Hannity: Texas is leading the charge to restore election integrity

Sean Hannity breaks down the latest 2020 election developments in his opening monologue

Latest Stories

  • As Biden passes 'safe harbor' milestone, Republicans on inaugural committee refuse to say he won

    Republicans on the Joint Congressional Committee on the Inaugural Ceremonies voted on Tuesday against a resolution stating that the committee was preparing for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

  • After Giuliani visit, Michigan House says nearly 30 have tested positive for Covid this year

    The chamber reported the numbers a week after Rudy Giuliani testified in Lansing and just days after he tested positive for Covid-19.

  • Wife of convicted California congressman seeks divorce

    The wife of former Rep. Duncan Hunter has filed for divorce after both were convicted of corruption and prosecutors alleged the lawmaker had used campaign funds on extramarital affairs. Margaret Hunter filed for divorce on Nov. 20 in San Diego Superior Court, according to online records.

  • More Inside John Stefanidis Designed Dreamy Escape on the Island of Patmos

    Tasked with a California family’s historic getaway on Patmos, John Stefanidis gives the once-neutral house a vibrant polychrome presenceOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • China says two Canadians held for two years on 'spying' accusations have been indicted and tried

    China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday that two Canadians held for two years in a case linked to a Huawei executive have been indicted and put on trial, but gave no details. Former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor have been confined since December 10, 2018, just days after Canada detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the founder of the Chinese global communications equipment giant. China has said Mr Kovrig and Mr Spavor were indicted June 19 by the Beijing prosecutor's office on "suspicion of spying for state secrets and intelligence." Neither China or Canada has released specifics about their cases. At a daily briefing Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said the two had been "arrested, indicted and tried," in what appeared to be the first public mention that they had been brought to court. She reiterated that their cases and Ms Meng's were "different in nature," with Ms Meng's being a "purely political incident." Despite that, China has consistently linked the fate of the two Canadians to its demands that Ms Meng be released immediately. Canadian foreign minister Francois-Philippe Champagne issued a statement Wednesday marking their two years of captivity, saying; "These two Canadians are an absolute priority for our government, and we will continue to work tirelessly to secure their immediate release and to stand up for them as a government and as Canadians." "I am struck by the integrity and strength of character the two have shown as they endure immense hardship that would shake anyone's faith in humanity," Mr Champagne said. The US is seeking Ms Meng's extradition from Canada on fraud charges. Her arrest severely damaged relations between Canada and China, which has also sentenced two other Canadians to death and suspended imports of canola from Canada. Ms Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, is living in a luxury Vancouver home while her extradition case continues in a British Columbia court. The US accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to deceive banks and do business with Iran in violation of US sanctions. It's not publicly known where Mr Kovrig and Mr Spavor are being held or under what conditions, although Canada's ambassador to China testified to a House of Commons committee this week that they were "robust." Canadian diplomats had been denied all access to the two men from January to October because of coronavirus precautions cited by the Chinese side. On-site visits were banned and not even virtual visits were permitted. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has described China's approach as coercive diplomacy, spoke last month with US president-elect Joe Biden about the case of the two men and said he expects Mr Biden to be a good partner in persuading Beijing to release them. Canada's Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment on Ms Hua's remarks.

  • U.S. voices concern about Bangladesh's relocation of Rohingya

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Thursday said it was concerned about Bangladesh's relocation of 1,642 Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char island and plans to carry out further moves, calling on Bangladesh to accept independent assessments of the move. The United States also backed the United Nations in calling for any such relocations to be "fully voluntary and based on informed consent without pressure or coercion", State Department spokesman Cale Brown said in a statement.

  • Pete Buttigieg reportedly really wants a Cabinet spot — but not just any Cabinet spot

