Author: Randy Slovacek

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Philly Mayor: Trump Needs To ‘Put His Big Boy Pants On And Acknowledge He Lost’

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (screen capture)
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters Friday that Trump needs to “put his big boy pants on” and acknowledge that “he lost and he needs to congratulate the winner.” “Just as Jimmy Carter did, just as George H.W. Bush did and frankly just as Al Gore did,” added Kenney. “Stop this and let us move forward as a country.” As of 1:24 p.m., Biden leads with about 13,492 votes in Pennsylvania with just under 112,000 mail ballots left to count, according to the secretary of state’s website.

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Election Update: November 6, 2020

L-R Donald Trump, Joe Biden (screen capture, campaign photo)
As of 10 am today, this is the state of play in the race for the presidency via the New York Times:

Mr. Biden, who was winning the popular vote by more than four million votes and has already won 253 electoral votes, pulled ahead of Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania by about 12,000 votes on Friday afternoon. If his lead holds — and it is expected to — the state’s 20 electoral votes would vault him past the threshold to win the election.

In Georgia, his lead was so narrow that state officials said a recount was inevitable.

In Arizona, Mr. Biden maintained his lead as election officials continued to plow through tens of thousands of ballots from Phoenix and its sprawling suburbs. His advantage shrank slightly, but not by as much as Republicans had hoped.

In Nevada, Mr. Biden nearly doubled his lead Friday to around 20,000 votes.

Mr. Biden had already begun to project the image of a man preparing to assume the mantle of office on Thursday, meeting with his economic and health advisers to be briefed on the coronavirus pandemic. He also urged the public on Thursday to show a “little patience” as the vote-counting in battleground states continued.

Note – one media outlet, Business Insider (working with Decision Desk HQ) has called the race for Joe Biden.

(graphic via NY Times)
(graphic via NY Times)

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New Cases Of Coronavirus Exceed 100K For 2nd Day In A Row In US

Donald Trump leaves the hospital after treatment for the coronavirus (photo: public domain)
Although Donald Trump told his followers on the campaign trail about the coronavirus – “By the way, on November 4, you won’t hear about it anymore” – sadly we are. For the second day in a row, the U.S. has reported over 100,000 new cases of the virus in a single day. From the New York Times:

The country burst across the 100,000 threshold of reported cases a day earlier, the first time it had done so since the pandemic began. The total count of new infections Wednesday was at least 107,000, according to a New York Times database.

On Thursday evening, the county in the U.S. hit 102,297, and was expected to go up.

Twenty-three states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.

Five states — Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota and Nebraska — set single-day case records on Wednesday. Cases were also mounting in the Mountain West and even in the Northeast, which over the summer seemed to be getting the virus under control.

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Nevada Is First State Constitution To Recognize All Marriages

(image via Depositphotos)
The state of Nevada is on its way to making history as the first state in the U.S. to acknowledge all marriages in its state constitution. On the ballot this election cycle was Question 2 which asked voters to remove an existing provision that only marriage between a male person and a female person would be recognized. The state constitution will be amended to require the state (and its political subdivisions) to recognize all marriages and issue marriage licenses to couples regardless of gender, and to treat those marriages equally under the law. The ballot question did include explicit language that allows religious organizations and clergy to refuse to perform a marriage that they don’t agree with on religious terms. Same-sex marriages became legal in the Silver State in 2014, and across the nation in 2015 thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. At this writing, the Secretary of State’s website shows the measure passing overwhelmingly by 61.69 percent to 38.31 percent. Gary Brewer, who married his husband this past May in a small ceremony, told local news affiliate FOX5, “It feels really good to know this is the direction Nevada has taken and I feel really proud to call the state my home,” Chris Davey of the Henderson Equality Center told FOX5 the legal amendment won’t change daily life for LGBTQ Nevadans at this time, but could prove to be crucial if the now-conservative leaning U.S. Supreme Court were to rule in favor of rolling back rights for same-sex marriages.

