https://www.theguardian.com/international
There has been a standstill from the General Services Administration, the department of the federal government whose duties include “ascertaining” the winner of the presidential election. GSA administrator Emily Murphy, who was appointed to the post by Donald Trump, hasn’t certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
As a result Biden’s transition team has not received the federal resources and classified information usually made available by the GSA to the president elect at this point after an election.
But a new ABC News report suggests that Murphy is at the very least aware that Biden won the presidential election. Murphy is reportedly putting feelers out about a new job, a move a GSA administrator wouldn’t do if the current administration was set to remain for four more years.
Emily Murphy, head of the GSA, recently sent that message to an associate inquiring about employment opportunities in 2021, a move that some in Washington interpreted as at least tacitly acknowledging that the current administration soon will be gone.
A GSA spokesperson denied the account that Murphy was actively looking for a job, but noted that it wouldn’t be unusual for someone in government, especially a political appointee, to consider future opportunities.
“The administrator remains focused on doing her job,” the spokesperson added.
Trump, responding to a Nov. 5 tweet related to Veterans Small Business Week, on Sunday tweeted: “Great job Emily!”
Congressional Democrats have accused Murphy of undermining the peaceful transition of power and could subpoena her for testimony on Capitol Hill to explain why she’s doing so.
And while it’s true that there’s often a reshuffling of officials after a presidential election, regardless of whether the incumbent returns, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., a senior member of the House Oversight Committee, insisted that Murphy reaching out privately about future employment opportunities “exposes the hypocrisy” of the Trump administration’s position.
The remarks by president-elect Joe Biden and vice-president elect Kamala Harris on the economy are expected to start soon. The pool reporter covering the president-elect emailed other reporters that he’s being into the room where Biden will give remarks, a sign that the speech is imminent.
True the Vote, a conservative group with a history of leveling baseless voter fraud claims, abruptly dismissed lawsuits in four battleground states that sought to block the certification of votes in Democratic-friendly areas.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the groups dismissed the suits. James Bopp, an attorney representing True the Vote, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The group voluntarily dismissed suits in Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan on Monday, less than a week after each of them had been filed. The lawsuits relied on specious allegations of election irregularities to try and stop results from being certified in certain counties. In Wisconsin, for example, the suit sought to block certification of results in three counties, including Dane and Milwaukee, two of the most populous in Wisconsin and home to reliably Democratic votes. In Michigan, the suit sought to block certification in Wayne county, home of Detroit, as well as Ingham and Washtenaw counties, both of which voted overwhelmingly for Biden.
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Sam Bagenstos, a former Justice Department official and law professor at the University of Michigan, told the Detroit Free Press, the suits appeared targeted. True the Vote, he said, “picked the big Democratic jurisdictions and said, ‘Let’s invalidate all the votes of the people there.’”
“It’s outrageous and anti-democratic and it’s based on nothing in terms of the allegations,” Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, said the suits were “racist.”
Top elected officials are embracing legalizing marijuana and enjoying the windfalls of doing so. In Virginia, governor Ralph Northam is going to introduce legislation legalizing marijuana in his state:
Gov. Ralph Northam said Monday he plans to introduce legislation legalizing marijuana when the General Assembly convenes in January, setting the state on a path to become the first in the South to allow recreational use of the drug.
“We are going to move forward with legalizing marijuana in Virginia,” Northam said. “I support that and am committed to doing it the right way. … It’s not going to happen overnight.”
Northam, a physician who says he’s never used the drug, said he supports legislation that would lay out an 18 to 24 month timetable for the state to establish and regulate the new marketplace.
Similarly, in Chicago, mayor Lori Lightfoot is retaining hundreds of jobs because of marijuana revenue. According to the Chicago Sun-Times:
Buoyed by higher than expected marijuana revenues, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Saturday canceled plans to lay off 350 city employees to help secure the 26 City Council votes she needs to pass her “pandemic budget.”
