that were received in all four years ago.

Republicans have been bracing themselves for this early Democratic advantage for months, as they've watched President Donald Trump rail against mail-in ballots and raise unfounded worries about fraud. Polling, and now early voting, suggest the rhetoric has turned his party's rank and file away from a method of voting that, traditionally, they dominated in the weeks before Election Day.

That gives Democrats a tactical advantage in the final stretch of the campaign. In many critical battleground states, Democrats have "banked" a chunk of their voters and can turn their time and money toward harder-to-find infrequent voters.

But it does not necessarily mean Democrats will lead in votes by the time ballots are counted. Both parties anticipate a swell of Republican votes on Election Day that could, in a matter of hours, dramatically shift the dynamic.

"The Republican numbers are going to pick up," John Couvillon, a GOP pollster who is tracking early voting, told the AP. "The question is at what velocity, and when?"

Couvillon said Democrats can't rest on their voting lead, but Republicans are themselves making a big gamble. A number of factors, from rising virus infections to the weather, can impact in-person turnout on Election Day. "If you're putting all your faith into one day of voting, that's really high risk," Couvillon said.

That's why, despite Trump's rhetoric, his campaign and party are encouraging their own voters to cast ballots by mail or early and in-person. The campaign, which has been sending volunteers and staffers into the field for months despite the pandemic, touts that it has registered more voters this year than Democrats in key swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania - a sharp reversal from the usual pattern as a presidential election looms.

But it's had limited success in selling absentee voting. In key swing states, Republicans remain far less interested in voting by mail.

In Pennsylvania, more than three-quarters of the more than 437,000 ballots sent through the mail so far have been from Democrats. In Florida, half of all ballots sent through the mail so far have been from Democrats and less than a third of them from Republicans. Even in Colorado, a state where every voter is mailed a ballot and Republicans usually dominate the first week of voting, only 19% of ballots returned have been from Republicans.

"This is all encouraging, but three weeks is a lifetime," Democratic data strategist Tom Bonier said of the early vote numbers. "We may be midway through the first quarter and Democrats have put a couple of points on the board."

The massive amount of voting has occurred without any of the violent skirmishes at polling places that some activists and law enforcement officials feared. It has featured high-profile errors - 100,000 faulty mail ballots sent out in New York, 50,000 in Columbus, Ohio, and a vendor supplying that state and Pennsylvania blaming delays on sending ballots on overwhelming demand. But there's little evidence of the mass disruption that some feared as election offices had to abruptly shift to deal with the influx of early voting.

The obvious enthusiasm among Democrats has cheered party operatives, but they note that it's hard to tell which way turnout will eventually fall. Republicans may be just as motivated, but saving themselves for Election Day.

"High turnout can benefit either side," Bonier said. "It just depends."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Early Voting: At Least 56 Million Americans Have Already Voted

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Early voting in the 2020 presidential election is on track to shatter records, potentially transforming the way Americans cast ballots for years to come. As of Friday, At least 52 million voters have cast ballots in the 2020 election, according to Michael McDonald, an Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Florida who specializes in elections, and the U.S.

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I think that the standard for what I expect a president to have is leadership because they need to be able to lead Americans and the country into the right direction.

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The ‘Trump Won’ Farce Isn’t Funny Anymore (Republican Election Info)

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The ‘Trump Won’ Farce Isn’t Funny Anymore (Republican Election Info)

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"Republicans are now seriously arguing that elections are legitimate only when their side wins."

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Republicans are now seriously arguing that elections are legitimate only when their side wins.

Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

To tell a joke to a crowd is to learn a little something about the people who laugh

For our purposes, the "joke" is President Trump's ongoing fight to overturn the election results and hold on to power against the wishes of most Americans, including those in enough states to equal far more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House.

"#OVERTURN," he said on Twitter this week, adding in a separate post that "If somebody cheated in the Election, which the Democrats did, why wouldn't the Election be immediately overturned? How can a Country be run like this?"

Unfortunately for Trump, and fortunately for the country, he has not been able to bend reality to his desires. Key election officials and federal judges have refused his call to throw out votes, create chaos and clear a path for the autogolpe he hopes to accomplish. The military has also made clear where it stands. "We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual," Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a speech not long after the election.

But there are others who - out of partisanship, opportunism or a simple taste for mayhem - have chosen to support the president's attack on American democracy. They refuse to acknowledge the president's defeat, back lawsuits to throw out the results, and spread lies about voter fraud and election malfeasance to Republican voters. They are laughing at Trump's joke, not realizing (or not caring) that their laughter is infectious.

What was a legal effort by the Trump campaign, for instance, is now one by the state of Texas, which has petitioned the Supreme Court to scrap election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, depriving Biden of his victory. Filed by Ken Paxton, Texas's attorney general, the suit says it would be a violation of due process to accept the outcome in those states, on account of "election irregularities" and "interstate differences in the treatment of voters" that disadvantage Republican voters in areas with stricter voting rules.

This lawsuit rests on the novel argument that the Constitution gives exclusive and unquestioned authority to state legislatures to appoint presidential electors as they see fit and renders any action to expand voting without direct legislative consent unconstitutional. The Supreme Court already rejected that argument once this week when it turned away a similar lawsuit by the Trump campaign to overturn the results in Pennsylvania.

Regardless, on Wednesday, 17 Republican attorneys general filed a brief in support of Texas, urging the court, in essence, to cancel the election and hand power back to Trump. "Encroachments on the authority of state Legislatures by other state actors violate the separation of powers and threaten individual liberty," reads the brief, which also claims that "States have a strong interest in ensuring that the votes of their own citizens are not diluted by the unconstitutional administration of elections in other States." The next day, more than 100 Republican members of Congress filed a brief in support of this lawsuit, in effect declaring allegiance to Trump over the Constitution and urging the court to end self-government in the name of "the Framers."

