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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
MEGAN CASSELLA and ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN, - Politico
Stephan: Trump has so much damage to the federal infrastructure that it is going to take months if not years to recreate a government that fosters wellbeing. Here is one of the first stories I have seen on this aspect, this challenge for the new administration; I am sure there will be many more. I don't think most people even understand or think about this.
Since the election, transition team officials have referenced the need to rebuild as well. In an email sent this week to Democratic chiefs of staff on Capitol Hill, transition aide Louisa Terrell noted that Biden “will inherit a hollowed out federal workforce” and as a result will need to “identify an unprecedented number of highly-qualified public servants ready to begin their service in the early days of the administration.” The memo asked members of Congress to send them suggestions of who out of “America’s best talent” they should nominate to key agency posts.
President-elect Biden
One person who has been in touch with the transition said the Biden team is working to get potentially thousands more people than usual ready to head into government jobs by Inauguration Day.
“There’s an understanding that they just have to get in quickly and put people in these seats and support the workforce and start rebuilding right away,” this person said. “It’s going to be frenetic.”
Some agencies have shown greater signs of strain than others — reflecting, in many cases, the level of rancor between the Trump administration […]
Stephan: I am sure you have probably seen this story; it's probably not news to you. I chose it for another reason because it illustrates something important. This act of petty nastiness makes it clear that neither the Republican Congress nor Trump nor his cabinet has the slightest interest in the wellbeing of the country they are sworn to serve and protect. If they did they would be doing everything they could to see the most efficient and secure transition from one administration to the next. I don't understand why people voted for these people, or don't seem to understand their own wellbeing is put at risk, but they don't. Look at the thousands of Trumpers who gathered in Washington today.
Part of the problem, I think, traces back to American schools, where what used to be called "Civics" was once a major subject. I went through the course in ninth grade, and have never forgotten what I learned. If you are old enough to have taken a civics course you probably feel the same. But today, to give one example, though 91 percent of Americans say the high court has an impact on their lives, surveys show 57 percent of those under 35 could not name a single Supreme Court justice. According to the Brookings Institute, "For example, every state mentions discussion of current events in its standards or curriculum frameworks, and 42 states and Washington, D.C., require at least one course related to civics education. In contrast, just over half of states (26, plus Washington, D.C.) mention simulations of democratic processes or procedures, while only 11 states include service learning (a less strict definition of service learning brings this total to 20). The lack of participatory elements of learning in state accountability frameworks highlights a void in civics education, as experts indicate that a high-quality civics education is incomplete without teaching students what civic participation looks like in practice, and how citizens can engage in their communities."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / Pool / AFP/Getty
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A stack of messages from foreign leaders to President-elect Joe Biden are sitting at the State Department but the Trump administration is preventing him from accessing them, according to State Department officials familiar with the messages.Traditionally, the State Department supports all communications for the President-elect, which is why many countries began sending messages to State over the weekend. But with Biden prohibited from accessing State Department resources by the Trump administration, because President Donald Trump refuses to accept Biden’s victory, dozens of incoming messages have not been received.Biden’s team is in touch with foreign governments without State Department involvement, and he has held numerous calls with leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Canada’s Justin Trudeau. But they are operating without the logistical and translation support that the State Department operations center provides.
Stephan: This is the unvarnished reality of Associate Justice Samuel Alito. Here, he literally speaks for himself. This is the kind of man Republicans place on the Supreme Court.
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito prompted stark warnings from legal scholars about the politicization of the nation’s highest court after he aired a laundry list of conservative grievances during a Thursday speech before the Federalist Society.
Alito, who was appointed to the bench by former George W. Bush, addressed the annual conference held by the Federalist Society, the shadowy dark-money conservative group which has bankrolled and guided President Donald Trump’s deeply conservative judicial picks, via Zoom.
The justice made unusually incendiary remarks about contraception, coronavirus restrictions and the threat he believes religious freedom faces from advocates of same-sex marriage. Alito claimed that the court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, bred intolerance for those who believe marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
“Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought,” he said. “Now, it’s considered bigotry.”