Revenues generated by the sale of recreational and medical marijuana have “gone through the roof”— topping $100 million statewide for the first time in October and $800 million in the first 10 months.
That will allow the city to cancel the layoffs and “bond against” a “conservative estimate” of future cannabis revenues — to the tune of $15 million in the corporate fund.
Even as Republicans pour as much resources and manpower into Georgia as possible, Trump is finding a way to stir up tensions. He and Georgia Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger have been in a heated feud about accusations from the president and allies about voting irregularities in the state.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state has had enough of President Trump’s lies about voting integrity.
After a week of attacks from Trump and his allies claiming that his apparent loss in Georgia was due to voting irregularities, Brad Raffensperger fired back Sunday night, writing a series of Facebook posts knocking back the claims and taking a swipe at Rep. Doug Collins, a top Trump deputy.
In one particularly pointed post, Raffensperger defended the state’s process of matching absentee vote signatures before swinging at Collins, who was tasked with leading Trump’s post-election efforts in the state after he lost a Senate bid two weeks ago.
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Underscoring Republicans’ all-in approach in Georgia, Karl Rove will run finance operations for the joint entity between the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the incumbent Republican senators running for reelection.
Politico’s Alex Isenstadt has more:
Senate Republicans have tapped Karl Rove to oversee their fundraising program for the Georgia runoff elections, according to a person familiar with the effort.
The former George W. Bush adviser will serve as national finance chairman for the Georgia Battleground Fund, a joint fundraising account formed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee that will benefit Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. The Jan. 5 runoffs in Georgia will determine which party controls the Senate next year.
The Georgia contests have become a focal point for both parties. Outside groups have begun to spend heavily and potential future presidential hopefuls, such as Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, are hitting the trail for the Republican candidates. Vice President Mike Pence is slated to travel to Georgia later this week.
The Senate races will decide control of the Senate. Those two races are runoffs between Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff and Loeffler and Reverend Raphael Warnock. Georgia is a state Democrats have been hoping to turn reliably blue for years now. Joe Biden appears to have won the state, a foreboding sign for Republicans. At the same time, it’s been years since a Democrat held a statewide office in Georgia.
The Trump administration made yet another major policy move undercutting the the president-elect’s incoming administration. Per The New York Times:
In a last-minute push to achieve its long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, the Trump administration on Monday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies.
That sets up a potential sale of leases just before Jan 20, Inauguration Day, leaving the new administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has opposed drilling in the refuge, to try to stop the them after the fact.
“The Trump administration is trying a ‘Hail Mary’ pass,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a liberal group in Washington. “They know that what they’ve put out there is rushed and legally dubious.”
The Federal Register on Monday posted a “call for nominations” from the Bureau of Land Management, to be officially published Tuesday, relating to lease sales in about 1.5 million acres of the refuge along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. A call for nominations is essentially a request to oil companies to specify which tracts of land they would be interested in exploring and potentially drilling for oil and gas.FacebookTwitter
Joe Biden’s transition team sent out a preview of the speech he and vice-president elect Kamala Harris will deliver later today. Per the transition:
Today, the president-elect and vice president-elect will meet with business and labor leaders to discuss the economic recovery and building back better in the long term. He’ll bring together leaders from business and labor to discuss how – despite our different perspectives – we can work together to reach our common goals. President-elect Biden will deliver remarks on ensuring our workers and businesses can operate safely and rebuilding our economy to be more resilient and inclusive. And, he’ll discuss how our economy and the virus are intertwined, and say that we must contain the virus in order to get our economy back on track. Participants in the briefing:
- Richard Trumka, President of AFL-CIO
- Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors
- Mary Kay Henry, President of SEIU
- Satya Nadella, President and CEO of Microsoft
- Rory Gamble, President of UAW
- Brian Cornell, CEO and Chairman of the Board at Target
- Marc Perrone, President of UFCW
- Lee Saunders, President of AFSCME
- Sonia Syngal, CEO of Gap
