Graham: Democratic Senate would mean 'end of checks and balances'

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman discusses the importance of the Georgia Senate runoff races.

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  • Republican official: Trump efforts to undermine Georgia results could 'suppress the vote' in U.S. Senate runoff elections

    President Trump’s efforts to undermine the results of the November election in Georgia will “absolutely” hurt Republicans in two U.S. Senate runoff races there, an election official in the state said Monday.

  • NYC sheriffs broke up a sex party with 80 people, a room full of mattresses, and boxes of condoms

    The dozens of attendees were all mask-less at Caligula, an illegal sex club, violating New York state COVID-19 regulations.

  • Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong detained for 2019 illegal assembly

    Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was remanded in custody on Monday after pleading guilty to charges of organising and inciting an unauthorised assembly near the police headquarters during last year's anti-government protests. Wong, who was just 17 years old when he became the face of the 2014 student-led Umbrella Movement democracy protests, faces a maximum three-year jail term. On Twitter afterwards, Wong said attention should be directed to the 12 Hong Kong people detained virtually incommunicado in China after being arrested at sea in August as they were attempting to flee by boat to Taiwan to escape charges related to last year's protests in the city.

  • Rush Limbaugh: Trump’s Legal Team ‘Promised Blockbuster Stuff and Then Nothing Happened’

    Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Monday criticized President Trump’s legal team over their chaotic press conference last week that failed to provide any evidence to back up their claims that the 2020 election was rigged.“You call a gigantic press conference like that — one that lasts an hour — and you announce massive bombshells, then you better have some bombshells,” Limbaugh said during his show on Monday. “There better be something at that press conference other than what we got…I talked to so many people who were blown away by it, by the very nature of the press conference. They promised blockbuster stuff and then nothing happened, and that’s just, it’s not good.”He added, “If you’re gonna do a press conference like that with the promise of blockbusters, then there has to be something more than what that press conference delivered.”He also questioned the role of lawyer Sidney Powell, who was present at the press conference but has since cut ties with Trump’s legal team.Though Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said Powell is “not a member of the Trump legal team” or a personal lawyer to the president, Limbaugh argued it’s a “tough thing to deny she was ever part of it because they introduced her as part of it."“She was at that press conference last week,” he said.During the press conference on Thursday, Giuliani claimed to have evidence of a "national conspiracy" to steal the election for President-elect Joe Biden, though he said he could not yet release any evidence as the judges presiding over the campaign's lawsuit might object and because his witnesses might face retribution if their names became public. He said he had “at least ten” witnesses ready to describe instances of voter fraud, he couldn’t reveal them publicly because “they don’t want to be harassed.”

  • Melania welcomes White House tree after being caught on tape saying ‘who gives a f***’ about Christmas

    Decorating mansion will be her final official act as first lady

  • Biden names climate statesman John Kerry as climate envoy

    John Kerry, one of the leading architects of the Paris climate agreement, is getting one more chance to lead the fight against climate change after President-elect Joe Biden named the longtime senator and former secretary of state as climate envoy for national security. Biden's team gave little immediate detail on Monday about how he envisioned Kerry shaping the new job, which many on social media and on all sides of the climate-action spectrum were quick to dub “climate czar.”

  • Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a candidate in the Georgia runoff, tested positive for COVID-19 and is quarantining

    Loeffler is currently campaigning in a high-stakes race that could determine control of the Senate at the start of President-elect Joe Biden's term.

  • Rights commission alarmed as Venezuelan minors deported from Trinidad and Tobago

    The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on Monday expressed concern for dozens of Venezuelan migrants, including 16 minors, who were deported from neighboring Trinidad and Tobago, and whose whereabouts it said were unknown. More than a dozen Venezuelans have been missing since vessels they boarded in attempts to get to Trinidad sunk. "The IACHR urges Trinidad and Tobago to strictly observe the duty of special protection of (children and adolescent) migrants and to consider their best interests in all decisions that affect them," the IACHR, a body of the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS), wrote on Twitter, adding that some of the minors were unaccompanied by their parents.

