Happy New Year, y'all -
And let's start with an election litigation update for the Gohmertian Goofiness.

As of 3 minutes ago no reply brief from Gohmert but some other updates have appeared.

(No, the judge won't ignore his filing if it's a little late.)

Election Litigation Update - Gohmert.

Reply brief is in. Let's have a look. They are, mercifully, underlength. They had 50 pages available, the PDF is 43 and some of that is cover page, signatures,

Interesting table of contents. Looks like they're packing a lot in, until you realize that much of the material that's important - like their response to the "you sued the wrong person" material and "injury in fact" take up very little space.

Looks like they decided to skip the table of authorities. Presumably GoogleDocWord ate it too bad for them to fix. This will certainly further endear them to the judge.

This is going to be interesting - leading off a reply brief with a "here's what our cause is about" is certainly a strategy. It's even a bold strategy.

Shall we dig deeper, Cotton?

"We live in a democratic republic in which the Vice President, who will more often than not be a candidate in the election, has the sole and unchallengeable power to decide who wins the election" is a hellofa take.

Texas - WTF is this even - a very short reassurance thread:

1: The Texas "lawusit" against four other "battleground" states in the United States Supreme Court is legally stupid.* It is so legally stupid that I was reluctant to believe that even Ken Paxton would file it.

*My patience level is not ginormous today. Please don't try to explain to me why you think it isn't stupid for whatever other reasons because I'll be making liberal use of the airlock. Thx.

2: Yes, one state can sue another at the US Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court gets to decide whether to take the case. One factor that they will **undoubtedly** look at is the factor of "injury."

Texas is claiming two things. First, that the states have a special interest in who becomes Vice President because of the tiebreaker. Second, that their electors are injured if their votes are "diluted" by electors from states that, in Texas's view, didn't obey their own law.

There is very little argument presented for "injury." Even less - barely a paragraph - was presented for how the defendant states caused that injury.

For lawyers, this is a signal that this is a performance of politics by "litigation" and not a serious effort.

NEW: @GenFlynn interview w/ @newsmax [on his view of the 2020 Election and what should happen next] "First of all, @realDonaldTrump won on the 3rd of November. The things that he needs to do right now [are]: appoint a Special Counsel, immediately; seize all of these Dominion and

2/ other voting machines that we have across the country; he needs to go ahead and prioritize by state, and probably by county [Fulton County, Maricopa County, as an example]. Exactly what they did up in Antrim County, MI, and what they discovered. I think if he looks

3/ at a random sampling of some of these counties, he's going to find exactly the same problem. These machines are clearly, CLEARLY, there is a foreign influence that is tied to this system, and it goes back to China. It likely goes to Russia. Likely goes to Iran. We know that

4/ Venezuela has participated in the development of these machines. There's been problems all over the country with them. Not only with Dominion, but with this Smartmatic software. He's got a couple of options that he can take, and he needs to take them right now.

5/ The President could, immediately, on his order, seize every single one of these machines around country, on his order. He could also order, within the swing-states [if he wanted to], he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states & basically re-run

NEW: @RudyGiuliani in GA hearing "Let me conclude by saying ... our Founding Fathers, miraculously, probably envisioned everything that would happen to us. They even envisioned this. A disputed election. Cheating. Stealing. And they made a choice. They made a choice of where to

2/ put the responsibility in a difficult situation like that. Article I, Section II of the of Constitution puts that responsibility right here, in the legislatures of the several states. You are responsible for the selection of the electors. Not the Governor. Not your Secretary

3/ of State, who is covering up everything that he can cover-up. Not anybody else, but you. It's your power. It doesn't come from the state constitution. It comes from the United States Constitution. You are not subjected to needing a special session. The governor has no right,

4/ really, to interfere. He has no right to call a special session or not call a special session. The Constitution has taken him out of the process. The Constitution put the power in the state legislature, so strong, that you can take that power back right up to the last moment,

5/ you can take it back two minutes before the electoral votes are counted, because ultimately it's your responsibility. You delegated it to them in the first place. And if you feel they are exercising it improperly, it is your obligation to stop them from doing it. And you KNOW

The Republican Party is an authoritarian power structure.

For decades, it embraced greedy nihilists in order to win elections.

In the last 10+ years, a well-funded insurgency has infiltrated and captured it.

They are now threatening & purging any remaining opposition.

We can’t address the threat they pose to democracy without addressing the methods by which they maintain popular support.

This requires action across multiple fronts.

In terms of public policy, we are working on the right things:

-Bills to eliminate the GOP’s counter-majorian control (voting security, eliminating vote suppression)

-Exposing dark money networks who are funding them (forcing transparency for anonymous shell companies)

-Addressing the immediate socio-economic pain that places people in anxiety-laden debt traps, makes them feel isolated, and makes them ripe targets for disinformation/authoritarian messaging appeals (fighting Covid with a plan, financial relief, genuinely empathetic leadership)

Biden and the Dem Congress are working on all of these things already.

This is moving us in the right direction, and shows that they get what needs to be done here. This is good.

There are three areas that still concern me, that I have been trying to call attention to...

We promised people that if we won the Senate, we would send out $2,000 survival checks. They delivered us to victory—and now we MUST deliver.

“Targeting” checks to a smaller group fails to do that. People need help like never before, and we must put money in their pockets.

“Targeting” checks isn’t just bad for people, it’s bad policy too! It’s not humane, it's not smart, it’s not effective, and it’s not even fiscally responsible. Not to mention that it doesn't meet the scale of this crisis.

Help me spread the word about 4 obvious reasons why:

1⃣The survival checks often use 2019 tax data to measure someone’s income.

Millions lost their jobs in 2020 due to COVID—that’s the whole point of this relief!—and therefore their income from 1 or 2 years ago is no longer accurate. They need help now and we must provide it.

Even if someone isn’t one of the nearly 1 million additional people losing their job EVERY single week, they likely lost hours and therefore had their overall income significantly reduced.

By “targeting,” we cut out people who are desperately in need of help.

2⃣The data from people who filed for unemployment shows that more than 20% of those earning between $50k and $70k were still food insecure.

That's up 16% from 2019—and it's why food banks have such long lines. We need to put money in their pockets so they can feed their family.