As I reported last month, on the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito chose to reignite their discontent with the 2015 decision that made marriage equality the law of the land. Justice Thomas wrote that the Obergefell ruling “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.” Since that time, Amy Coney Barrett (who has a history of anti-LGBTQ views) has been confirmed to replace recently-deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg increasing the conservative-leaning of the court to 6-3. Just this week, Barrett heard arguments in a case regarding a Roman Catholic adoption agency in Philadelphia (Catholic Social Services) that claims a First Amendment right to decline to match foster children with same-sex households even though it signed a contract with the city agreeing not to engage in anti-LGBTQ discrimination through its taxpayer-funded activities. According to Washington Blade reporter Chris Johnson, the court appeared to side with CSS after the oral arguments. With these Supreme Court developments in mind, state-based legal moves like Question 2 in Nevada become all the more important for LGBTQ Americans. (source: FOX5 News, Washington Blade)

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Greetings From Nevada: Biden Expands His Lead Over Trump

New numbers were finally reported today from the presidential race in battleground state Nevada showing former Vice President Joe Biden expanding his lead over Donald Trump. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

In the latest results released by the Secretary of State’s office at 9 a.m. Thursday, Biden built on the 7,600-vote lead he held when counting stopped on Election Night, a 0.6 percentage point advantage over Trump in a race with more than 1.2 million votes cast. Biden now leads Trump by 597,353 votes, 49.50 percent, to Trump’s 585,311 votes, 48.50 percent.

Nevada will continue to count ballots and update at least once daily.

Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, in a statement released late Wednesday, said that the remaining ballots were mail-in ballots received on or after Election Day and ballots from voters who registered at the polls on Election Day, as permitted by state law.

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A Tale Of Two Candidates (In Two Tweets)

L-R President Donald Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden
A tale of two candidates… As Joe Biden called for unity and declaring the office of the presidency “demands a duty of care for all Americans,” Donald Trump was retweeting his demands that states “STOP THE COUNT!”

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Supreme Court May Rule In Favor Of Adoption Agency That Won’t Work With LGBTQ Couples

(stock photo via Depositphotos)
After hearing arguments in a case involving LGBTQ discrimination and foster parenting in Philadelphia, the Supreme Court appeared to lean in favor of a Roman Catholic adoption agency that wouldn’t certify same-sex couples to foster children. From CNBC:

The adoption agency case (Fulton v. City of Philadelphia) arose after the city of Philadelphia learned in 2018 that Catholic Social Services, a foster care services provider affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, would not certify same-sex couples as suitable parents for children in the city’s foster care system.

After Philadelphia learned about CSS’ policy, the city stopped referring the group new children, citing a city law prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination, and updated its 2019 contract with foster care services providers to explicitly forbid such discrimination against potential parents.

Catholic Social Services argues that Philadelphia’s exclusion of it from the city’s foster care system amounts to religious discrimination, in violation of the First Amendment’s protections for religious exercise.

This case is the first to come before newly-confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Barrett’s history of anti-LGBTQ views were raised during her Senate confirmation hearings last month.

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Election 2020: Where We Are So Far (With Updates)

(graphic via NY Times)
With six states left undecided in the presidential race, most folks are saying they’d rather be in Joe Biden’s shoes than Donald Trump’s at this point. I’ll be updating this page as states are called. Update 1: Wisconsin was just called for Biden giving him 237 electoral votes to Trump’s 213. Update 2: CNN just called Michigan for Biden taking him to 252 electoral votes to Trump’s 213. The Trump campaign is already calling for a recount in Wisconsin but state law says a recount can’t happen until 10 days after an election. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says Biden’s 20,000+ advantage could be tough to overcome in a recount tweeting, “After recount in 2011 race for WI Supreme Court, there was a swing of 300 votes. After recount in 2016 Presidential race in WI, Trump’s numbers went up by 131.”

Here’s an abbreviated version of how things stand according to Nate Cohn at the New York Times: Nevada: Mr. Biden has a narrow lead (7,600+), with only 86 percent of Democratic stronghold Clark County (Las Vegas) has been counted. The remaining ballots look to be Democratic-leaning late mail and provisional ballots. Arizona: Biden leads by 3.5 points and there’s more than 10 percent of the vote yet to be counted in Democratic strongholds Maricopa and Pima Counties. There are late mail ballots, received by the state over the last few days and those ballots usually tilt Democratic. Michigan: Biden leads with over 48,000 and almost 20 percent of heavily Democratic Wayne County (Detroit) remains to be counted. It’s reasonable to assume that much of the outstanding vote is Democratic mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania: Trump currently leads here by 463,000+ votes – but only 80 percent of the votes have been counted. There are many outstanding votes in Democratic-leaning areas like Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh area. The majority of those are mail-in ballots, which Biden has won those by a margin of 78 percent to 21 percent. There are more than 1.4 million absentee votes left to count, according to the secretary of state, plus more that could arrive over the next few days. If Biden wins those by the same margin he’s been winning them so far it would net him 800,000 votes. Georgia: Trump leads with 93 percent of the vote in (83,000+ votes). An estimated 200,000 uncounted votes remain in the state, and most come from left-leaning areas of metropolitan Atlanta, which could mean they’re likely to skew Democratic. According to the secretary of state, the winners of most races in the state should be announced by Wednesday afternoon. North Carolina: Trump leads by 1.4 points (76,000+ votes), so it’s not really that close. But, the state accepts mail ballots received after the election until November 12, and there were around half a million absentee ballots still outstanding heading into Election Day. I personally don’t expect Biden to win here.