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Credit... Damon Winter/The New York Times

There's a paradox here. This sloppy, harebrained lawsuit has no serious chance of success. Granting Texas (and, by extension Trump, who joined the lawsuit) its relief would plunge the country into abject chaos, with violence sure to follow. That this quest is quixotic is, in all likelihood, one reason it has so much support. It is only with the knowledge of certain defeat that Republican officeholders feel comfortable plowing forward with an effort that would tear the United States apart if it succeeded. They can play politics with constitutional government (Paxton, for instance, hopes to succeed Greg Abbott as governor of Texas) knowing that the Supreme Court isn't going to risk it all for Donald Trump.

Then again, it was only two weeks before Election Day that four of the court's conservatives announced their potential willingness to throw out votes on the basis of this theory of state legislative supremacy over electoral votes. It is very easy to imagine a world in which the election was a little closer, where the outcome came down to one state instead of three or four, and the court's conservatives could use the conflict over a narrow margin to hand the president a second term.

With no evidence that Republicans have really thought about the implications of a victory in the courts, I think we can say that these briefs and lawsuits are part of a performance, where the game is not to break kayfabe (the conceit, in professional wrestling, that what is fake is real). Still, we've learned something from this game, in the same way we learn something about an audience when it laughs.

We have learned that the Republican Party, or much of it, has abandoned whatever commitment to electoral democracy it had to begin with. That it views defeat on its face as illegitimate, a product of fraud concocted by opponents who don't deserve to rule. That it is fully the party of minority rule, committed to the idea that a vote doesn't count if it isn't for its candidates, and that if democracy won't serve its partisan and ideological interests, then so much for democracy.

None of this is new - there is a whole tradition of reactionary, counter-majoritarian thought in American politics to which the conservative movement is heir - but it is the first time since the 1850s that these ideas have nearly captured an entire political party. And while the future is unwritten, the events of the past month make me worry that we're following a script the climax of which requires a disaster.

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Opinion | The 'Trump Won' Farce Isn't Funny Anymore

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Republicans are now seriously arguing that elections are legitimate only when their side wins. To tell a joke to a crowd is to learn a little something about the people who laugh For our purposes, the "joke" is President Trump's ongoing fight to overturn the election results and hold on to power against the wishes of most Americans, including those in enough states to equal far more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House.

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Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett: ‘Judges Are Not Policymakers

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Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett: ‘Judges Are Not Policymakers

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Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was announced to be Donald Trump's Associate Justice of the Supreme Court nominee on September 26, 2020.

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This story first appeared in 1600 Daily, the White House's evening newsletter. Subscribe now to get breaking news from President Trump before anyone else.
On September 26, President Trump announced Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as his nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. In doing so, the President fulfilled one of his most sacred duties under our Constitution.

Judge Barrett is exceptionally qualified for the High Court. A graduate of Rhodes College and Notre Dame Law School, she clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia before pursuing a career as a litigator and professor. Following a bipartisan vote by the Senate in 2017, Barrett was confirmed as a Federal judge.

President Trump Nominates Amy Coney Barrett for the U.S. Supreme Court

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement of support following the President's announcement. "President Trump could not have made a better decision. Judge Amy Coney Barrett is an exceptionally impressive jurist and an exceedingly well-qualified nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States."

Sen. Ted Cruz agreed, as did a number of other Senators and leaders. "Judge Barrett is well-qualified to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Having confirmed her to the circuit court in 2017 with bipartisan support, the Senate has already undertaken a thorough and rigorous review of her record," he said.

A dedicated wife and mother of seven, Judge Barrett would also bring a new and important perspective to the Court. Here are just a few examples of how:

Judge Barrett would be the first mother of school-aged children to become a Supreme Court justice. She would also become only the fifth woman ever to serve on the Court.

As the mother of a child with special needs, she fully understands the issues and concerns that confront our nation's most vulnerable.

Judge Barrett would be the only current justice to have earned a law degree from a school other than Harvard or Yale-having graduated at the top of her class from Notre Dame Law School in Indiana.

She would become one of only two sitting justices to have been born and raised in the South, having grown up in Louisiana before attending college in Tennessee.

"Amy is more than a stellar scholar and judge; she is also a profoundly devoted mother," President Trump said. "Her family is a core part of who Amy is."
🎬 WATCH: "I'm used to being in a group of nine: my family."
Of Judge Barrett and her husband's seven children, two were adopted from Haiti. Their youngest son, Benjamin, has Down syndrome-and boasts the title of "favorite sibling" from his brothers and sisters, according to Barrett.

After President Trump announced her nomination, Judge Barrett spoke about the importance of judges putting the Constitution above any personal views on the law.

"I clerked for Justice Scalia more than 20 years ago, but the lessons I learned still resonate," she said. "His judicial philosophy is mine, too: A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold."

Judge Barrett also had a message for the American people.
🎬 WATCH: President Trump's full nomination announcement
"I would assume this role to serve you," she said. "I would discharge the judicial oath, which requires me to administer justice without respect to persons, do equal right to the poor and rich, and faithfully and impartially discharge my duties under the United States Constitution."

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Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett: 'Judges Are Not Policymakers' | The White House

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This story first appeared in 1600 Daily, the White House's evening newsletter. Subscribe now to get breaking news from President Trump before anyone else. On September 26, President Trump announced Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as his nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.