Even Republicans Are Disgusted By Other Republicans' Efforts to Disenfranchise Voters in Texas
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Republicans, from Donald Trump all the way down to your bad uncle, know that the only chance they truly have to win this year’s election is to disenfranchise as many voters as possible in as many states as possible. But that undemocratic and incredibly suspect effort is hitting some roadblocks in the courts. The latest setback? On Monday, a federal judge, and one who was appointed by George W. Bush to boot, rejected a last-ditch attempt by a group of Republicans to toss out more than 120,000 ballots cast in Harris County, the most Democratic county in the state that includes the city of Houston.
More on this desperate move, from the Texas Tribune:
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, a George W. Bush appointee, follows two earlier decisions by the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court rejecting similar efforts by Republicans challenging the validity of drive-thru voting in Harris County. Although Hanen’s ruling is still expected to be appealed, it appears to clear the way for counting of the early voting drive-thru ballots on Election Day.
Ten percent of Harris County’s in-person early voters cast their ballots at the county’s 10 drive-thru locations. Dismissing the votes would have been a monumental disenfranchisement of voters in a presidential election besieged with fights over voter suppression and fraud.
In a sign of just how fucked up this effort was, even other prominent Republicans, including the state’s former Republican House Speaker Joe Straus as well as the long-time election attorney Benjamin Ginsberg, described the effort to invalidate voters’ ballots as “patently wrong” and “un-American.” In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Ginsberg blasted Trump’s efforts to prevent people from voting. “My party is destroying itself on the Altar of Trump,” he wrote, adding, “My fellow Republicans, look what we’ve become. It is we who must fix this. Trump should not be reelected. Vote, but not for him.”
Trump and his fellow Republicans have reason to be worried this year about their prospects in Texas, which is a sentence I thought I wouldn’t type until at least 2028:
I’m not going to get my hopes up, but I did spend two hours phone-banking young voters in Texas on Sunday evening so I must be feeling a small shred of possibility??? Help, it feels too miserable to hope!
Here is a list of just some of the words used to describe Kimberly Guilfoyle in this unnecessarily long profile of the (alleged) sexual harasser and all-around very bad person:
- “a bona fide Fox News star” who “knows how to make lemonade out of lemons”
- “a female version” of Donald Trump
- “the prom… queen of MAGA land”
- “a human Venus flytrap”
- “a character”
- “from another fucking planet”
- “a diva”
- “she’s tall, she’s beautiful, she’s busty”
- Donald Trump wants to fire America’s pandemic daddy, Anthony Fauci, something he technically cannot do directly, but when has that ever stopped the man? [CNN]
- Joe Biden is still up in Pennsylvania and tied with Donald Trump in Arizona. [Politico]
- In related news:
- Young voters have been turning out in huge numbers for Biden. [HuffPost]
- Donald Trump continues his campaign against… Lady Gaga?
- As well as “Beyonsee,” who endorsed Joe Biden today in an Instagram post. [Vulture]
- Meanwhile, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are blessed with the support of not only the aforementioned Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, but 2 Chainz, who on Monday gave a stirring speech in support of his favored candidates.
- Will it surprise you to learn that many of the extremists charged with plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer participated in numerous anti-government, anti-lockdown protests? [Washington Post]
- The Supreme Court has tossed out a federal appeals court ruling that allowed the activist DeRay Mckesson to be sued by a police officer who claimed he was injured not by Mckesson, but by an unnamed protester. [USA Today]