  • Pennsylvania Republicans File Emergency Lawsuit to Block Certification of Election Results

    A group of Pennsylvania Republicans filed a lawsuit over the weekend to block certification of the state's election results in an eleventh-hour attempt to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the key battleground state.The emergency petition, filed in state court, takes issue with a voting reform bill that passed Pennsylvania's Republican-held legislature in October last year. The lawsuit claims that the law's allowance of  no excuse mail-in voting is "unconstitutional" and seeks to block Pennsylvania counties from certifying their vote results ahead of the deadline on Monday to do so and invalidate millions of mail-in ballots cast in the 2020 election.The group is led by Pennsylvania Representative Mike Kelly and GOP congressional candidate Sean Parnell, who has not conceded since his defeat this month by his Democratic rival, Representative Conor Lamb. Their suit names Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, the GOP-led legislature, and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar as defendants.Meanwhile, a federal judge on Saturday dismissed a lawsuit from the Trump campaign that sought to invalidate millions of votes in Pennsylvania and block the certification of the state’s election results. Trump wrote in a tweet Saturday night that he plans to appeal the decision.About 2.6 million voters in Pennsylvania cast mail ballots in the general election this month. Biden won three out of every four mail ballots cast in the state, according to an analysis of data from Pennsylvania's state department.Biden won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes over President Trump and is expected to be awarded the Keystone State's coveted 20 electoral votes. States have until December 8 to resolve election disputes, and electors will meet on December 14 to formally vote for the next president.Over the past several weeks, Trump has made allegations that voter fraud occurred on a massive scale through mail-in ballots. The president has claimed he won the election and has refused to concede even though his lawyers have not produced evidence of fraud widespread enough to alter the election outcome.

  • Yes, Mark Halperin Works at Newsmax Now

    Over the weekend, social media was abuzz with the realization that disgraced political pundit Mark Halperin is now an on-air contributor for fledgling right-wing network Newsmax, which has been making a recent play for disgruntled Trump supporters angry with Fox News.As The Daily Beast reported last month, Halperin, who became persona non grata in mainstream media after his history of alleged, widespread sexual misconduct was exposed in 2017, has been at Newsmax since at least the summer—and he even hosts his own show on the Trump-boosting channel.It was an explosive Saturday interview—one that inevitably reshaped the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overthrow President Donald Trump’s election loss—that led many to discover that Halperin had quietly returned to cable news.> Would swear that’s Mark Halpern on the right there https://t.co/gD5QUmWr4d> > — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 22, 2020The former MSNBC and Bloomberg analyst has long been making regular appearances on several Newsmax programs, such as former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s early-evening show. Beyond that, the one-time influential pundit now also hosts a weekend show called Mark Halperin’s Focus Group.When asked about Halperin’s role with the network in August, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy told The Washington Post that Halperin had “been posting or doing a focus group Zoom video on YouTube” and that they thought they “would test it on the weekends and see how the political talk did.” Ruddy added that there was “no long-term agreement to run the show.”And last month, with Halperin’s show still running on the weekends and the pundit being billed as a Newsmax political analyst on-air, the network still insisted to The Daily Beast that while they “continue to air Focus Group, a program that is developed and owned by Mr. Halperin,” Newsmax had “not made any final determination on the program.”On Sunday, Halperin, along with former Fox News host and current Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt, spoke with now-former Trump legal team member Sidney Powell, who has been peddling the outlandishly baseless allegations that Dominion voting software—apparently at the behest of late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and liberal philanthropist George Soros—flipped millions of votes from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.During the interview, which quickly went viral, Halperin and Schmitt uncritically allowed Powell to expand her outrageous election-fraud accusations to include Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state, claiming they are part of the vast conspiracy while implying they were both bribed. She went on to vow that she would “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” lawsuit.Also on Sunday, just a few days after Powell headlined the Trump team’s insane press conference in which she laid out her bizarre voter fraud conspiracy, Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis released a statement disavowing Powell and distancing her from their legal efforts. “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity,” the statement read.Newsmax TV Is Coming for Fox News by Hiring All the Crazies. Is It Actually Working?Before helping to credulously amplify Powell’s fringe theories, Halperin turned to Newsmax earlier this year when it appeared that all other avenues to a mainstream media return had been closed to him. A previous comeback last year, with the help of some of his high-profile cable news pals like the Morning Joe crew, was quickly dashed amid widespread outrage and criticism.Halperin is hardly alone at Newsmax as the network has become something of a safe haven for personalities whose scandals have made them unwelcome on other networks or outlets.The network’s star host Greg Kelly, a former Fox News correspondent and one-time New York City local news fixture, was previously accused of sexual assault (prosecutors decided not to file charges) and has an alleged history of creepy behavior with female colleagues.And one of the network’s top legal analysts, Alan Dershowitz, has largely seen his frequent Fox News appearances dry up in the wake of his connection to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking scandal, especially after Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest and a Netflix documentary that included explosive allegations about Dershowitz. (He has vehemently maintained his innocence.)Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Reports: Israeli PM flew to Saudi Arabia, met crown prince

