Jim Newman (via Instagram) Some news items you might have missed: • InstaHunks: Let’s hear it for Broadway’s Jim Newman (above) who definitely knows how to find his light. Follow him on Instagram here. • CNN: Donald Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the Russia investigation. • HBO Max: The original series EQUAL pays tribute to the epic origin stories of the LGBTQ+ movement. The four-part docu-series captures the true backstories of the leaders and unsung heroes, pre-Stonewall, who changed the course of American history through their tireless activism. Each hour-long episode in the series plays like a thriller, bringing to life the high stakes and hard deadlines of historical events that have not yet been given their due. In honor of Transgender Day of Awareness, I want to highlight Episode 2 which focuses on the courageous pioneers of the trans movement. Check out the trailer for the series below.
• Out: Two Trump-appointed judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit today overturned a lower court ruling and struck down local ordinances prohibiting licensed therapists from practicing the debunked “conversion therapy” on minors. • Bloomberg: Donald Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., tested positive for coronavirus earlier this week and is isolating. Junior recently downplayed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak that deaths are “almost nothing.” I guess this makes Junior “almost nothing.” • AP: Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified results reported by the state’s 159 counties that show Biden won the state by a margin of 12,670 votes.
Georgia’s top elections official has certified results showing Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential race in the state. https://t.co/hZ0eR6A7rx
(graphic via ABC News) The results of a week-long hand recount of ballots in Georgia show President-elect Joe Biden did win the Peach State. Via CNN:
Georgia has finished its statewide audit of the razor-thin presidential race and President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump, according to a news release from the Secretary of State’s office.
Biden beat Trump by 12,284 votes, according to the final results from the audit. This is a slight drop for Biden compared to the pre-audit results.
Officials have said repeatedly that the audit confirmed there was no widespread fraud or irregularities in the election.
Per state law, the Trump campaign will have two business days to request a machine recount once these results are certified which is expected to occur on Friday.
CNN: Georgia has finished its statewide audit, according to a press release from the GA Secretary of State’s office. President-elect Biden beat Trump by 12,284 votes, according to final results from the audit.
Billy Reilich (via Instagram) Some news items you might have missed: • InstaHunks: Ellen DeGeneres’s former “gardener,” Billy Reilich (above), is masked up for COVID-19 safety telling his followers, “Here we go again.” • KCCI: A lawsuit filed this week claims managers at a Tyson’s meatpacking plant “organized a cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many employees would test positive for COVID-19.” • Out Music: Peppermint, Mila Jam, and LaFemmeBear team up for a remake of the Sounds of Blackness “Optimistic.” The anthem aims to unite the country and rally around black Trans lives to celebrate Transgender Awareness Week this week. Peppermint says: “The number of transgender people who’ve been murdered is higher than ever recorded. In the midst of senseless murders of black folks, in the midst of the division and the pandemic. After seeing everything that has happened in our country and our world lately and coming up on the holidays, I wanted to gather black Trans women to put out a message of solidarity and love while simultaneously shedding light on the important road ahead.”
• Reuters: New claims for unemployment jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 742,000 last week, up from the 711,000 filed a week earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday. The spike in claims indicates continued challenges for the U.S. economic recovery as COVID-19 infections continue to surge across the U.S. • AP: Two Republican canvassers in Wayne County, Michigan, initially balked at certifying the vote, and then reversed course after widespread condemnation. But after a call from Donald Trump, the two Republicans reversed AGAIN signing affidavits on Wednesday saying they believe the county vote “should not be certified.” • Pink News: Karine Jean-Pierre could become the first out lesbian and first Black woman to be named White House press secretary. NBC’s Geoff Bennett tweeted multiple sources say Jean-Pierre is a leading contender for the high profile job.
NEWS: Karine Jean-Pierre has emerged as a top candidate for Biden’s WH press secretary, multiple sources tell @mikememoli, @kwelkernbc and me.
She would be the first Black woman in that role. Symone Sanders has also been discussed and has recently focused on Harris’ transition. — Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) November 18, 2020
President Donald Trump has invited Republican state lawmakers from Michigan to the White House on Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter, as the President and his legal team are mounting an effort to overturn the results of the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump also called two Republican canvass board members from Wayne County, to Tuesday to offer his support, the person said, after they went back and forth on voting to certify the election results from the state’s largest county, which includes Detroit. The board members filed affidavits Wednesday seeking to “rescind” their votes to certify the election result.
