Jenna Ellis now specifically arguing that the PA state legislature has authority to throw out the results of the PA state election and just appoint whoever they want.
That's simply not the law, and it would be both illegal and unconstitutional (as @MatthewStiegler ably noted)
Giuliani now: "We would ask you not to certify, and just to certify the correct votes"
The PA Legislature has exactly zero role in PA certifying its elections, and PA has already certified
Hallelujah, one of the senators just pointed out "no, we passed a statute saying we appoint electors via elections, and our lawyers say we can't just appoint electors. What are you talking about"
Jenna: "No, you can take that power back at any time"
Seriously, this legal team has exactly zero legal acumen on it. There are better arguments they can make. (Not good ones ... but better). They don't know them
Rudy, doubling down on "normal scrutiny" - "you have a rational basis to take that back"
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The Third Circuit has obliterated Trump's Pennsylvania lawsuit. For obvious reasons, the opinion was written by the *Trump appointed* judge on the panel, Stephanos Bibas.
Gonna break down the opinion shortly. But an important note, first:
People NEED to stop assuming that judges appointed by Republicans are unqualified hacks. Are there some? Yes. Some of the nominees have been egregiously bad. But for the most part, Trump judges are judges. Committed to the law, & doing their best to follow it. Internalize that.
Start here, with the opening. Some basic points being made:
1) You can't just show up in court and say "I was robbed." You need to allege specific facts from which a jury could *find* you were robbed. This is the civil procedure rule known as Twiqbal
Does anybody actually know what the "illegal consent judgment" in Georgia is that Trump and his leagle weasels keep complaining about?
Would you like to? Because the detail is in that latest Georgia complaint, and it's stupider than even I expected
Here's what Georgia law required - signatures on absentee ballots were to be checked against an electronic signature file and if the signature wasn't a close enough match the ballot had to be rejected. Now here's what the consent judgment said:
"when you think a signature doesn't match, have two other people check your work. If both of them overrule you, keep the ballot. If one of them agreed with you, reject it"
Folks, if you're not following a whole bunch of lawyers on here you're probably not seeing the way the collective legal community is in shock at how bad Trump's lawyers are. Even if you are, it's probably hard to grasp the detail of how truly bad it is.
So here's an analogy:
Imagine you moved to a new town and are going to see a new doctor for the first time. And when he walks in, he has his stethoscope dangling out of his ass. And then he pulls it out and says "OK, I want to take your temperature now" and moves to place it on your forehead.
That's the net effect of what we're watching the Giuliani clown crew do. Everything they are doing is wrong in literally every procedural and substantive way any of us could have imagined - and also in ways none of us could have invented if we'd tried to predict it in advance
Folks, the Trump campaign *is not appealing* Judge Brann's decision that none of the plaintiff's has standing. (for my non legal followers: no standing = you can't sue on those claims.)
Easy example: if I get hurt in a car accident, I can sue. You can't. I have standing to sue on my injuries. You don't, because you weren't the one harmed.
What does this all mean?
The Trump campaign is appealing & asking ONLY that the third circuit find that they didn't wait to long to add the claims they tried to bring in their second amended complaint.
Claims the court *already decided* they don't have standing to assert
Let's talk about the #Founders for a second, shall we? Yeah, this is sparked by Ben Shapiro's outrage that 39% of Black people would classify them as villains.
Me? I don't. The American system is a true blessing, and I'll talk about why. But that's also easy for me to say 1/19
And it's not beyond the realm of possibility that, because it's so easy, I'm actually wrong. At the end of the day, this is *at best* a close call. And there's nothing wrong with recognizing that. And everything wrong with failing to.
Start with the First Amendment. It's easy to focus on freedom of speech, and how much better off we are, here in America, than the rest of the world with its far weaker protections. Yeah, that means more hate speech, here. But it means more freedom on defamation and gov't control
OK. Time for a thread on masks. Anti-maskers (who should be as reviled as anti-vaxxers) keep citing research studies showing masks aren't that effective at protecting wearers from becoming infected. You need to know why the anti-maskers are wrong. It's a basic mistake
The anti-maskers are (sometimes deliberately, sometimes ignorantly) confusing SOURCE CONTROL with INFECTION CONTROL.
What does that mean?
"Infection control" means "protecting the wearer from being infected". When a hospital worker puts on PPE and a properly fitted N95 mask to go take care of a patient on airborne precautions - someone sick with an airborne respiratory virus - they're engaging in infection control.