Tag: 2020 election

Here’s what happens if Trump tries to sue his way to victory

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A hearing on Wednesday in an election case captured in miniature the challenge for the Trump campaign as it gears up for what could become an all-out legal assault on presidential election results in key swing states: It’s easy enough to file a lawsuit claiming improprieties — in this case, that Pennsylvania had violated the law by allowing voters whose mail-in ballots were defective to correct them — but a lot harder to provide evidence of wrongdoing or a convincing legal argument. “I don’t understand how the integrity of the election was affected,” said U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage, something he repeated several times during the hearing. (However the judge rules, the case is unlikely to have a significant effect; only 93 ballots are at issue, a county election official said.)

“A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Levitt said judges by and large have ignored the noise of the race and the bluster of President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. “They’ve actually demanded facts and haven’t been ruling on all-caps claims of fraud or suppression,” Levitt said. “They haven’t confused public relations with the predicate for litigation, and I would expect that to continue.” Continue reading.

Uncertainty, Trump loom over packed year-end agenda

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Uncertainty is hanging over the congressional year-end agenda as Washington waits to see who will win the White House and Senate majority and tries to gauge President Trump’s willingness to cut big deals if he loses. 

Doubt about who will hold power, and the appetite for year-end barn clearing, is colliding with a lengthy to-do list that includes a fight over Confederate-named bases and hopes of getting a fifth coronavirus relief deal. 

Lawmakers also need to pass a government funding bill by Dec. 11 to avoid an end-of-Congress shutdown just before the holidays and with only weeks to juggle the competing items.  Continue reading.

Egging On His Most Violent Supporters, Trump Tweets ‘Defend Your President’

Donald Trump’s campaign urged supporters on Wednesday to “DEFEND YOUR PRESIDENT” just days after his warning that a full vote count might cause armed rebellion.

While the 2020 election remains uncalled, as of Wednesday morning Joe Biden held a lead in enough states to win the White House.

Trump, who has been demanding for months that the election be decided based only on the votes counted by Election Day, appeared to be egging on his violent extremist supporters. Continue reading.

World watches with unease as drawn-out, contested election batters America’s global image

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As the world reckoned with another day of uncertainty over the result of the U.S. presidential election, Trump’s premature victory claim, unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud and the threat of legal challenges continued to overshadow the drawn out vote count, from which no clear winner has emerged. The indecision was met with deep unease around the globe over what lies ahead for the U.S. political process — and more than a little glee from America’s traditional adversaries.

Amid the slow count, America’s global image as a model for other democracies to emulate has taken yet another battering, especially among its allies around the globe.

In Japan, America’s closest ally in Asia and a country whose postwar constitution was largely written by Americans, U.S. election updates dominated television news. The Mainichi newspaper said the events even called into question “the intrinsic value of democracy,” adding that “responsibility for fanning the divide and amplifying the confusion lies with Mr. Trump.” Continue reading.

What a contested election means for the economy — and your wallet

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It looks increasingly likely that the United States is going to keep experiencing a ‘K-shaped recovery’

Americans woke up Wednesday morning to an undecided presidential election, which could be the case for some time, depending on legal challenges and recounts. For the economy, that means uncertainty is here to stay in 2020.

Business leaders and investors tend to hate uncertainty, and this political situation adds more of it as the nation is already dealing with a second big wave of coronavirus cases and a contentious battle in Congress over another stimulus package.

The early read among economists and Wall Street analysts is to buckle up for a wild few weeks. Continue reading.

Fox’s Arizona Call for Biden Flipped the Mood at Trump Headquarters

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The Fox News decision left the president fuming, and his team complaining. Then he began casting aspersions on other states’ vote counts.

WASHINGTON — With Florida looking red early on Tuesday night, President Trump and his advisers thought they were witnessing a repeat of election night 2016, when a victory in Florida foreshadowed a victory over all.

Inside the East Room, the mood was upbeat as hundreds of people, including cabinet secretaries, ambassadors and former officials who have remained loyal to Mr. Trump, mingled and dined on sliders and French fries. Officials who had been pessimistic about the president’s re-election chances suddenly started to picture four more years in power.

That mirage of victory was pierced when Fox News called Arizonafor former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 11:20 p.m., with just 73 percent of the state’s vote counted. Continue reading.

Trump and his allies boost bogus conspiracy theories in a bid to undermine vote count

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The campaign also sent an estimated 9 million text messages between midnight and midday Wednesday, according to an anti-robocall firm, with some messages seeking money to launch voting challenges.

President Trump, his son and top members of his campaign on Wednesday advanced a set of unfounded conspiracy theories about the vote-tallying process to claim that Democrats were rigging the final count.

Eric Trump tweeted a video, first pushed out by an account associated with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, that purported to show someone burning ballots cast for his father. The materials turned out to be sample ballots, and Twitter quickly suspended the original account that circulated the misleading clip.

Trump’s son and others, including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, claimed falsely in tweets later hidden by warning labels that the president had won Pennsylvania — even though no such determination had been made. And the campaign’s spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, claimed without evidence that crowd control at a processing center in Detroit was an effort to thwart Trump’s chances of reelection. Continue reading.

As U.S. leaves Paris accord, climate policy hangs on election outcome

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The United States became the first and only nation to withdraw from the Paris climate accord on Wednesday, even as the outcome of the presidential race remained unknown.

The nation’s formal exit from the global effort to combat climate change — a departure set in motion by President Trump more than three years ago — marked the only sliver of certainty in a sea of ambiguity about the future trajectory of U.S. climate and environmental policy.

If Trump were to eke out a victory, the U.S. government would all but vanish from international efforts to slow the Earth’s warming, in favor of promoting fossil fuels. Democratic nominee Joe Biden has called climate change “the existential threat to humanity” and vowed to immediately rejoin the Paris accord if elected. But even if he wins the White House, his plan to invest trillions of dollars toward making the United States a greener nation will face a deeply divided Congress. Continue reading.

Fox News Helped Fuel Trump’s Rise. Now It’s Reporting on a Possible Fall.

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The president and his aides have been critical of the cable network that includes some of his most ardent media allies.

President Trump and Fox News have a complicated relationship. Election Day did not help.

The cable news channel that kick-started Donald J. Trump’s political career was suddenly in the position of signaling its potential end. The network’s early call of Arizona on Tuesday night for Joseph R. Biden Jr. infuriated Mr. Trump and his aides, who reached out publicly and behind the scenes to Fox News executives about the call.

The network held firm — even as two of its biggest stars, Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro, attended Mr. Trump’s defiant early-morning speech in the East Room of the White House. Continue reading.

Trump campaign mounts challenges in four states as narrow margins raise stakes for battles over which ballots will count

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NOTE: This article is provided free of charge by The Washington Post.

President Trump’s reelection campaign said Wednesday that it would launch a legal blitz to try to halt vote-counting in Pennsylvania and Michigan, would seek a recount in Wisconsin and challenged the handling of ballots in Georgia, threatening to draw out the final results of the razor-thin White House contest.

The campaign’s aggressive legal posture while the presidential race remains unresolved underscored how the close margins in key states have raised the stakes for litigation over which ballots will count. It comes after Trump, who has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the election, pledged to get the courts to determine its outcome.

Democrats said they were unfazed by what they said was legal posturing by the president’s campaign. They said they were well-prepared to fend off any lawsuits or appeals.