Crooked Media - What A Day: Chasing Amy

President Trump has resumed his rigorous schedule of superspreading campaign rallies in hard-hit swing states, as his poll numbers and the chances of a coronavirus-relief deal continue to dwindle. If at first you don't succeed, get a bunch of people in Pennsylvania sick!
 

• Hoarsely addressing a packed, largely maskless crowd in Florida on Monday night, Donald Trump finally hit on that perfect blend of pandemic recklessness and predatory sense of entitlement that suburban moms go crazy for: “I feel so powerful. I’ll walk into that audience. I’ll walk in there, I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women—everybody.” In a sign of how well things are going for Trump since his diagnosis, he has a rally planned in Iowa this week and surrogates scheduled to campaign in Georgia, Nebraska, and Ohio—traditionally red states where he’s been bleeding support. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has generously offered some game-changing suggestions. 
   
• Contrary to Trump’s boasts of complete recovery and godlike immunity, it’s not at all clear that he’s no longer contagious. Monday’s memo from Trump’s physician/admitted liar Sean Conley asserted that Trump had tested negative on “consecutive days” (which ones?) using the Abbott Labs rapid antigen test. Other doctors not on the White House payroll have noted that the CDC does not recommend using antigen tests to spring sick patients from isolation, and that Conley’s memo pointedly omitted the results of Trump’s PCR test. Still no answers from the White House about when Trump last tested negative before sharing a debate stage with Joe Biden.
   
• We’re now three weeks out from election day, and Trump is no closer to getting on the same page with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about pursuing a stimulus deal. After McConnell announced that the Senate would take up another insultingly small, unworkable proposal next week, Trump immediately tweeted, “STIMULUS! Go big or go home!!!” Millions of people are at risk of eviction and hundreds of thousands of women have dropped out of the workforce, but if you heard McConnell’s spooky little giggle when Amy McGrath confronted him about his coronavirus failures on Monday night, you know the only path forward is to take away his title. 

Americans might be staring down the barrel of three more months without help from the government, but they’ll be delighted to know that Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Court seat-stealing project is right on schedule.
 

• On the second day of her confirmation hearings, Judge Amy Coney Barrett refused to commit to recusing herself from election-related cases, or to answer senators’ questions about her well-documented opinions on Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, and the Affordable Care Act. Less predictable highlights included Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) using his time to explain the dark money infrastructure fueling the right-wing effort to reshape the Court, Chairman Lindsey Graham using his to whine about getting out-fundraised, and the inadvertent conception of a meme, which Twitter was forced to carry to term. 
   
• A few of Barrett’s evasions were more telling. She refused to give a clear answer to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) about whether the Constitution gives the president authority to unilaterally delay an election—a straightforward question with a simple answer, which is “nope.” Barrett similarly declined to say whether voter intimidation is illegal, a question to which the only fact-based answer is “yep.” None of this bodes well for the prospect of Barrett siding with the law over Trump in a potential post-election dispute. 

A record 12-million people have already voted in this election, and unless Donald Trump figures out a better campaign strategy than pretending he isn’t currently president, his only hope of a second term is through GOP voter-suppression efforts and/or a far-right Supreme Court willing to defy the will of voters altogether. When we defeat the former, we neutralize the latter. 21 days.

On a new Campaign Experts React, Dan Pfeiffer is joined by Be A Hero President Liz Jaff and Data for Progress Executive Director Sean McElwee. In this episode the experts break down Trump's latest Covid propaganda, Biden's climate change ad running in Michigan, and a health care spot produced by Liz & Sean featuring Ady Barkan. Watch and smash that subscribe button → youtube.com/crookedmedia

The men who plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) also discussed “taking” Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA), according to an FBI agent’s testimony at a court hearing. Both Whitmer and Northam were targeted for their coronavirus lockdown orders. In April, President Trump tweeted anti-lockdown demands to “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” just as he did with Michigan. The day the news of a kidnapping plot against Whitmer broke last week, Trump went on Fox News and falsely accused Northam of executing a baby, so at least he’s now riling up the QAnon crowd in addition to armed white gangs! All of this is unspeakably crazy, but it bears repeating that the president of the United States has been using his office to egg on violence against Democratic leaders, with real-world consequences. 

• The Supreme Court has approved the Trump administration’s request to stop the Census count early, while litigation continues in the Ninth Circuit. 
   
• The Justice Department has sued Melania Trump's former friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, alleging that she violated an NDA when she published her tell-all book. Gotta keep Trump happy somehow, what with Obamagate continuing to deflate like a sad balloon.
   
• The California Republican Party admitted responsibility for placing fake ballot drop boxes and said it would continue to do so, in violation of state law. 
   
• An appeals court has reinstated an order limiting drop-off sites in Texas to one per county, finding that it was the governor's intention to—wait for it—make it easier for Texans to vote. Up is down, birds are frogs, nothing means anything, have ice cream for dinner. (Then fight back against GOP voter suppression.)
   
• A severed cable shut down Virginia’s online voter-registration system on the state’s last day to register. It’s not yet clear if the cable was cut by accident, or by someone who will soon be praised by a Republican judge for making it easier for Virginians to vote.
   
• Eli Lilly has paused clinical trials of its coronavirus antibody treatment, and Johnson & Johnson has paused trials of its vaccine candidate due to safety concerns.
   
• A legal dispute over how North Carolina voters should fix problems on their mail-in ballots has left at least 6,800 votes in limbo. Nearly half of those voters are people of color.
   
• As we prepare for potentially drawn-out election results, here’s a great timeline of how quickly absentee votes will be counted in each state. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are among the states that won’t begin pre-processing ballots until election day, so we can expect to wait longer for final results there. 
   
• Democratic lawmakers have called on the Government Accountability Office to rush a review of Trump’s Drug Discount Cards 4 Senior Votes scheme. Meanwhile, the White House has been funneling record subsidies to farmers in Trump’s rural base.
   
• Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the government has been hiding key evidence of UFOs for years, in news that would be extremely interesting at any point in human history other than October 2020.
   
• Kim Jong Un was the first person to wish Donald Trump well during his hospitalization, according to an anecdote Eric Trump told to Wisconsin supporters at a bowling alley for some reason.
   
• Here is Anderson Cooper valiantly trying to keep his shit together when he realizes the song Macho Man is playing at the Trump rally.

When you see Republicans performatively pearl-clutching about the possibility of Democrats rebalancing the Supreme Court after the election, know that the GOP has a rich tradition of trying to pack state supreme courts. In a study published earlier this year, Duke University law professor Marin Levy documented court-packing efforts in at least 11 states in recent years, with most of them initiated by Republicans. Two of the GOP attempts, in Arizona and Georgia, successfully added two seats to those states’ supreme courts. Not only is there historical precedent for enlarging the United States Supreme Court, but Republicans have made clear they’re perfectly fine with the practice when it suits their ideological interests, and should be loudly mocked for pretending otherwise. 

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A record-shattering 126,876 Georgia voters cast their ballots on the state’s first day of early voting. 

A truly astonishing 97 percent of eligible voters in Travis County, TX, are registered this year. Travis County, home of Austin, is one of the largest and bluest counties in the state. Yee, and we can’t stress this enough, haw. 

Michelle Obama and LeBron James have teamed up their voter initiatives to generate buzz about voting early.

Giffords, former Rep. Gabby Giffords's (D-AZ) gun control advocacy group, will launch Gun Owners for Safety—a national firearms group meant to strip members and power from the NRA.