    Pete Buttigieg is reportedly ready to make his political return — if President-elect Joe Biden can find a suitable place for him.The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor proved a strong contender in the crowded 2020 Democratic primaries before dropping out and endorsing Biden. He's now seeking a spot in the Biden administration, and is a little picky about where he ends up, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.Buttigieg's top choice in a Biden administration was reportedly ambassador to the United Nations — a Cabinet-level post in Buttigieg's preferred arena of foreign policy. But Biden passed Buttigieg over for that role, giving it to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who has worked in Foreign Service almost as long as Buttigieg has been alive.It's not that Biden isn't fond of Buttigieg; He has gone so far as to compare the former mayor to his late son Beau. Instead, Biden has been focused on picking women and people of color for his top spots — something that has frustrated those looking for LGBTQ leaders in the Democratic administration, Washington Blade reports. And Buttigieg hasn't made it easy for Biden to include him either. Buttigieg shook off talks of being Biden's Office of Management and Budget director because he wanted a "real Cabinet" position and not a "staff-level" job, a Democratic insider tells Washington Blade. He also reportedly squashed talks of leading the Department of Veterans Affairs.Now, Biden is considering giving Buttigieg a high-profile ambassadorship, potentially even sending him to China, Axios reports. Buttigieg is also reportedly being considered for some remaining domestic roles — something his supporters see as a way to build his profile before another presidential run.More stories from theweek.com 7 criminally funny cartoons about Trump's potential pardon spree Trump's jaw-dropping vaccine screwup The Trumps are reportedly preparing to move out of the White House

  • Chuck Schumer had to tell Dianne Feinstein that she should step down as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee twice because she forgot the first conversation they had, new report alleges

    One source told the New Yorker that Feinstein, "wasn't really all that aware of the extent to which she'd been compromised."

  • Mechanic: 'Everything perfect' before fatal WWII plane crash

    The only surviving crew member of a World War II-era bomber that crashed in Connecticut last year, killing seven people, told investigators that “everything was perfect” before takeoff and he doesn't understand what went wrong, according to federal documents released Wednesday. Mitchell Melton was the mechanic aboard the four-engine, propeller-driven B-17G Flying Fortress bomber that crashed at Bradley International Airport north of Hartford on Oct. 2, 2019. The NTSB made documents in the investigation public on its website Wednesday, including a transcript of a nearly two-hour interview with Melton in November 2019.

  • Britons banned from travelling to EU countries from January 1

    Britons will be precluded from travelling to EU countries in the new year when the Brexit transition period ends. Travellers from a limited number of countries with low coronavirus rates are allowed to visit EU countries for non-essential travel. When the UK exits the bloc on Jan 1, residents will no longer be able to freely travel in Europe under the bloc's Covid safety rules, according to the Financial Times. Eight non-EU countries, including Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, are on the list of "safe" third nations. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 18 EU countries have higher rates of Covid-19 than Britain.

  • U.S. thinks Eritrea joined Ethiopian war: sources

    The United States believes Eritrean soldiers have crossed into Ethiopia's Tigray region, according to a U.S. government source and five regional diplomats, despite denials from both countries. The two nations, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki, made peace in 2018 and now have a mutual foe in the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front. Though Ethiopia's government says a month-long offensive against the TPLF is now over, a spokesman on Tuesday (December 8) said some fighters in the northern region were not yet defeated. Eritrea has, however, repeatedly denied sending its soldiers to support the Ethiopian military. The U.S. view of the conflict appears to disagree. According to the Reuters sources, who were all briefed on the U.S. assessment, evidence of Eritrean involvement includes satellite imagery, intercepted communications and anecdotal reports from the ground. A U.S. government source said there did not appear to be "any doubt" while a senior diplomat from another country said "thousands" of Eritrean soldiers were believed to be engaged. The U.S. State Department did not confirm the U.S. conclusion, but said its embassy in the Eritrean capital Asmara was urging restraint to officials. Abiy's spokeswoman said queries should be directed to Eritrea, whose foreign minister called suggestions of Eritrean involvement "propaganda." The U.S. assessment does match reported sightings by Tigrayan residents and refugees, however, and the TPLF claims to have killed and captured large numbers of Eritrean soldiers over the past month. With communications down and the access tightly controlled, claims from Tigray are near impossible to verify but reports of Eritrean involvement will alarm the U.S. and other world powers. Ethiopia hosts the African Union, its security services work with Western allies and its troops serve in peacekeeping missions. Eritrea, however, has for years faced accusations of large scale rights abuses, including jailing opponents and forcing citizens into lengthy military or government service.

