Supreme Court Denies Texas' Bid To Overturn Election Results In 4 States

The Supreme Court rejected Texas' lawsuit to overturn Joe Biden's election victory.

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    Europeans were bewildered at first by the chaos unleashed by Trump’s desperate efforts to stay in power. But they are paying attention now.

  • Bloomberg News Chinese staff member detained in Beijing

    Chinese authorities have detained a Chinese national working for the Bloomberg News bureau in Beijing on suspicion of endangering national security, the news agency and China's foreign ministry said on Friday. According to a Bloomberg report, Haze Fan was seen being escorted from her apartment building by plain-clothes security officials on Monday, shortly after she had been in contact with one of her editors.

  • Taiwan president launches new domestically made patrol ships

    Taiwan's president launched a new fleet of domestically made Coast Guard patrol vessels Friday, in a boost to the island's plans to strengthen its defense capabilities as tensions rise with China. The new Anping (CG-601) vessel is the first of 12 locally designed and built 600-ton class catamaran patrol vessels that can also be used in a military capacity. The ships “are superior in speed and function compared to previous ships of the same tonnage, demonstrating the technical strength of Taiwan’s shipbuilding industry,” President Tsai Ing-wen said at the launch ceremony in the southern city of Kaohsiung.

  • Ted Cruz says Senate will likely blockade Biden's nominations based on debunked election fraud allegations

    Some Republican senators are using their unfounded election fraud claims as an excuse to muddy President-elect Joe Biden's transition.Biden has spent the past few weeks since the election filling out his Cabinet, hoping quick confirmations will help him get a quick start on reversing President Trump's policies. But "as long as there's litigation ongoing, and the election result is disputed, I do not think you will see the Senate act to confirm any nominee," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Axios.The Senate typically starts hearing from an incoming president's Cabinet nominees before Inauguration Day, allowing them to more quickly be confirmed and start work as soon as a new president is sworn in and can formally nominate them. That's especially essential during a pandemic — something retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) noted to Axios on Friday.But much of the Republican Senate and House have yet to acknowledge Biden's win. More than 100 of those congressmembers joined Texas' lawsuit Thursday aimed at overturning the election results in four states that went for Biden. The lawsuit alleges Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin improperly changed voting rules in the 2020 election, but is unlikely to succeed in the Supreme Court, not least because several states included on the suit made similar changes by the same means.Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) meanwhile wants a chance to challenge Biden's nominees on their credentials, particularly his controversial Defense Secretary pick retired Gen. Lloyd Austin.More stories from theweek.com The Constitution has an answer for seditious members of Congress Joe Biden's agriculture appointment is a slap in the face to Black voters 5 scathing cartoons about Congress' stimulus gridlock

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  • Republican congressman rips Texas GOP for suggesting secession and says 'my guy Abraham Lincoln and the Union soldiers already told you no'

    Kinzinger said the Texas GOP chairman should be fired for suggesting some states should "form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution."

  • First woman detained under India's controversial Love Jihad laws 'forced into miscarriage'

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  • India accuses China of responsibility for border tensions

    India on Friday rejected a Chinese allegation that it is responsible for high tensions along their disputed border. Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said the six-month standoff between the two countries' armies "has been a result of the actions of the Chinese side, which has sought to effect a unilateral change in the status along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh.” Srivastava was responding to a statement by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in Beijing on Thursday that "the rights and wrongs of what has happened in the China-India border area are very clear and the responsibility lies squarely with the Indian side.”

  • Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms reportedly went from Biden's VP list to being offered a Bahamas ambassadorship

    Talk about a demotion.Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) played a big advocacy role in President-elect Joe Biden's 2020 bid, no doubt helping him lock up the typically red state of Georgia. Bottoms was expected to be offered a White House role in return, perhaps as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development or the head of the Small Business Administration, or even Biden's vice president.After the naming of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as Biden's running mate over the summer, and after Biden slotted Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) into the HUD spot, Bottoms' choices seemed to be slimming. But as sources tell The New Yorker's Charles Bethea, Bottoms was offered a role as the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, which she declined.> Mayor Bottoms' Press Secretary did not immediately offer comment when reached this morning. gapol (2/2)> > — Charles Bethea (@charlesbethea) December 11, 2020An ambassadorship to the Bahamas is typically given to apolitical Foreign Service professionals or, in some cases, top political donors. In either case, it's generally not considered a spot for a rising star in the Democratic party.More stories from theweek.com The Constitution has an answer for seditious members of Congress Joe Biden's agriculture appointment is a slap in the face to Black voters 5 scathing cartoons about Congress' stimulus gridlock

  • Sexual misconduct shakes FBI's senior ranks with little to no discipline

    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.

