Crooked Media - What A Day: Breaking Brad

There’s no wrong way to kick off a new year: Set a new fitness goal, start a daily journal, commit some election interference crimes on a recorded phone call, see what feels right for you!

• In the spirit of personal reinvention, President Trump spent an hour on Saturday bullying Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to fraudulently manipulate Georgia’s presidential election results: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have...fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” Sounding like a mob boss with a recent head injury, a rambling Trump threatened Raffensperger and his office’s attorney Ryan Germany with vague criminal charges if they refused to produce enough nonexistent votes to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
   
• That call marked the 19th time that Trump had tried to reach Raffensperger since the election, and officials in Raffensperger’s office said they decided to record it after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked them to throw out legally cast ballots, and later denied it. (A classic case of “kissing the president’s ass so hard you accidentally propel him into jail.”) Continuing to set the record straight on Monday, top Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling held a press conference to debunk Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy theories one by one: “This is all easily provably false. Yet the president persists.” 
   
• State and federal election laws tried to silence him, but nevertheless, he persisted. The lone Democrat on Georgia’s election board has called on Raffensperger to open an investigation into Trump’s potential civil and criminal violations. Meanwhile, Georgia’s Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Atlanta, Byung “BJay” Pak, abruptly left his post weeks earlier than expected, citing “unforeseen circumstances.” Could those circumstances perhaps be that Trump ordered him to charge election officials with crimes for refusing to steal him an election? That he was unwilling to support a federal criminal probe of the president who appointed him? Seems worth finding out. 

True news buffs will remember a similar “perfect” phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine, which was an abuse of power galling enough to trigger impeachment proceedings. Surely this one is, too? 
 

• That depends on who you ask (and when you ask them). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was immediately ready to go for round two: “I absolutely think it's an impeachable offense, and if it was up to me, there would be articles on the floor quite quickly.” Other Democrats are less convinced. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told reporters that House leaders are “not looking backwards, we're looking forward,” caught some backlash for it, then tweeted, “Democracy is precious. It does not run on autopilot. We will defend it relentlessly.” (Republicans, obviously, have either frozen very still or expressed righteous fury at Raffensperger over the real crime here: leaking a Private Conversation.)
   
• Given the timeline until Joe Biden’s inauguration, the odds of a second impeachment look pretty slim. House members were scheduled to head home from January 6 through January 19, but may stick around until Friday if Republicans drag out the congressional certification of Biden’s victory. A dozen Senate Republicans have pledged to do just that on Wednesday, with 12 enemies of democracy joining Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to force a public debate over what should be a rote, ministerial duty. The good news is, that stunt has no chance of keeping Trump in power. The other good news is, every Republican will now have to go on the record as standing with either democracy or a criming reality show host. The exceedingly bad news is, this is how American presidential elections end now. 
   

In his closing arguments at Trump’s impeachment trial, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said, “What are the odds if left in office that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent. A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.” That prediction has proven true, and now we have to ask ourselves: What are the odds if left unpenalized that the GOP will continue using his anti-democratic playbook? We don’t need to look very far backwards to know the answer.

TOMORROW is the runoff election in Georgia, meaning today is your last chance to remind your Georgia friends, family, acquaintances, exes, and beyond to vote. 

There will be volunteer opportunities available right up until the polls close on January 5, so sign up for a shift today at votesaveamerica.com/georgia and send the link to your Georgia friends so that they have access to valuable voting information tomorrow. 

That’s votesaveamerica.com/georgia. Go do it now.  

All 10 living former defense secretaries wrote an op-ed warning Donald Trump against involving the military in his attempts to overturn the election, presumably in history’s most intense Google Doc. “The time for questioning the results has passed,” wrote the gaggle of defense secretaries, and any efforts to involve the military in resolving those artificial questions “would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.” The statement urges the Pentagon to cooperate with the Biden transition (Biden accused both the Defense Department and OMB of obstruction last week), but seems to have stemmed from a darker concern: Former Vice President Dick Cheney got the op-ed gang together after David Ignatius published this Washington Post report that government officials were concerned Trump might incite violence as an excuse to mobilize the military and hold new elections. Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser has activated the national guard in preparation for potential protests around Congress’s certification of Biden’s victory.

