This is Emily Murphy, @GSAEmily. She is the Trump political appointee who is presently refusing to recognize Biden's victory and release funds for the transition to commence. She also helped cover for Trump's profiting off his DC hotel while POTUS. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
“Her action now has to be condemned,” said Rep @GerryConnolly, who leads a House oversight panel on federal operations. “It’s behavior that is consistent with her subservience to wishes of the president himself, and it is clearly harmful to the orderly transition of power.”
Lives are at stake: "The delay has already gummed up discussions on critical issues, including plans to distribute a possible coronavirus vaccine, this official said."
1/ Next week will be the beginning of a very turbulent period. Trump’s loss will be called, and apart from pursuing grievances and handing out goodies and pardons to his cronies, I reckon he will start to check out.
2/ Some of his advisors will abandon ship. There will be firings, and those that seek to capitalize on the dirt they have will begin to cash in their chips. Expect leaks. But the White House will start to unravel, even as COVID19 spreads amongst the staff- driving many away.
3/ The Biden transition, which needs to stand up a government and begin installing 4,000 political appointees in a pandemic and must face GOP recalcitrance, will have no help from the bitter enders. Rather, it can expect sabotage.
There are 75 days until the inauguration of the next President of the United States, which is almost certainly going to be Joe Biden. Welcome to the interregnum. The pop-up newsletter I run with @MelissaRyan and @ggreeneva was made for this moment: americaninterregnum.substack.com/p/meltdown?r=w…
After a day seeing windows boarded up in my city, watching police violence against voters, Trump supporters hunt down & run people off the road following a bus bearing Biden's name and reports of GOP efforts to toss ballots in multiple jurisdictions, the polls are not my concern.
This morning @NoelKing talked to 36 year old dairy farmer Rick Roden of West Bend, WI, a case study in an utterly self-interested white voter who is locked into right wing ideas and cannot empathize with others. npr.org/2020/10/28/928…
"As far as equal rights to everybody, you know, women and blacks have a lot- same opportunities that we may have today, that maybe they didn't have years ago."
"Protests are good and they're fine, but when somebody starts rioting, they need to be held accountable and something needs to be done about that."
1/ The nonprofit @Avaaz commissioned SurveyUSA to examine the extent to which mis- & disinformation is being spread on social media, the extent to which it is believed, and the degree to which voters feel social media platforms are obligated to address it. surveyusa.com/client/PollPri…
2/ It is devastating.
• 85% of voters saw the lie that mail-in voting will lead to fraud in their news feeds, and 35% said they believe it
• 48% of voters saw the false claim that “Joe Biden is a pedophile”, with 19% believing it true. 64% of the exposed saw it on Facebook.
3/
• 53% of registered voters read the false claim that “George Floyd died from an overdose of drugs” (that he was not killed by the police) with 18% believing this to be true.
• 65% of respondents who saw the claim reported seeing it on Facebook.
1/ I want to say a couple of things to put this location & what is going on here in context. First, yes, this is voter suppression. The NYC BOE failed to plan for this & I reckon that's partly since it is the first time we've had early voting in a Presidential and in a pandemic.
2/ This was also a neighborhood hard hit by COVID. Just in my zipcode we've had 2700+ cases & 300+ deaths. This voter line wraps around the former location of one of the state administered covid testing sites, where cars stretched out in lines all spring.
3/ It was also the site of one of the most violent moments I witnessed during the protests this summer. The police confronted a peaceful protest and tried to pen them in on Bedford just behind the Sears. When protestors reversed course the police used force. These are my pics.