Michigan law requires the election results to be certified by Monday, November 23. With no credible reports of fraud, observers are concerned state lawmakers could use the legislature to substitute Trump-supporting Electoral College electors in an effort to swing the state back to Trump. President-elect Joe Biden won the state by 3 percentage points and over 157,000 votes.
This is really nuts. He is actually, actively attempting a coup. Stuart Stevens called it sedition the other night and I'm inclined to agree. https://t.co/OhYhz20aqN
I need someone to explain why this isn't election tampering. I need someone to explain why the Dems hair isn't on fire about all of this. "Everything will work out fine" is not a strategy against a desperate, cornered pig who happens to hold Executive power. https://t.co/w0RnBv6yAV
With a 5 pm deadline looming today in Wisconsin for the Trump campaign to request (as previously indicated) a recount of the votes cast in the presidential election, which has been estimated to cost $7.9 million, the state has received reportedly received a $3 million payment from Team Trump for a partial recount. From AlterNet:
The recount the campaign is requesting is focused on heavily Democratic Dane County and Milwaukee County since Team Trump regards Democratic votes as inherently suspicious.
President-elect Joe Biden got 577,455 votes in those counties and won Wisconsin as a whole by 20,608 votes.
A recount would start this week and needs to be completed by Dec. 1. It’s extremely unlikely — virtually impossible, even — that even a statewide recount would net Trump more than 20,000 votes. A 2016 recount of the state got him an additional 131 votes.
He's not contesting Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Georgia. He's contesting Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta. What is his issue with these voters? I can't Qwhite put my finger on it.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says Donald Trump actually depressed his own voting base by demonizing mail-in ballots. According to the stats, 24,000 Republicans that voted by absentee ballot in the 2020 primary didn’t vote at all in the general election which President-elect Joe Biden won by 14,000. From HuffPost:
Raffensperger, a Republican, ordered a recount. But he also told Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB that the president hurt his own cause by discouraging mail-in voting, which he portrayed as a “scam.”
Raffensperger told the station that 24,000 Republican voters who voted absentee in the primary did not vote in the general election.
“Those 24,000 people did not vote in the fall,” Raffensperger said. “They did not vote absentee because they were told by the president, ‘Don’t vote absentee. It’s not secure.’ But then they did not come out and vote in person.”
“He actually depressed, suppressed his own voting base,” he added.
UPDATE: Just hours after announcing a deadlock on certifying the election results in Wayne County, the Board of Canvassers reversed itself and certified the results by unanimous vote.
After a huge public outcry when Republican election board members refused to certify results from Detroit, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers has now reversed itself and certified its results. https://t.co/bzI7CKefh3
The four-member Board of Canvassers in Wayne County, Michigan, deadlocked along party lines on certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election today. Wayne County includes Detroit and its surrounding areas – can everyone hear the dog whistle? From the New York Times:
The Wayne County Board of Canvassers was deadlocked on Tuesday on certifying results in the county, which voted for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. by a margin of nearly 323,000 votes.
The two Republicans on the board said they had voted against certifying the results because many precincts in the county were out of balance by a few votes. Monica Palmer, one of the Republicans, suggested that the board would certify the county’s results without the totals from Detroit, where Mr. Biden won with 94 percent support.
The election results now move to Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers, which will complete the work that the Wayne County board could not finish. The state board also has a 2-2 Republican-Democratic split.
In a statement posted on Twitter on Tuesday night, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of Michigan said the Board of State Canvassers would be responsible for certifying the Wayne County results if the county board’s decision held.
The Board of State Canvassers meets on November 23. Team Trump has been hoping that the decision would fall to the Republican-controlled Michigan state legislature to choose their own electors to vote in the electoral college. But the Republican state Senate leader, Mike Shirkey, told the press today that Biden won Michigan and the legislature won’t interfere — “That’s not going to happen.”
Michigan’s Bureau of Elections stands ready to fulfill its duty to complete the canvas for Wayne County, address any clerical errors and improve the quality of the canvass overall. Importantly, this is not an indication that any votes were improperly cast or tabulated.
Donald Trump (image public domain/White House) Donald Trump has fired Christopher Krebs, the Department of Homeland Security cyber chief who declared the 2020 general election was the most secure in U.S. history. From the New York Times:
President Trump fired Christopher Krebs on Tuesday night, retaliating against his administration’s most senior official responsible for securing the presidential election.