  • Freed Uighur family reunited in Australia after three-year separation

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  • 'No Wisdom, No Courage!': Trump lashes out at the Supreme Court after it rejected a Texas bid to overturn the election results

    "The Supreme Court really let us down," Trump said in a tweet on Friday. "A Rigged Election, fight on!"

  • Canada border official says information shared inappropriately with FBI in Huawei CFO case

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  • Iran summons Turkish ambassador over Erdogan remarks in Baku

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  • How Jill Biden Went From Kamala Harris Skeptic to #KHive Member

    Former Vice President Joe Biden, then Democratic presidential nominee, second left, and Senator Kamala Harris, then Democratic vice presidential nominee, hold hands next to Jill Biden, left, during the Democratic National Convention in Wilmington, Delaware, on Aug. 20, 2020. To understand the dynamics of the incoming White House, it’s worth stopping for a minute to consider the fulcrum that is First Lady-in-waiting Jill Biden. Dr. Biden — a Ph.D.-credentialed college professor and perhaps the most indifferent-to-politics person to take on the task since Mamie Eisenhower — had choked back her skepticism about the woman her husband was about to announce as his governing partner.

  • The Constitution has an answer for seditious members of Congress

    Let's review two pieces of news from the last week. First, the American coronavirus pandemic is entering its worst stage yet, with cases and deaths skyrocketing across the country. Last Thursday saw over 3,000 deaths — more than 9/11 or Pearl Harbor — and with ICU beds at or near capacity in most of the country, absent serious change it is possible there will be double or even triple that number per day in a matter of weeks. We may yet top the deadliest day in American history, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 that killed an estimated 8,000 people, very soon. President Trump is doing precisely nothing about this.Second, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under investigation for bribery and abuse of office, filed a baldly seditious lawsuit calling for the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and hand their electoral votes to Trump. It was flatly an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, end constitutional government, and install Trump in power. Before the Supreme Court threw the suit out Friday night, 17 other Republican state attorneys general had joined him, along with 126 members of the Republican caucus in the House, while Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has agreed to represent Trump. And this is just one of dozens of attempts that Republicans at all levels of government have concocted to overturn Trump's loss.In short, material conditions in this country have not been this bad since 1932 at least, and the political situation has not been this bad since 1860. The logical endgame of the rapidly-accelerating Republican attempt to destroy democracy while the country burns would be civil war — if it weren't for the high probability that Democratic leaders would be too cowardly to fight.But it's worth thinking about what a party seriously committed to preserving democracy would do when faced with a seditious opposition party — namely, cut them out of power and force them to behave. Democrats could declare all traitors ineligible to serve in national office, convene a Patriot Congress composed solely of people who have not committed insurrection against the American government, and use that power to re-entrench democracy.The reasoning here is very simple. All members of Congress swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, which establishes a republican form of government. The whole point of a republic is that contests for power are conducted through a framework of rules and democratic elections, where all parties agree to respect the result whether they lose or win. Moreover, the premise of this lawsuit was completely preposterous — arguing in effect that states should not be allowed to set their own election rules if that means more Democrats can vote — and provides no evidence whatsoever for false allegations of tens of thousands of instances of voter fraud. Indeed, several of the representatives who support the lawsuit were themselves just elected by the very votes they now say are fraudulent. The proposed remedy — having Republican-dominated legislatures in only the four states that gave Biden his margin of victory select Trump electors — would be straight-up election theft.In other words, this lawsuit, even though it didn't succeed, is a flagrant attempt to overturn the constitutional system and impose through authoritarian means the rule of a corrupt criminal whose doltish incompetence has gotten hundreds of thousands of Americans killed. It is a "seditious abuse of the judicial process," as the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin jointly wrote in their response to Texas trying to steal their elections.The Constitution, as goofy and jerry-rigged as it is, stipulates that insurrectionists who violate their oath are not allowed to serve in Congress. