Bill Barr’s DOJ Will Indulge Trump’s Voter Fraud Fantasies
Everything you need to know for Tuesday, Nov. 10: NC's COVID cases keep rising + UNC-CH's admissions policy tested in court + Trump thinks he’s going to run again
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020
16 days until Thanksgiving
30 days until Hanukkah
45 days until Christmas
52 days until this cursed year ends
71 days until this cursed presidency is over
Today’s Number: 34
Percentage of Republicans professing trust in American elections, down from 68% before the election, according to Morning Consult.
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> Justice Dept. Will Investigate Voting “Irregularities”
No sooner did Joe Biden pull ahead than the Trump campaign—and its Republican allies—began making baseless accusations of election fraud. In the week since the election, Donald Trump has filed a slew of lawsuits—most recently, asking a federal court to block Pennsylvania from certifying its election—while his appointee has refused to recognize Biden’s victory, blocking transition funds and potentially delaying the Biden administration’s ability to enact a COVID-19 plan.
Now, despite the fact that evidence of voting fraud exists only in Trump’s fever dreams, the Department of Justice has reversed its own policies to authorize federal prosecutors to pursue allegations of “vote tabulation irregularities.”
In his memo, circulated two days after results showed former vice president Joe Biden had defeated Trump, [Attorney General William] Barr seemed to take aim at previous guidance from the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Branch that said prosecutors should not—in most instances—take overt steps in voter fraud or related investigations until after election results are in and certified. The guidance was designed to ensure that voters and state and local election officials, rather than the federal government, decide the results. …
But Barr wrote that the previous directive was never “a hard and fast rule,” and that a “passive and delayed enforcement approach can result in situations in which election misconduct cannot realistically be rectified.”
Why is Barr doing this now? Take a wild guess.
Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration who is now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the memo amounts to “scaremongering” that will allow officials to send letters or take other public steps that might suggest there is voter fraud in a particular state, when in fact there is none.
“This is totally predictable. It’s DOJ scare tactics again. It’s the same show we’ve seen before,” Gupta said. “Barr is probably doing this because Trump is demanding that he do something, but the voters decided this election, and overwhelmingly voted for Biden.”
From The Washington Post:
Meanwhile, other GOP officials also rushed to bolster Trump’s case, including the two U.S. senators from Georgia, who demanded the resignation of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, after his office said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the state. …
“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” said one senior Republican official. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”
What’s the downside? Check out the Morning Consult poll above.
LOCAL & STATE
—> NC Hits a High of 2,400 New COVID Cases
We may have adjusted to The Way Things Are Now, but that doesn’t mean the pandemic has plateaued.
DHHS reported 1,521 new lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday, the first time since last Monday that it has reported less than 2,000 new cases. Even as the number of new cases fell, the seven-day daily average for new cases continued to rise Monday, reaching a record-high of 2,405 cases over the past week. Rolling averages are used to track new cases in order to better account for single-day peaks and valleys. …
DHHS also reported eight new deaths from COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the total since the pandemic began to 4,615 residents of North Carolina.
—> RELATED: The Biden transition team—the one the Trump administration is refusing to admit is a real thing—announced a coronavirus task force comprising experts and physicians.
“Biden’s task force will have three co-chairs: Vivek H. Murthy, surgeon general during the Obama administration; David Kessler, Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; and Marcella Nunez-Smith, associate dean for health equity research at the Yale School of Medicine.”
“The 13-member task force also includes former Trump administration officials, including Rick Bright, former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, who, after being demoted, spoke out against the administration’s approach to the pandemic. Luciana Borio, director for medical and biodefense preparedness on Trump’s National Security Council until 2019, is also on the panel.”
“Public health experts said Biden should use the transition to provide leadership as the pandemic continues through a deadly stretch and begin communicating a strong national message. ‘Clearly from the election outcomes, half the country doesn’t believe we’re in a crisis,’ said Kavita Patel, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked on health policy in the Obama administration. Biden and Harris ‘have an incredible platform that can be used for communication. The country needs clear daily briefings that we thought we’d get from the White House coronavirus task force. They have an incredible platform, if not an official platform.’”
—> Durham’s Heat Biologics Moves Forward with COVID Vaccine
Pfizer’s press release yesterday about its COVID-19 vaccine study sent the stock market into overdrive. But Durham’s Heat Biologics is also making progress on its COVID vaccine.
The TBJ:
On Monday, Durham-based Heat Biologics (Nasdaq: HTBX) released its third quarter results alongside an update on progress for its drug candidates, including its Covid-19 vaccine.
"We continue to make progress on both our oncology and Covid-19 vaccine programs," the CEO Jeff Wolf said in his message to investors. … “We believe our vaccine has the potential to be used as either a standalone vaccine, or in combination with other antibody-focused vaccine approaches to enhance prophylactic protection,” Wolf said.
Even so, while Pfizer’s stock soared, Heat’s fell 7% yesterday. Apparently, the market thinks there’s only room for one.
Regardless, Heat reports continued success in its original target before Covid-19: the treatment of lung cancer.
On Monday, Wolf reported the company is continuing to enroll patients its Phase 1 trial for its drug candidate PTX-35. The study is ultimately looking to enroll about 30 patients with “advanced solid tumors” that have not responded to traditional treatment avenues.
—> RELATED: The FDA has given emergency approval to Eli Lilly’s COVID-19 antibody treatment. This was the treatment given to Chris Christie after his diagnosis last month.
—> SORTA RELATED: A mother-daughter team in RTP has raised more than a half-million dollars to build prototypes for water purification systems.