RYAN HEATH , Author of Global Translations, POLITICO’s global newsletter and podcast - Politico
Stephan: Biden like Obama before him is going to inherit a painfully diminished country. Only this time it is much worse. Trump's financial policies, foreign policies, personal integrity, and policy decisions have all failed and wounded us grievously in the process, but advanced and enriched him personally. It is the path of Moussolini as Ruth Ben Ghiat points out in her book, Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present. And it is going to take years to repair was has happened over the past four years. Even if Biden is a wonderful success, international leaders will always think they can no longer rely on America's reliable consistency, because they have just witnessed one narcissistic Republican grifter come to power and with the support of his party completely change America, making her a kind of national grifter, non longer reliable. How can they ever be sure it won't happen again? Don't you think that is what you would think about?
Christopher Ingraham, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: Anyone who does not live in the fact-free Trumper bubble can see the explicit and unashamed activities by Republicans all geared to sabotaging American democracy. As this article describes the United States is now a nation with an authoritarian government on the level of Turkey or Hungary. But the scariest aspect of this is that millions of Americans voted for thugs, QAnon supporters, and open racists. I want to be optimistic about the future but it is getting harder and harder. We are so close to the end of the dream of the Founders. I am no longer clear that we will get through the next 70 days as a democracy.
Mitch McConnell
In Georgia, two GOP senators called on the state’s Republican secretary of state to resign, alleging irregularities and mismanagement without offering evidence. Only four of 53 Senate Republicans have congratulated Biden on his projected victory. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently told reporters “there’s nothing to congratulate [Biden] about,” while Missouri’s Roy Blunt said the president “may not have been defeated at all.”
It’s the latest sign of the party’s lurch away from democratic ideals and practices, a shift that predates Trump but one that has accelerated precipitously since. Now, according to data released by an international team of political scientists just before the Nov. 3 election, it’s possible to quantify the extent to which the Republican Party no longer adheres to such principles as the commitment to free and fair elections with multiple parties, the respectful treatment of political opponents and the avoidance of violent rhetoric.
“The Republican Party in the U.S. has retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years,” said Anna Lührmann, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg […]
Stephan: Here are the facts about the election, let no one think that any of what Trump and his allies are doing is based on facts. It is all an attempt to sabotage American democracy.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” a statement from a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official said. Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The statement from a high-ranking official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency amounted to a strong rebuke of President Trump’s baseless assertion that the election had been stolen from him. A growing chorus of Republican senators have said that President-elect Joe Biden should receive intelligence briefings.
Stephan: The Republican Party is less a political party and more a racist fascist cult willing to do anything to stay in power even though they are increasingly a minority group. This is perhaps the main story coming out of the transition period, and here is one of many proofs of what I am saying.
A campaign attorney for President Donald Trump was caught calling his own business partner as a witness during a Thursday hearing on alleged electoral irregularities in Arizona.
Kory Langhofer
Kory Langhofer is leading the White House’s increasingly impossible efforts to overturn election results in Maricopa County where the 45th president was handily defeated by Joe Biden, leading to the Democrat’s razor-sharp victory margin in the Grand Canyon State.
To that end, Langhofer called witness Zack Alcyone–who just so happens to be the co-founder of petition analysis company Signafide. The company’s other co-founder? Kory Langhofer.
According to his Signafide biography, Alcyone is a “[g]raduate of The Yale Law School and the University of Southern California with [t]hirteen years of experience in advanced programming and tech startups.” His job is to oversee “all technological development, testing, and automated analytics.”
The company says Alcyone is an: “[e]xpert witness on ballot access calculations.” But, notably, Alcyone was not called as an expert witness during Thursday’s hearing.
Alcyone’s biography is situated right next to Langhofer’s biography on Signafide’s “About” page–which says the attorney is also an “expert witness on ballot access issues.”