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, written to exclude Confederate Civil War traitors, says that "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress … who … having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same[.]" How the Supreme Court ruled, or whether Republicans actually believe their lunatic claims, is irrelevant. It's still insurrection even if it doesn't work out.Democrats would have every right, both under the Constitution and under the principle of popular sovereignty outlined in the Declaration of Independence, to convene a traitor-free Congress (also including similar acts committed by Republican senators like Lindsey Graham, David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler, and others), and pass such laws as would be necessary to preserve the American republic. That might include a national popular vote to decide the presidency, ironclad voting rights protections, a ban on gerrymandering either national or state district boundaries, full representation for the citizens of D.C. and Puerto Rico, regulations on internet platforms that are inflaming violent political extremism, a clear legal framework for the transfer of power that ends the lame duck period, and so on. States would be forced to agree to these measures before they can replace their traitorous representatives and senators. If the Supreme Court objects, more pro-democracy justices can be added.This wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened, either. Immediately after the Civil War, the Radical Republican Congress refused to seat delegations from the former rebellious states until they were satisfied with the progress of Reconstruction. Southern states were forced to ratify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments — which guaranteed due process and universal male suffrage — before their congressional delegations would be seated. (As a consequence, those delegations included numerous Black representatives, until Reconstruction was overthrown.)It is virtually impossible to imagine the ancient, timid fossils that run the Democratic Party even considering this kind of thing (though remarkably, Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey has) because it would require courage, vision, and honestly reckoning with the parlous state of the nation. It would not be illegal, but it would be a step beyond narrow legal proceduralism and into the uncharted waters of aggressive political innovation and raw will-to-power. It could conceivably touch off armed unrest in several states.But it's not hard to see where the current conservative trajectory is headed. While elected Republicans have tried to overturn the election using increasingly blatant methods, top conservative pundits are mulling the idea of secession, as their treasonous fire-eater forebears did 160 years ago. The lie that Biden stole the election is now official GOP dogma. By the same token, it is not a coincidence that the Republican Party is ignoring the deadly pandemic (if not actively spreading the virus) while they try to overturn the Constitution. They feel they can safely ignore the welfare of the American people, because they are not accountable to them.Unless this escalating conservative extremism halts from the inside somehow — which is not remotely in sight anywhere — this can only end eventually in a violent confrontation, or (much more likely) Democrats will simply give up and let themselves be defeated. Still, this country was founded by people who thought it was worth putting their lives at hazard to throw off tyrannical rule. Perhaps some of that spirit can once again be found.More stories from theweek.com Joe Biden's agriculture appointment is a slap in the face to Black voters 5 scathing cartoons about Congress' stimulus gridlock Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms reportedly went from Biden's VP list to being offered a Bahamas ambassadorship

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ripped into GOP Sen. Mike Lee after he blocked the creation of Latino and women's history museums during a dramatic Senate session

    Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and GOP Sen. Susan Collins both pushed back against Lee, who said Americans didn't need "separate but equal" museums.

  • Australia won't rush Pfizer after homegrown vaccine canned

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  • Mexican archaeologists find remains of 119 more people in Aztec 'tower of skulls'

    Mexican archaeologists said on Friday they had found remains of 119 more people, including women and several children, in a centuries-old Aztec "tower of skulls" in the heart of the capital. The new discovery was announced after an eastern section of the Huei Tzompantli was uncovered along with the outer facade, five years after the northeastern side was found. Archaeologists believe that many of the skulls belonged to captured enemy warriors and that the tower was intended as a warning to rivals of the Aztec empire, which was overthrown by Spanish conquistadors in 1521. Some of the remains could be of people who were killed in ritual sacrifices to appease the gods, according to experts quoted in a statement released by the National Anthropology and History Institute. "Although we cannot determine how many of these individuals were warriors, perhaps some were captives set aside for sacrificial ceremonies," archaeologist Barrera Rodriguez said.