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LGBTQ Candidates Win Across The Country Making History In Their Races

L-R Ritchie Torres, Sarah McBride, Torrey Harris, Michele Rayner (images via campaigns)
There were over 574 LGBTQ candidates on ballots across the nation on Tuesday night. Here are just some of the results that will send these community leaders to represent us. Colorado: Brianna Titone overcame an onslaught of vile transphobic ads to win her election for Colorado State House, District 27. Also, David Ortiz won his race for District 38 in the State House, becoming the first bisexual candidate elected to the Colorado state legislature. An advocate for his fellow disabled veterans, he’ll also be the first wheelchair user elected to the legislature. Delaware: Sarah McBride won her state senate race, making her the first and only openly transgender state senator in the U.S. and the country’s highest-ranking transgender official. Florida: Shevrin Jones became the first openly LGBTQ person ever elected to the Florida State Senate. Michele Rayner won her race for the Florida House making history as the first openly Black queer women ever elected at any level. Georgia: Kim Jackson won her race for the Georgia state Senate, becoming the first openly LGBTQ person elected to that chamber. Kansas: Stephanie Byers was elected to her state house seat in Kansas making history as the first trans person of Native American heritage to be elected to any state legislature. New York: Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones were elected in New York, making them the first openly gay, black members of Congress. Jabari Brisport won election to the state senate from Brooklyn’s 25th District. He will be the first openly queer person of color to join the New York Legislature.” Ohio: Charmaine McGuffey, who is openly gay, won the Hamilton County Sheriff’s race and will be the county’s first female sheriff. Oklahoma: Mauree Turner became the first openly non-binary person ever elected to a state legislature in the United States, winning their race for the Oklahoma House. Tennessee: Torrey Harris, who is bisexual, became the state’s first openly LGBTQ legislator. Texas: Ann Johnson won her race for House District 134 in the Lone Star state. Ann will join a growing number of LGBTQ women in the state House and help them pass pro-equality legislation. Vermont: Taylor Small became the first out transgender person ever elected to the Vermont state legislature. (source: Victory Fund)

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Texas Republicans Lose Again Trying To Block Drive-Thru Voting

Drive-through voting in Harris County, TX (screen capture)
And stay out! First, the Texas state Supreme Court said ‘no.’ Then, a federal District Court judge said ‘no.’ Now, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has said ‘no’ to a bid by Texas Republicans to block Election Day drive-through voting in Harris County. From NPR:

In a terse order, the three-judge panel wrote: “It is ordered that appellants’ motion for injunctive relief to issue a preliminary injunction banning drive-thru voting on Election Day, November 3, 2020, is denied.” No explanation was given.

The move is yet another loss for Texas Republicans who had sought to challenge the legality of some 127,000 votes cast at drive-through voting sites in the Houston area.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen threw out that suit, ruling the plaintiffs don’t have legal standing to sue. The Texas Supreme Court dismissed a similar challenge on Sunday.

Harris County, Texas’ most populous county and majority Democratic, erected 10 drive-through sites, mostly tents, to expedite the early voting process as a way of allowing people to cast ballots safely during the coronavirus pandemic. They were also in place this summer before the state’s primary.

Noting that point, Hanen, a George W. Bush appointee, asked plaintiffs, “Why am I just getting this case?” He later said that the suit was not timely and that “this has been going on all summer.”

Harris County Clerk Christopher Hollins decided to shut down 9 of the ten Election Day drive-thru voting sites out of concern that the votes could later be thrown out via ongoing legal challenges filed by Republicans.