    Israeli media reported Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Saudi Arabia for a clandestine meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which would mark the first known encounter between senior Israeli and Saudi officials. The reported meeting was the latest move by the Trump Administration to promote normalized ties between Israel and the broader Arab world and reflected the shared concern of all three nations about Iran. The Israeli news site Walla, followed quickly by other Hebrew-language media, cited an unnamed Israeli official as saying that Netanyahu and Yossi Cohen, head of Israel's Mossad spy agency, flew Sunday night to the Saudi city of Neom, where they met with the crown prince.

  • Oregon Gov. Kate Brown Encourages Residents to Call Police on Neighbors Violating COVID Rules

    Oregon Governor Kate Brown is encouraging residents to call the police on any neighbors who flout state COVID-19 restrictions, which include limiting in-home gatherings to a maximum of six people.“This is no different than what happens if there's a party down the street and it's keeping everyone awake,” Brown said in an interview Friday. “What do neighbors do [in that case]? They call law enforcement because it's too noisy. This is just like that. It's like a violation of a noise ordinance.”Last week the Democratic governor instituted a new round of restrictions aimed at mitigating the spread of coronavirus in the state via executive order, including a two-week “freeze” limiting indoor and outdoor gatherings to no more than six people from no more than two households just ahead of Thanksgiving. Residents are also prohibited from eating out at restaurants and going to the gym, though faith-based gatherings of up to 25 people indoors and 50 people outdoors are allowed.Violators can face up to 30 days in jail, $1,250 fines or both. The Marion County Sheriff’s office said in a statement on Friday that it believes “we cannot arrest or enforce our way out of the pandemic.”“We believe both are counterproductive to public health goals.”Brown pushed back, calling criticisms of the new restrictions "irresponsible."“This is about saving lives and it's about protecting our fellow Oregonians,” she said. “We have too many sporadic cases in Oregon. We can't trace these cases to a particular source. We have to limit gatherings and social interactions.”On Sunday, new COVID-19 cases reached a record high in the state for the third straight day, with 1,517 new infections recorded, bringing the state total to 65,170.

  • Clever’s 2020 Gift Guide Is Here and It Just Wants You to Have a Nice Time

    We rounded up a mix of gifts that help others, keep folks healthy, and add a little something-something to the home Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Op-Ed: In what moral universe does Biden require a Catholic task force when Trump got a free pass?

    To pretend that there is anything approaching moral equivalency between Joe Biden and Donald Trump represents an appalling failure to exercise ethical judgment.