Mr. Krebs, who has systematically disputed Mr. Trump’s baseless declarations in recent days that the presidency was stolen from him through fraudulent ballots and mysterious software glitches that changed millions of votes, had worked in the Department of Homeland Security.
The announcement came via Twitter, the same way Mr. Trump fired his defense secretary two weeks ago.
Mr. Trump seemed set off by a statement released by Homeland Security late last week, the product of a broad committee overseeing the elections, that declared the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history.”
…votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Chris Krebs did a lot of work this year to help state and local officials pull off remarkably free and fair elections with record turnout, under difficult circumstances. For this, he was fired by Donald Trump.
Trump just “terminated” Chris Krebs, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director. By tweet, of course. As predicted. His reason? That Krebs dared to call the Nov. 3 election “the most secure in American history.” The truth is kryptonite to Trump.
Stewing in the WH, the lame duck president just fired a leading cybersecurity official in Chris Krebs who vouched for the security of US election. Trump still has more than two months before he has to go. Two more months to settle scores and potentially cause great damage.
(stock images via Depositphotos) While some folks around the country are a bit done with the adding of these or those numbers amid the aftermath of the presidential election, the statisticians at Pornhub decided to crunch some figures themselves. While they weren’t able to predict who each state voted for, they were able to ascertain what each state was searching for on the adult website during election week! “The top relative search is the term that was more often searched in each state when compared to all other states,” writes the streaming platform on its blog. “It’s a snap-shot of what was truly in the hearts and on the minds of everyday Americans while they waited to find out who their next president will be.” For some states, size clearly matters – Pennsylvania (‘fat a**’), West Virginia (‘chubby’), and Alabama (‘big booty’). Maturity was a factor for viewers in Ohio (‘cougar’), South Carolina (‘grandma’), and Tennessee (‘granny’). Local flavors were the thing in some states like Texas (‘sexmex’) and Louisiana (‘popeyes’). There were some random searches like Iowans expressed an interest in ‘yoga pants,’ Georgia had ‘tickling’ on its mind, and Connecticut was up for ‘wedgie’ action. I’m not gonna ask about Oregon’s fascination with ‘succubus.’ A few states were on the (excuse me) less-creative side with terms like Florida (‘Trump’), Delaware (‘Election’), Nevada (‘Vegas’), Utah (‘Mormon’), and the District of Colombia (‘Vote’). And in the “If you can’t spell it you shouldn’t be watching it” category, Mississippi wins with (cue the sad trombone sound) ‘pron.’ Check out the full graphic via Pornhub below.
Donald Trump (screen capture) Donald Trump seemed to acknowledge that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. had indeed won the presidential election (as projected by nearly all major news outlets including Fox News), but then U-turned dispatching a new tweet that read, “I concede NOTHING!” This is just the latest in Trump’s woefully embarrassing behavior in light of his loss to Biden. From the New York Times:
His first tweet came Sunday morning at 7:47. Referring to Mr. Biden, the president said that “he won.” That represented the first time Mr. Trump had publicly said what his advisers have been telling him for days privately: His re-election bid failed and Mr. Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
After a flurry of tweets and news reports about his “concession,” Mr. Trump insisted that he had been misunderstood.
At 9:16, he insisted falsely: “RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!” And three minutes later, he wrote that Mr. Biden “only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”
Even though Republican Attorneys General and Republican Governors in the final battleground states have assured the public there’s been no evidence of the ‘widespread voter fraud’ Trump continues to allege, he continues. #sad Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic rages on with no president attending to the issue as more than 1,000 Americans are dying on average each day. From the Washington Post:
Since Election Day and for weeks prior, Trump has all but ceased to actively manage the deadly pandemic, which so far has killed at least 244,000 Americans, infected at least 10.9 million and choked the country’s economy.
The president has not attended a coronavirus task force meeting in “at least five months,” said one senior administration official with knowledge of the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details.
He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!
As per election officials all over the nation, it was the most secure election in history. Biden WON in a landslide both in terms of the popular vote (by nearly 6 million) and the electoral college (306 to 232).
Pres has departed the WH, probably to play golf. Before leaving, he was tweeting, more adamant than ever, that “election was rigged, we will win,” and “I concede nothing.”
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