The Duck is Definitely Fine We Swear
The Trump post-defeat trainwreck is really something. On the one hand, it's just embarrassing! On the other hand, it's a bit alarming how it's embarrassing. It makes it pretty clear how beholden the Republican party is to Trump, who could definitely scuttle the whole thing if he's sufficiently mad at them. (They're fine with sabotaging the country for political advantage, but Trump's loyalty isn't "party over country", it's "self over everything".) A lot of Republicans in important roles in state and national government clearly would be okay with a judicial or legislative coup, and some are certainly pushing the rhetoric towards outright sedition. Republicans have been not so keen on democracy for a while, but there's a difference between wanting to make it inconvenient to vote and suggesting that entire states should be retroactively disenfranchised because you didn't like the election result.
It does make me glad that SCOTUS is in fact still a bit sheltered from electoral politics because if Republican Justices were behaving like Republican Senators this would maybe be the end of the republic for real. Instead, SCOTUS's response to Pennsylvania Republicans' request to disenfranchise the entire state was a one-sentence "lol no". Getting this in before it happens, but Texas v. Pennsylvania will be similar. State courts changing in some ways the circumstances under which ballots can be cast does not violate the electors clause. Even if it did, a reasonable remedy would not be to disenfranchise entire states, but only in cases where your favored candidate lost. The people who could reasonably sue about this already did, and their case was rejected. Pretty sure this one is in the bad lawsuit trifecta: Lack of standing, wrong on the facts, the remedies proposed are not justified by the alleged facts (or possibly any plausible set of facts).
I do get the sense that the nightmare lame-duck session has been a bit deferred on account of fantasies about overturning the election result. Not that it hasn't been bad. The corrupt pardon of Flynn and the withdrawal from (and destruction of related equipment for) the Open Skies Treaty are both really bad, for example. It's going to get crazier, though.
It does make me glad that SCOTUS is in fact still a bit sheltered from electoral politics because if Republican Justices were behaving like Republican Senators this would maybe be the end of the republic for real. Instead, SCOTUS's response to Pennsylvania Republicans' request to disenfranchise the entire state was a one-sentence "lol no". Getting this in before it happens, but Texas v. Pennsylvania will be similar. State courts changing in some ways the circumstances under which ballots can be cast does not violate the electors clause. Even if it did, a reasonable remedy would not be to disenfranchise entire states, but only in cases where your favored candidate lost. The people who could reasonably sue about this already did, and their case was rejected. Pretty sure this one is in the bad lawsuit trifecta: Lack of standing, wrong on the facts, the remedies proposed are not justified by the alleged facts (or possibly any plausible set of facts).
I do get the sense that the nightmare lame-duck session has been a bit deferred on account of fantasies about overturning the election result. Not that it hasn't been bad. The corrupt pardon of Flynn and the withdrawal from (and destruction of related equipment for) the Open Skies Treaty are both really bad, for example. It's going to get crazier, though.