  • Iran vows to crush any Israeli attempt to hit its 'advisory' role in Syria

    Iran on Sunday vowed to defeat any Israeli attempt to harm its role in Syria, saying the era of "hit and run" attacks by Israel there was over, days after Israel carried out air strikes on Syrian army and Iranian paramilitary targets in the country. Israel, which views Tehran as its biggest security threat, has repeatedly attacked Iranian targets and those of allied militia in Syria, where Tehran has backed President Bashar al-Assad and his forces against rebels and militants since 2012. On Wednesday, an Israeli military spokesman said eight targets were attacked, including an Iranian headquarters at Damascus international airport and a "secret military site" that served as a "hosting facility for senior Iranian delegations when they come to Syria to operate".

  • Indonesia's confirmed coronavirus cases exceed half million

    Indonesia’s confirmed COVID-19 cases breached half a million on Monday as the government of the world’s fourth most populous nation scrambled to procure vaccines to help it win the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Indonesia's Health Ministry announced that new daily infections rose by 4,442 to bring the country’s total to 502,110, the most in Southeast Asia and second in Asia only to India’s 9.1 million confirmed cases. President Joko Widodo said at a Cabinet meeting that his administration is preparing mass vaccinations.

  • Fauci says it’s ‘unrealistic’ to think we’ll be able to celebrate normally with families during spring holiday season

    In an interview with Yahoo News National Correspondent Alexander Nazaryan, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that even with a vaccine rollout beginning later this year, he hopes Americans can gather safely for the spring holidays, but it’s “unrealistic” to think Easter and Passover celebrations will be completely back to normal.

  • Election mail: We sent 193 shipments, and here's what we learned

    Nearly 200 mailings found delivery times of up to two weeks. Those delays could have affected election, as COVID-19 led to millions of mailed ballots

  • US national security adviser warns China not to use military force against Taiwan

    The United States’ national security adviser has warned China not to use military force against Taiwan, a day after an unannounced visit to the democratic island by a two-star Navy admiral overseeing US military intelligence in the Asia-Pacific. Robert O’Brien cautioned Beijing while touring the Philippines and Vietnam, where he spoke to his counterparts about tackling China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, a region of vital shipping routes where it has made multiple disputed territorial claims. The Chinese Communist Party also claims Taiwan, a democracy of 24 million, even though it has never ruled there. It has threatened to annex the island, and in recent months has stepped up military intimidation through air incursions and invasion simulations. “We have very close ties with Taiwan. The president has made it very clear that any attempt to cause Taiwan to unify with China with anything other than persuasion or democratic election, is something that would be extraordinarily consequential for the People’s Republic of China,” said Mr O’Brien. “I can’t imagine anything that would cause a greater backlash against China around the entire world if they attempted to use military force to coerce Taiwan,” he told reporters. The US does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taipei but it views Taiwan as a democratic ally in the strategic Indo-Pacific region. It is Taiwan’s biggest arms supplier. The Trump administration has beefed up support for Taiwan in recent months - approving several big weapons sales and dispatching senior officials, including Alex Azar, the US health secretary. This weekend Reuters reported that Rear Admiral Michael Studeman, the director of the J2, which oversees intelligence at the US military’s Indo-Pacific Command, had made a secretive visit. He is believed to be one of the most high-ranking US officers known to have visited Taipei in recent years. The increased US backing for Taiwan has riled China amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over the South China Sea, the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and an ongoing trade dispute. On Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry hit back with a warning of its own, demanding the US “immediately stop” all official exchanges and military contacts with Taiwan and signalling that China would make “legitimate and necessary responses” without giving further details. “China firmly opposes official exchanges and military contacts between the US and Taiwan in any form. This position has been consistent and clear. We urge the US side to fully recognise the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue,” said spokesman Zhao Lijian.

  • Man in Trump-shaped flotation device charged with assault after breathing on protesters

    Raymond Deskins was charged with misdemeanor assault for allegedly breathing heavily on protesters who were outside Trump National Golf Club.