  • Rudy Giuliani, hospitalized with the coronavirus, says he has 'exactly the same view' on COVID-19

    Speaking from his hospital room, Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday he hasn't changed his mind regarding the coronavirus or mask use, despite his recent COVID-19 diagnosis.Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer and a former mayor of New York City, was admitted to a Washington, D.C., hospital on Sunday, after traveling across the country in his futile attempt to overturn the election results. Giuliani did not wear a mask during meetings last week in Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia, exposing lawmakers and others to the virus.During an interview with New York radio station 77 WABC, the hosts asked Giuliani if his views on the virus have changed, now that he is sick and in the hospital. They mentioned former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who contracted the virus after attending a super-spreader event at the White House; Christie later said it was "wrong" to be there without a mask."No," Giuliani responded. "I have exactly the same view. You know, I've also been through cancer, a couple of other things — very serious, very serious, emergency knee operation. Things happen in life, and you have to go with them. You can't overreact to them. Otherwise, you let the fear of illness drive your entire life." Regarding face coverings, which provide protection to the wearer and those around them, Giuliani said he thinks "you can overdo the masks."Giuliani revealed that he has received two of the same medications Trump took during his hospitalization for COVID-19: remdesivir and dexamethasone. One of the radio hosts told Giuliani the drugs are "not something that the normal American is going to be able to get, because it's quite expensive." Giuliani deflected, saying he "didn't know that. I mean, they give it to us here at the hospital."Giuliani did admit that his high profile is why he's receiving treatment that the average American can't get, saying: "I think if it wasn't me, I wouldn't have been put in the hospital. Sometimes, when you're — you know, when you're a celebrity — they're worried if something happens to you, they're going to examine it more carefully, and they do everything right." He said his advice to people is "get early treatment," falsely claiming that "the earlier you get treated for this, No. 1, you totally eliminate the chance of dying."More stories from theweek.com Trump's jaw-dropping vaccine screwup The Trumps are reportedly preparing to move out of the White House SpaceX Starship test flight ends in a fiery crash

  • White House interns don't get paid. A group of more than 200 former interns is calling on Joe Biden to fix that.

    Congressman Tim Ryan told Business Insider he "hopes the White House follows our lead in the House" and makes internships paid positions.

  • Georgia GOP Senate staffer sent dossier on critic of GOP donor to FBI

    Two FBI agents visited the critic at his home in 2017, the agency confirmed. The critic said they told him to stop threatening the donor on social media.

  • Why Trump supporters won't accept election results

    No one expected Donald Trump and his supporters to lose the 2020 presidential election graciously, least of all those of us who thought he had a much better chance of winning it than public polling suggested.This is why, in one sense anyway, I think we should not put too much stock in surveys like this one, which suggests that only a quarter or so of Republicans "accept" the results of this year's election. Ever since Democrats and their allies in the media began using this phrase in the fall of 2016 in a bad-faith attempt to secure some kind of worthless pledge from Trump (they would ignore this apparently world-historic imperative by spending the next four years insisting that Trump was not himself the duly elected president), I have found myself asking exactly what it is supposed to mean. Does the result of a presidential election depend upon our attitudes concerning it? You might as well ask people whether they "accept" the results of bad weather or personal financial setbacks.Which is why I believe it makes more sense to see the conservative response to the 2020 election not as some bizarre new development on the American right or even as the outgrowth of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, but rather as the inevitable culmination of a process that began long ago.For decades now it has been clear that the flipside of Americans' veneration of the office of the presidency, which combines the functions of head of government and head of state into one extraordinarily powerful title, is our insistence that presidents whom we do not ourselves support cannot be just that: politicians we did not vote for and would just as soon not see re-elected. Instead, the opponents of virtually every president in my lifetime, from Bill Clinton to Trump, have insisted that he was at the very least illegitimate, if not a tyrant.These vague inclinations have a way of justifying themselves. After years of omnidirectional scandalmongering by the House GOP, Clinton was impeached in 1998. George W. Bush, who owed his election to a Supreme Court decision that outraged half the country, spent most of his eight years in office being compared to characters from dystopian novels and to various historical dictators; everything was the subject of intense, indeed at times ludicrous scrutiny, from his invasion of Iraq to his re-election in 2004, which was the basis of another of conspiracy theories involving (what else?) the manipulation of electronic voting machines. Barack Obama's legitimacy was cast into doubt by his enemies long before his inauguration thanks to the so-called birther controversy, which actually began during Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential run. Meanwhile Trump was accused by liberals of being some kind of Russian plant from the minute he took office, a ludicrous fiction of which his previous opponent appeared to be convinced four years later.Complaining about supposed democratic norms is a mug's game. In a country in which authority tends to be understood in what might politely be described as conditional terms, it should not be surprising that the sizable portion of the electorate supporting one candidate should reject the other. The days when people of my grandparents' generation calmly insisted that the person in the White House deserves our full respect and support regardless of one's vote are as remote as the gold standard or smoke-filled rooms at party conventions.My guess is that at some point, likely well beyond the point at which it serves any purpose save those of nostalgia and self-aggrandizement, we will come to regret our inability to acknowledge the victories of presidential candidates we dislike, much less to hope for their success in office. The presidency is too powerful for it to; if our constitution had been meant to give us something more akin to the partisan and provisional office of prime minister, I suspect we would be in a very different position.In the meantime, however, insisting that only one half of the country should greet the results of presidential elections with unconditional enthusiasm makes about as much sense as asking why 70 million people should have been allowed to vote for the losing candidate.More stories from theweek.com 7 criminally funny cartoons about Trump's potential pardon spree Trump's jaw-dropping vaccine screwup The Trumps are reportedly preparing to move out of the White House