—> Records Show UNC Schools Treat Sexual Assault Claims Inconsistently
Following local media organizations’ years-long battle with the UNC System for access to student sexual misconduct records, WRAL obtained about 120 records dating to 2007 from UNC-Chapel Hill, Western Carolina University, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Asheville, Winston-Salem State University, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Pembroke, UNC-Wilmington, Elizabeth City State University, and Fayetteville State University.
The records show that only 17 students were expelled, and the schools appeared to handle sexual misconduct allegations in rather different ways.
One concern is a lack of consistency in how cases are handled, according to Georgia Nixon, an attorney who has represented accused students.
“Each school does it differently, but more often than not, it is not fair to the person the allegation is regarding,” Nixon said. “Some schools conduct thorough investigations, but ... I’ve also seen somebody say, ‘Hey, come in and tell your side of the story, and oh, by the way, you’re expelled.’”
UNC-Asheville records show the same student was punished twice for separate incidents in 2012 and 2013. Yet, he was allowed to return to school and graduate in 2018.
Two UNC-CH students who got expelled were high-profile athletes:
Freshman basketball player Jalek Felton was expelled in 2018.
Football player Mike Hughes was expelled after being found responsible for a sexual offense. He then transferred to the University of Central Florida (my alma mater, yay) and now plays in the NFL.
—> UNC-CH Defends Its Use of Race in Admissions
This week, the school will begin defending itself in a federal lawsuit brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a right-wing group that alleges UNC-CH illegally gives preference to Black and Hispanic students in admissions.
From the N&O:
UNC has defended its admissions practices, saying its policies “comply with the spirit and letter of the law.” … The university uses race as one of many factors in evaluating applicants and does not use quotas or formulas, according to UNC’s website about the case. Students can share their race or ethnicity in their application, but their “academic performance, test scores, class rank, essays, experiences, circumstances and potential to contribute to the educational environment” will all be considered.
The school seems to have the current case law on its side.
In a similar case against Harvard University, a federal judge ruled that Harvard should continue to consider race in its admissions process. Last fall, Federal District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs said that “ensuring diversity at Harvard relies, in part, on race conscious admissions.” She wrote that the elite private university’s admissions program “passes constitutional muster.”
The UNC case also resembles Fisher v. University of Texas, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment allows race to be considered in undergraduate admissions decisions.
Of course, the new, more conservative Supreme Court might reconsider.
—> Only 20% of NC Teachers Are Minorities
While more than half of North Carolina’s public school students are minorities, only one in five teachers are, WRAL reports.
There's widespread agreement this is a problem worth addressing, but there's no program at the state level specifically designed to address the recruitment or retention of teachers of color, according to a legislative report filed Monday at the statehouse. …
A number of local systems have their own programs, lawmakers heard Monday during an oversight committee meeting, but many of these efforts are in their infancy and difficult to judge, according to the legislative report.
—> Weather
Mostly cloudy, high of 79.
NATION & WORLD
—> The Lede: Trump Wants to Run Again
The president hasn’t admitted defeat, and he likely never will, but he’s already making plans to run in 2024.
This is the clearest indication yet that Trump understands he has lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden—even as the president continues to falsely insist that he is the true winner, that there has been election fraud and that his team will fight to the end in the courts. …
Aides advising Republicans who are likely to run in 2024 are dreading the prospect of a Trump run given the extraordinary sway he holds over millions of GOP voters.
Even four years after leaving office, he could remain formidable in a Republican primary.
That fact alone could freeze the ambitions, fundraising and staffing of individual candidates—and of the Republican National Committee as it seeks to regroup and move beyond Trump.
Axios reminds us that Trump filed his re-election papers on the day of his 2017 inauguration. It will be interesting to see if he does anything similar on Jan. 20, 2021.
—> The Brief: 4 Stories to Read Today
Facebook takes down Steve Bannon-linked “Stop the Steal” pages for spreading disinformation. “The seven pages, which had a total of over 2.45 million followers and had pushed the ‘Stop the Steal’ messaging, were flagged for Facebook by the liberal group Avaaz on Friday night. The move comes just days after Bannon was permanently banned from Twitter after saying that Trump should execute Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert. Facebook had also removed two videos from his page for inciting violence.”
Trump and Fox News, the end of a love affair? “As he faces expulsion from the White House, Trump has vowed revenge on the network that propelled his political career, according to close White House aides—perhaps by publicly attacking Fox or undermining its business model by endorsing a competitor. … Fox was on the big-screen TVs as Trump won the key state of Florida, and the room filled with increasing optimism that Trump had again defied the polls. Until 11:20 p.m., when Fox News called Arizona for Biden with 73 percent of the expected vote counted—a ‘screeching of tires’ that brought the party to a halt, said one official present. … Trump erupted in anger, telling others in the White House to ‘get that result changed,’ a senior administration official said.”
Ben Carson and others who attended the White House election night party have COVID. “Carson, who tested positive Monday morning at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after experiencing symptoms, was at the White House last Tuesday for an election night event, as was White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who also has tested positive for the virus. Carson was around senior administration officials and other Cabinet members during the event. … Carson’s diagnosis comes days after news of a fresh wave of coronavirus infections at the White House, with Meadows and five other Trump aides receiving positive test results in the time around Election Day.”
Progressives encourage Biden to bypass the Senate and appoint the Cabinet he wants. “Allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Axios last week that a GOP-controlled Senate would be willing to go along with Biden’s nominations for his administration, as long as they’re centrists. But progressive activists say that path would be unacceptable, and they’re already putting pressure on the incoming Biden administration to go around the Senate so that McConnell doesn’t get to decide a Democratic Cabinet. … The two main options center around using a law called the Vacancy Act, and appointing officials when the Senate is in recess. Transition officials have so far been unwilling to discuss what sort of strategies they’re considering.”
Thanks for reading! See you tomorrow.