• The more contagious (but not more deadly) coronavirus variant first found in the U.K. has spread to dozens of countries, and has been detected in Colorado, California, Florida, and New York.
   
• Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) has gone full QAnon in the final days of the Georgia Senate runoffs, baselessly accusing Raphael Warnock of being “involved in child abuse, domestic abuse.” There’s still time to help send her home. 
   
• The Trump administration approved faster slaughter line speeds at 15 poultry plants during the pandemic, which seems to have fueled coronavirus outbreaks at those facilities. The administration is now rushing to finalize a rule that would expand those faster line speeds to other facilities and make them permanent, at the expense of worker safety. 
   
• A pharmacist at a Wisconsin hospital has been fired and arrested for intentionally trying to spoil more than 550 doses of coronavirus vaccine because he believed the vaccine would mutate people's DNA. If you have a pharmacist in your life, consider deleting their Facebook account.
   
• Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-LA) died of coronavirus complications last week, at age 41.
   
• Trump took a quick break from pardoning his criminal allies to award the Medal of Freedom to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), for pursuing the “Russia Hoax” at “great personal risk.” A whole generation of congressional snowflakes, coddled by participation trophies. 
   
• Groups of anti-maskers have been terrorizing grocery stores and shopping malls in Los Angeles, where hospitals are so overwhelmed that ambulances are waiting up to eight hours to offload patients.
   
• Hundreds of Google employees have launched a union, presumably in history’s most encrypted Google Doc. 
   
• Chinese billionaire Jack Ma hasn’t been seen in public in more than two months, after delivering a speech in which he sharply criticized China’s regulatory system. 
   
• Former Bond girl Tanya Roberts is still alive, contrary to her rep’s mistaken announcement that she had died. An incomplete list of other people who are still alive: Bean Dad (alive and canceled), Hilaria Baldwin (alive and from Boston), Ben Affleck (alive and very from Boston), Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles (alive and holding hands). 

Only four million of the 14 million coronavirus vaccine doses delivered to states have been administered, falling just a tiny bit short of the Trump administration’s promises to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020. The basic problem, which public health experts warned about for weeks, is that the federal government has dumped the full burden of distribution on overwhelmed and underfunded local officials, resulting in a chaotic, confusing patchwork of vaccination policies. In Florida, some seniors have been waiting in line overnight to receive their shots, while in West Virginia, 42 people were mistakenly injected with antibody treatments instead of the vaccine. Most wrenching of all, the hobbled rollout means that an untold number of vaccine doses could expire in the freezer before they’re put to use. Thankfully, we’re just a little over two weeks away from having a president who thinks death is bad, and who intends to use a “whole of government response” to fix the vaccine distribution process.

Take Action with the ACLU to Demand the End of the Federal Death Penalty

The Trump administration has carried out an unprecedented number of federal executions this year. In its rush to kill people during a pandemic, the government has sidestepped due process, public health recommendations, and legal precedent. But the death penalty is always cruel and inhumane — it’s time we end it once and for all. 

Just like the death penalty in the states, the federal death penalty is racist, arbitrary, and error-prone in its application. The ACLU is demanding that the Biden-Harris administration honor its pledge to end the federal death penalty. Add your name to join us. 

We’re demanding that the new administration commute all federal death sentences while it works to end the federal death penalty once and for all. If you agree, click here to add your name and make your voice heard with the ACLU.

Moderna announced that it will increase its 2021 vaccine production from 500 million doses to 600 million.

A record-breaking 2.3 million people have already voted early in the Georgia runoffs, with strong turnout from Black and young voters. (Anything can happen on Tuesday—we’ve still got work to do.)

The Youngs have taken to TikTok to encourage voter participation among Fellow Youngs in the runoffs.

Congress restored Medicaid coverage for 100,000 Pacific Islanders as part of the end-of-year spending package, in large part thanks to Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI).