Fired Krebs fires back; Trump continues shameful spectacle

BY JACK CROWE

November 30, 2020

CHRISTOPHER KREBS WAS FIRED by President Trump last week for the crime of having assured the public that he did his job and secured the election.

In his first interview since being thrust into the national spotlight, Krebs repeated the sentiment that earned him Trump's ire and lost him his job leading Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

"There is no foreign power that is flipping votes. There's no domestic actor flipping votes. I did it right. We did it right," Krebs told Scott Pelley of CBS's 60 Minutes. "This was a secure election."

Just as he did when Krebs first contradicted his baseless claims of widespread fraud, Trump immediately took to Twitter after the Sunday night interview to insist that the 202O election was "probably our least secure EVER."

"NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION!" Trump tweeted after listening to Krebs explain that there is a paper record for 95 percent of the ballots cast, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did in fact lose.

As the president continues this shameful spectacle, and too many Republicans in Washington stay silent, embarrassed 60 Minutes viewers could take some comfort in Krebs' praise for the Republican state officials who ensured that the election itself ran smoothly — and then refused to acquiesce to Trump's selfish demands that they pretend otherwise.

Krebs praised secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona, who, he said, are "under attack from all sides."

"Look at Secretary [Brad] Raffensperger in Georgia, lifelong Republican," Krebs said. "He put country before party in his holding a free and fair election in that state. There are some real heroes out there. There are some real patriots."

Raffensperger has pushed back strongly on Trump's election fraud claims and wrote an op-ed in which he renounced his longstanding support for the president.

There are countless stories of anonymous Republican local and state officials refusing to knuckle under to Trump's absurd demands.

Tina Barton, the Republican clerk of the small Michigan city of Rochester Hills, told the New York Times that she received a call from the Trump campaign in the days after the election. The person on the other end asked her to endorse Trump's effort to delay the certification of results in the battleground state, reportedly the first stage in Trump's plan to disenfranchise voters by ensuring that loyal electors would be appointed by Republican state legislatures.

"Do you know who you're talking to right now?" Barton asked the campaign official.

Another little-known Michigan Republican, Aaron Van Langevelde, dealt with more than a quick phone call. As one of two Republicans on the board of state canvassers, Van Langevelde faced overwhelming pressure to refuse to certify the election results from colleagues in Michigan and Trump allies in Washington.

Recognizing that the board of canvassers lacked the authority to independently investigate fraud claims — and lacking evidence that the results had been overturned — Van Langevelde voted to certify.

"We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don't have," Van Langevelde said before casting his vote, according to Politico. "As John Adams once said, 'We are a government of laws, not men.' This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election."

It took courage at the local and state level to curtail the damage being inflicted on the country by the White House. While it's unlikely that Joe Biden will be shouting about how the election was rigged against him should he lose in 2024, he's surrounding himself with people who have themselves worked to erode confidence in our elections.

In 2016, Trump's victory was treated in some quarters as an impossibility. He was such a uniquely bad candidate that he had to have been helped, most likely by foreign actors. As Glenn Greenwald notes in his Monday newsletter, Neera Tanden, who Biden is considering for OMB director, was one of the loudest proponents of this theory. She suggested on Twitter that "Russian hackers" changed vote totals in Florida, handing the state to Trump over her career benefactor, Hillary Clinton.

And Tanden wasn't alone in her conspiracy theorizing: an Economist/YouGov poll conducted one year after the election found that 66 percent of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President."

Trump is by far the worst offender when it comes to undermining confidence in the vote, but it didn't start with him and his supporters aren't alone.

Moderna to Request Emergency FDA Approval for COVID Vaccine

Moderna announced on Monday morning that it would seek emergency approval for its coronavirus vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The announcement came after Moderna confirmed that its vaccine is 94-percent effective against coronavirus. If approved, the Moderna vaccine could be available to certain segments of the population within two weeks. Pfizer and BioNTech also applied for emergency authorization for their jointly-developed vaccine on November 20.

"We believe that our vaccine will provide a new and powerful tool that may change the course of this pandemic and help prevent severe disease, hospitalizations and death," Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement. Moderna stocks jumped 12 percent upon the announcement.

Trump Administration Works to Limit Immigration in Final Days

The Trump administration in its final days is pushing to institute a new slew of immigration restrictions and policy changes, including making it easier to deny visas to immigrants and lengthening the citizenship test.

The administration's final push on immigration is being led by senior aide Stephen Miller, who has help shaped Trump's immigration policies for four years, according to Politico.

De Blasio to Reopen NYC Elementary Schools amid Backlash

New York City schools will begin reopening for in-person classes on December 7, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday, after he closed public school buildings earlier this month due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The country's largest public school district ended in-person instruction on November 19 after the city's seven-day average hit a 3 percent positive testing rate, a threshold set during negotiations between the mayor and teachers' unions, though the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization recommend a 5 percent infection rate threshold for school closures.

Businesses, Residents Left to Fend for Themselves as Anti-Cop Fervor Drives Retirement Surge

It was mid-afternoon when the sport utility vehicles pulled up in front of Tim Mahoney's downtown Minneapolis restaurant.

It was a sunny Friday in mid-June, a glorious time of year in Minnesota as spring turned to summer. Dining rooms statewide had just reopened after months of mandated coronavirus closures and weeks of protests and riots in the wake of George Floyd's death during an encounter with four city police officers. Mahoney expected a busy evening at his Loon Cafe.

But the young occupants of the SUVs had their own plans that day.

They took over the patio of the restaurant next door to the Loon, smoked pot, drank Hennessy from a bottle they'd brought, and blocked paying customers from entering.

Mahoney and the owner of the neighboring restaurant asked them to leave. They refused.

Mahoney called the Minneapolis Police Department's non-emergency line; there was nothing the police could do, they said. He tried 911, but was told no officers were available.

Biden's Cabinet: What a Hillary Clinton Administration Would Have Looked Like

President-Elect Joe Biden, with his first round of cabinet nominees and White House staff picks, has reassured his party's moderate wing by drawing from the deep reservoir of Washington establishment types that he's been surrounded by during his nearly five decades in government, rather than elevating more ideological upstarts.

Biden appears to be prioritizing time spent in government service in his choices for the executive branch's most powerful positions, prompting critics on the Right and, to a lesser extent, the far-left to suggest they will be liable to repeat the mistakes of past Democratic administrations. The nominees so far include familiar names from the Obama administration, including a number of prominent figures close to Hillary Clinton, who likely would have been appointed to senior positions had she won in 2016.