  • Rep. Eric Swalwell refused to say if he had sex with a suspected Chinese spy who slept with 2 mayors for an intelligence campaign

    Fox News' Tucker Carlson said Swalwell's office declined to comment when his show asked about a claim that he had sex with a suspected Chinese spy.

  • Al Jazeera anchor sues Saudi, UAE princes, along with Miami woman, over Twitter attacks

    An anchorwoman for the Al Jazeera news channel in the Middle East on Wednesday sued the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates along with more than 20 others — including a Miami woman — accusing them of orchestrating a global social media campaign to destroy her reputation.

  • 'Under the rug:' Sexual misconduct shakes FBI's senior ranks

    An assistant FBI director retired after he was accused of drunkenly groping a female subordinate in a stairwell. Another senior FBI official left after he was found to have sexually harassed eight employees. An Associated Press investigation has identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the past five years, including two new claims brought this week by women who say they were sexually assaulted by ranking agents.

  • 17 red states join Texas' lawsuit to throw out blue states' ballots — even though some had the same voting rules

    Texas and a slew of other GOP-leaning states are accusing four blue states of doing the same things they did.Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) filed a lawsuit Tuesday asking the Supreme Court to overturn votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, thus reversing President-elect Joe Biden's win. Seventeen more states signed on to the suit on Wednesday, though they probably won't do much to further the case's very slim chances of success.Essentially, the Texas lawsuit alleges executive officials in the four states that went for Biden improperly tweaked voting rules, thus invalidating their results. But Texas' own Republican governor did exactly the same thing, using an executive order to extend the early voting period for the 2020 election, Reuters' Brad Heath notes. The suit also alleges Pennsylvania's decision to accept late-arriving ballots "raise[s] concerns about election integrity" there, even though Kansas and Mississippi, two supporters in the case, accepted late ballots as well.> The brief also argues that executive officials shouldn't be able to mess with voting rules. But Texas -- the plaintiff in this case, the state they're supporting -- did that very thing. The governor used executive power to extend the early voting period, among other things. pic.twitter.com/aHFUJH9pOD> > -- Brad Heath (@bradheath) December 9, 2020President Trump signaled support for the suit on Wednesday, tweeting that "we will be intervening in the Texas case," but not exactly spelling out what "intervening" meant. Maryland's Democratic Attorney General Brian Frosh meanwhile had these harsh words for the suit he would definitely not be joining. > Maryland will NOT be joining the Texaslawsuit. The suit is a cesspool of disproved charges, wild speculation, insupportable arguments and silly gibberish. > > Joe Biden is the President-Elect. https://t.co/kC6UhUwyLm> > -- Brian Frosh (@BrianFrosh) December 9, 2020More stories from theweek.com 7 criminally funny cartoons about Trump's potential pardon spree Trump's jaw-dropping vaccine screwup The Trumps are reportedly preparing to move out of the White House

  • Europe, U.S. should say 'no' to China's 'wolf-warrior' diplomacy - EU envoy

    The European Union and the United States should work together to stand up to coercive Chinese diplomacy and coordinate with other countries in the region on the disputed South China Sea, the EU ambassador to China said on Thursday. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, due to take office on Jan. 20, has spoken of the need to revitalise alliances with like-minded democracies as a core source of strength in dealing with China. EU Ambassador Nicolas Chapuis, speaking at an energy forum in the Chinese capital, said the EU hoped to reach agreement with the new U.S. administration on policy towards China.